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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
Apr 9, 20231 min read

Early Purple Irises: A Poem and a Couple of Pictures


Comments below the poem.


Early Purple Irises


“Is it May? Is it May?”

My early irises say.

Their yellow beardlets blown

White by icy breezes.

“My eager purple sheep

Lay your heads back down to sleep

Or learn a lesson how

Cruel April teases.”


“Is it May? Is it May?”

My drowsy irises say,

Their blossoms cradled in

Soft beams of mellow sun.

“Listen here, my purple sheep.

Lay your heads back down to sleep

And hold your blossoms till

We’re sure Jack Frost is done.”


“Is it May? Is it May?”

The worried irises say,

While I am cozy warm

And sheltered in my bed.

“Oh, dear, my simple sheep

It appears that during my sleep

Jack Frost came by and chopped

Off every purple head.”



Soooo...this poem popped into my head as Luna and I walked today. I had a mind to keep it singy-songy, but then, when I thought of what really happens in the poem, especially at the end, I thought, "Let's make it seem metrical, but then alternate the lines between light and easy rhythms and heavy, dull thudders." That kind of rhythm tends to be aggravating to most people when they try and read it, especially aloud as poems should be read. I don't know about you, but I do get really aggravated when my blooming flowers are nipped in the buds by Ol' Jack Frost, literally. Let's cross our fingers and hope Mr. Frost has gone back north and leaves the huge crop of purple irises I have alone.

As always ENJOY! --And write and let me know what you think about the poems, pictures, or anything else.

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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