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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

Poem-a-Week: One that Came Naturally and One That Keeps Fighting Me


This morning, Kellie was not able to walk with Luna and me. What a shame! It was a gorgeous 54 degree morning. The fog did rise off the pond before I got a good picture of it floating and swirling over the water, but the picture above with no fog is not too shabby. Also, while I was walking this morning, I got into a word rhythm and pretty much composed the entire following poem/song in my head. It took me less than 15 minutes to write it down when I got home, and I only edited two or three words. ENJOY! Tell me what you think!


Hymn #1: Ode to Joy

 

The sun winks through the leaves.

The dew sparks on the grass.

Troubles meander through my mind.

I think I’ll let them pass.

 

Yes, I will let them pass.

They cannot come today.

Because this day is mine alone,

I’ll shoo them on their way.

 

The fog rests on the pond.

The tall sunflowers sway.

I know that soon winter will come,

But it won’t be today.

 

No, it won’t be today

Because this day is mine.

I’ll think that where my troubles pass

I’ll seek some other sign.

 

Jays warble in the oaks.

Grapes ripen on the vine.

Tomorrow comes for other folks.

Today, this day is mine.

 

Oh, yes, this day is mine.

I will not let it pass.

I’ll not wait for some other day.

My joy has come at last.


Damn! I love the feeling when words just overwhelm me, and I put them down, and they're not bad. But...


Yeah, you remember the fragment from last week. It keeps haunting me. The words come haltingly, and I want to change them before I've even finished typing them, but the idea just keeps coming back over and over again like when I eat a cucumber and burp cucumber the rest of the day. It just won't go away. If you can enjoy my edits, revisions, and additions to this fragment, please let me know.


A Fragment About a Fragment

 

I watched the copper bolide shoot

Through the sky, an errant spear.

I saw its seedling spark take root

In fallowed fogs of morning air.

 

The nimbly glowing mist entwined

The deep shadows of woodland boughs.

It spread into the fields and vined

Across the backs of dozing cows.

 

Then, spokes sprang forth; a giant wheel

That spun in whirls quicker than thought

Gyrated up a nearby hill

And on the rising moon was caught.

 

There it twirled like sun-lit lightning

Spitting at the universe.

The soft horizon, slowly brightening,

Absorbed the brunt, or even worse,

 

Let the sputum pierce each pass

The bubbling secrets of Earth’s heart,

A mix of molten rock and glass,

That felt the burden of its part

 

Reechoing the pink and gold,

Collecting all the precious gems,

And keeping sunshine in its hold,

Yet still the liquid spilled over its rims.

 

Some horizontal cloudlets, thin and dark,

Stained the auburn liquor as it spread

And scarred the browning wheat sheaves with their mark

Above the stubbled ground, graying and dead.

 

Then from the dirt, a seedling springs

And later bursts into a head.

In the woods, a bluebird sings

To rouse the buried from the dead.

  

The coydog howls on mountaintops.

His voice a call to break the dawn.

He ends and licks his frothy chops,

Stretches his legs and rambles on

 

Through heavy growths of pine and holly

That combs his coat with spikey tips.

His life is not so melancholy

With his den mates at his hips.

 

The pack pauses at what it hears.

A chapel rings its mourning bells.

The sound is foreign to their ears.

Some Man has died; the tolling tells

 

And some will die again today

As does every plant or beast.

Coyotes go the other way

But are not bothered in the least,

 

For Death’s a partner in their life.

If they’re to eat, some things must die.

Daily they live with mortal strife

And never stop to question why,

 

Nor do they question why the shapes

And colors eddy overhead.

The sun is warming on their napes

But looks the hue of burnished lead.


Please don't forget that Uncle Boog and the Dogfight is available at Lulu and Amazon. I haven't checked the other online sellers this week. Read it! Help spread the word about it! It is a good little book.



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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