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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
8 hours ago2 min read

Two for You: Poems-a-Week


Red Leaves on a Gum Tree

My, oh, my! How great it is to be off work and to have time to think and write with about being burdened with creating assignments, managing assignments, and grading assignments. It is almost like having a totally different life. I could even get in the habit of doing some creative writing every day if I didn't have to have a job for the money, the insurance, the retirement, etc. Oh, well! Retirement is in sight, but it is a long ways off yet.


While I contemplate retirement that is still 6 1/2 years down the road, ENJOY this poem about the three crow brothers, which, by the way, I have not seen in the last few days. I may have to write a ditty about that. I can't of the last time I haven't seen the crows for three days in a row.


The Three Crow Brothers Eating Habits

 

There’s them three crow brothers

A scratchin’ at the grass

Or maybe they are tearin’ at

Some decomposing mass.

 

I’ve seen those crows are picky

‘Bout the freshness of their meals.

They like their meat still bleedin’,

Not pulped by grindin’ wheels.

 

They’re awfully fond of livers

And next prefer the eyes.

Crisp kidneys and some steamin’ guts

Come best as a surprise.

 

And in their dreams, they eat a man

Creamed richly in a roux.

I don’t think they’ll be eatin’ me,

But I can’t say about you.


I thought that I wrote last week that I do not create Christmas poems, and, guess what, I wrote a Christmas poems--sort of. Then, I had to go back and see if I had actually written that I don't do Christmas poems, and that is NOT what I wrote. I wrote that I did not write Christmas poems for requests. Therefore, I am not going back on my word with the following poem about something or other. I'm not sure what it is. See if you can figure it out.


What Is It?

 

It is a galaxy but made of wood,

A blank green slate hung with a hundred spheres,

A shape tinseled in whirlwind harmony

And glistening throughout with crystal tears.

 

The hundred orbs reflect a lampless light

And glimmer red and silver, gold and green.

They make a soundless music in the night

And wake a thousand memories unseen.

 

Now, people smile and stare and dream of ghosts

Of strangers long ago in foreign lands,

Of Germans hanging eucharistic hosts

That say we are redeemed—and there it stands.


Merry Christmas, Cheery Solstice, Happy New Year! I should be back next week, but with all the goings-on, who knows?

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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