The Accidental Smallholder Forum

Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: Womble on October 28, 2015, 07:55:37 am

Title: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on October 28, 2015, 07:55:37 am

This is mine. Feel free to share yours.

The Sun, by Mary Oliver.

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Rupert the bear on October 28, 2015, 07:42:15 pm

If , R Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: HappyHippy on October 29, 2015, 09:13:57 am

I shan't share any today - I'm having a Philip Larkin/Sylvia Plath type day so will spare everyone the misery  ;)
Will come back with something happier soon! I love poetry!
Kx

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Ghdp on October 29, 2015, 10:28:00 am

Keats 'Ode to Autumn, every time especially now obviously. Cannot find a cut and paste version to add sorry. Go and read it if you can.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Bionic on October 29, 2015, 11:18:40 am

Is this what you were after Ghdp?

CCLV. Ode to Autumn [/font]
S[size=-1]EASON[/size] of mists and mellow fruitfulness,	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Conspiring with him how to load and bless	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
And still more, later flowers for the bees,	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Until they think warm days will never cease;	[/font]
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;	[/font]
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Steady thy laden head across a brook;	[/font]
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day	[/font]
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;	[/font]
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.	[size=-2] [/size] [/font]

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Ghdp on October 29, 2015, 01:14:27 pm

In deed!!
Thanks Bionic
Greg

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Ghdp on October 29, 2015, 01:21:05 pm

Some extra prinying came up on my version from you Bionic but I have nw found this so I will try to post again

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on October 29, 2015, 05:52:51 pm

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

The lot of man is ceaseless labor,
Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,
Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.
I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know
That it is hard to be really useful, resigning
The things that men count for happiness, seeking
The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting
With equal face those that bring ignominy,
The applause of all or the love of none.
All men are ready to invest their money
But most expect dividends.
I say to you: Make perfect your will.
I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.
 
The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change,
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.
 
 
from "The Rock"
by T.S. Eliot

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on January 30, 2017, 11:10:28 am

Feeling sad today  :'(:

The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Rosemary on January 30, 2017, 12:13:36 pm

Quote from: Womble on January 30, 2017, 11:10:28 am

Feeling sad today  :'(

Many of us fel sad today, and maybe a little scared. God bless America.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Marches Farmer on January 31, 2017, 02:49:11 pm

.....and God help us all.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Marches Farmer on February 01, 2017, 10:46:45 am

..... and here's a poem by an American which some folks on this forum may feel applies to them .....

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Rosemary on February 01, 2017, 02:42:53 pm

Another Robert Frost and  one of my favourites

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on February 01, 2017, 03:06:55 pm

Nice!  :thumbsup:

I wonder if I can get away with posting my favourite poem of all time?:

The Verse (by Philip Larkin):


They **** you up, your mum and dad.   
    They may not mean to, but they do.   
They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were ****ed up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   
Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
    And don’t have any kids yourself.


And if that's too dark for you:
the Converse (not by Philip Larkin):

They tuck you up, your Mum and Dad,
     They read you Peter Rabbit, too.
 They give you all the treats they had
     And add some extra, just for you.

 They were tucked up when they were small,
     (Pink perfume, blue tobacco-smoke),
 By those whose kiss healed any fall,
     Whose laughter doubled any joke.

 Man hands on happiness to man.
     It deepens like a coastal shelf.
 So love your parents all you can
     And have some cheerful kids yourself.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: PK on February 01, 2017, 05:04:36 pm

Well, since Philip Larkin has been mentioned, here is one of his smallholders might relate to:-

First Sight

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth’s immeasurable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Rosemary on February 01, 2017, 05:22:04 pm

 

The Little White Rose

By Hugh MacDiarmid (1892 – 1978)

1934

The rose of all the world is not for me.
I want for my part
Only the little white rose of Scotland
That smells sharp and sweet – and breaks the heart.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Rosemary on February 01, 2017, 05:23:36 pm

 

The Bonnie Scotsman

There was a bonnie Scotsman, who went out one evening fair

And you could tell by how he walked, that he’d drunk more than his share.

