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Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.-Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry is when emotion has found its thought and thought has found words--Robert Frost

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance--Carl Sandburg

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry--John Cage

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you--Joseph Joubert

Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own. ~Dylan Thomas

joybragi84

A Butterfly Poem and One More Dose of Cherries (They Are All Gone!)



I took the picture of this butterfly on my rosebush beside the house. Shortly after, I came in to write a poem about it because I thought I had a clear vision of what I wanted to write. As soon as I got started, I struggled to say what I wanted. The poem and my thoughts kept running away from the poem I had formulated in my mind until I simply stopped writing at the end of the sixteen lines below. A couple of days later, I looked at the fragmented thoughts in verse, changed a few words, and thought, "Maybe that is not so bad if I say it is fragmented thoughts." The title is Wordsworth-worthy. I don't know about the poem. Here is what I ended up with. Tell me what you think. ENJOY!


Fragmented Thoughts After Watching a Butterfly

 

A butterfly’s a scrap of a light divine,

A feather shed from denizens of heaven,

A bit of trash swept from the golden shine

Of streets whose names are known but never given.

 

Alighting on a leaf, it gives its power,

Enhancing blooms, augmenting paradise,

And slows the movement of the sun an hour

So that we see no difference with our eyes.

 

He’s lured in by the rose, a blushing maiden.

She offers him the nectar of her love.

The butterfly’s weak mind is overladen.

He flutters to more tepid blooms above.

 

The myrtle flower seems a fitter bride,

A simple blossom that’s less liquored up.

He slips into her stigma from the side

And let’s his pollen fall into her cup.


Yes! I did get some cherry cobbler! And I did get to eat most of it over about a week. Kellie ate some, but not much. I think Sarah might have gotten one serving. Anyhow, the cherries are now all gone from the tree, and here is a poem that I wrote on the relief I felt from the observation of their absence. Unlike the poem above that I mulled over for several days and a couple of sittings without much satisfaction, this one took about five minutes, and, while I admit to changing a word or two as I looked at it today, it is not much different than the original thought.


The Cherries Are All Gone

 

Though May has been a fruitful month,

The cherries are all gone.

We’ve picked and pitted, boiled and baked,

And feel our job is done.

 

To finches flitting in the tree,

The cherries are all gone.

You’ve eaten nearly half of them.

Your gorging days are done.

 

A sunflower sprouts up through the limbs

Where cherries are all gone.

Its seeds will soon be feeding birds

Whose fruiting days are done.

 

I dreamed last night of sagging trees

Whose cherries dragged the lawn.

I was so glad to wake and find

The cherries are all gone.

 

I don’t know what next year will bring.

The cherries are all gone.

Maybe the tree will bear again

Thank God, for now, it’s done.


Oddly enough, to me, I have had no one email me about our book, Essential Words. I don't know if my blog readers and friends are buying the book at Lulu.com, but I'm not being asked to sign any. I have copies available. Email me at mbt1966@yahoo.com, and I will get you a copy some way or the other. Here is what the book looks like.




Catch you later! As always ENJOY!


Comments


I find that I cannot exist without Poetry--without eternal poetry--half the day will not do--the whole of it--I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan.-John Keats

We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value.-T. S. Eliot

A man may praise and praise, but no one recollects but that which pleases.-George Gordon, Lord Byron

The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting.-John Keats

Our faulty elder poets sacrificed the passion and passionate flow of poetry to the subtleties of intellect and to the stars of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and heterogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious something, made up, half of image, and half of abstract meaning. The one sacrificed the heart to the head; the other both heart and head to point and drapery.-S. T. Coleridge

The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation.-W. B. Yeats

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