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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
Oct 24, 20222 min read

An Announcement, Two Pictures, and a New Poem


On Wednesday, November 2 from 12:00-1:00, Annie England Noblin and I will be signing copies of our books Christmas in Blue Dog Valley and Atheists and Empty Spaces. Please join us for this special event on the Arkansas State University-Mountain Home campus in the Gaston Lobby of Roller Hall. Books will be available for sale, or you can bring a copy that you have previously purchased. The event is sponsored by the English Department of ASUMH.


While the previous joint book signing by Annie and I was a bit far away from home from most of my family, friends, and folks, this one is a bit more convenient located and in the middle of the day...Sooo... you can come and look at the beautiful ASUMH campus and the new fountain statue of our mascot Blaze the Trailblazer (pictured above) while having a copy of what may become your favorite books signed by your favorite authors.


The picture above is one that I took as the full moon rose over the tops of the trees on the other of the street a couple of weeks ago. I did not notice how the top of the tree limb looks like someone falling or diving across the sky until I blew the photo up a bit. In response to this picture, I wrote a short poem. Two things about this poem are a bit weird. First, I ended up writing about Phaeton, the son of Apollo or Helios, and not a mythical figure typically associated with the night--or the moon. Inspiration is a fickle muse. Second, I know that I promised to stick with a nature theme as I create my next book of poems, and this poem ended up having a spiritual or religious theme, I guess, but, you know, inspiration is a fickle muse. I think I already said that. The poem is still short, and it is song-worthy. As always, ENJOY!


Phaeton’s Ride


On any clear and cloudless night

When angels sweep star-dusty skies,

Observe each falling meteorite

As it spits flames and swiftly dies

And know that each quick tumbling light

Falls to the grave where Phaeton lies.


One fretful dawn with doubtful heart,

He dropped the reins he was given

And tripped into his father’s cart,

Enflaming the vaults of heaven.

With no god’s hands to hold their start,

Sol’s coursers were fiercely driven.


They seared the Earth. They scorched the sky

But proved he was a bastard son

Of timeless gods who cannot die.

Pray that he is the only one.

For when false gods with humans lie,

Both faith and light are soon undone.

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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