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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
Sep 18, 20222 min read

A Newly Revised Poem from 2005 Written While Sitting at Case Cemetery


Kellie took this picture of a tiny purple flower on our daily walk a few days, maybe even a week or two, ago. The flower is an exquisite beauty close up but not much to look at from a distance. Sometimes, bending over to look at something is worthwhile.

The poem that I offer today was written as I sat at Case, or East Richwoods, Cemetery after weed-eating around my dad's memorial and all of the stones near to his in 2005. I am going to guess that it was summer time, but I am not sure about that. Shortly after I had finished weed-eating, a line of showers came over the hill from toward Benny Risner's house and pretty much blotted out the world for fifteen minutes, and then, after the hard rain, the sun came out. I jotted down two rough outlines for poems while I sat in the work truck that day. The other poem Two Miles Down the Road is also posted here in my blog. I have worked on versions of The Weight many times. I think that I am satisfied enough with this one to share it with others. Though it is a bit sad, as always, I only ask that you--- Enjoy!


The Weight


The raindrops fall in swags across the sill;

The listless hillock a mile away fades

As a misty gray curtain slowly shades

The distance between us. The wind is still;

Oaks, maples, pines, hick’ry, and sweet gum chill

And shine silver like the breeze-blown grass blades.

All motion turns silent. The shroud parades

Loudly over the crest of Halpain Hill

And roars through the weedy grass pastures there,

Blotting out the marble tombstones in Case

Cemetery without one thought or care

Of the memories lying in that place—

No, not lying! Drifting in the grave air,

And now crushed into the soil’s hallowed space.

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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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