He stumbled on until he could no longer keep his feet,

And tumbled off the grass to sleep beside the street

Just then two young and lovely girls just happened by,

And one said to the other, with a twinkle in her eye,

“See yonder sleeping Scotsman, so strong and handsome built,

I wonder if it’s true what they don’t wear beneath the kilt.”

They crept upon the sleeping Scotsman as quiet as can be,

And lifted up his kilt about and inch so they could see,

And there behold for them to view beneath his Scottish skirt,

Was nothing more than God had graced him with upon his birth.

They marvelled for a moment, then one said, “We must be gone;

Let’s leave a present for our friend before we move along.”

So as a gift they tied a red silk ribbon in a bow,

Around the bonnie Scotsman’s star the kilt did lift and show.

The Scotsman wakes to Nature’s call and stumbles for the trees,

Behind a bush, he lifts his kilt and gawks at what he sees,

And in a startled voice he cries at what’s before his eyes,

“Och, lad, I don’t know where you’ve been, but I think you’ve won first prize!”

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: harmony on February 01, 2017, 07:26:08 pm

Are blue rosettes not normally second prize  :thinking: :roflanim:

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: carla78 on February 10, 2017, 07:35:55 pm

My personal favourite, and one i often think about:

William Henry Davies

'Leisure'

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on February 16, 2018, 09:12:20 pm

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be.
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on July 17, 2018, 07:10:38 am

OK, not a poem this time, but my Mum sent me a link to this painting by August Friedrich Albrecht (https://getdailyart.com/22629/august-friedrich-albrecht-schenck/anguish) Schenck. Having spent nights in the barn yelling "Just breathe, you little *****!?" at newborn lambs, I feel the pain here. It also reminds me of our peahen who lost her only chick on Saturday. It drowned in a bath of water that next door's use to soak hay, and I couldn't sleep for listening to her calling for it all night. Our existence on this planet is so fragile, don't you think?  :'(   
 

(https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/dailyartartwork/img-201806225b2caf9dd1e85_ipad)

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: landroverroy on July 17, 2018, 09:45:18 am

That is a really evocative painting Womble. I don't think I could have it on my wall - it would upset me too much to constantly see it.
I can understand your sadness at the peahen losing her chick. I had it happen to one of mine a few years ago.
2 of my peahens have just hatched out some chicks and I've gone round and emptied out or covered any old containers that have gathered rain water and are deep enough to drown in.
Pity you don't live nearer Yorkshire - you could have had one of my peachicks

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Lesley Silvester on July 18, 2018, 12:20:41 am

That painting is so sad. All those crows gathering. Made me want to cry,

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: DavidandCollette on July 20, 2018, 07:57:51 am

Don't feel sorry for the glow worm
For the glow worm is never glum
How can you be unhappy
With a light shiny from your bum?

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on February 23, 2021, 10:00:05 am

It's a long while since we've posted anything here, so....

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver.


You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Buttermilk on February 23, 2021, 12:02:43 pm

I'm a weed by T R Milford

I'm a weed, I'm a weed,
One of the old untameable breed;
I never came from a packet of seed.

I am no cossetted nursery child,
Nobody keeps my pedigree filed,
I am wild, I am wild, I am wild!

Do you think, sister Pink,
That it's nice to line borders on somebodies orders?
The man who kindly plants you,
When he no longer wants you
will throw you out to rot.

Won't you speak, Mr. Leek?
Do you like being made to stand stiffly on parade?
He'll never let you flower
Who has you in his power;
He'll boil you in a pot.

Can I suppose, Lady Rose,
That you actually enjoy being treated like a toy,
While they play genetic games on you,
And stick their fancy names on you,
Caught in a breeder's plot?

Freely I scatter my prodigal seeds;
Sun, wind and rain will provide for their needs.
Man cannot always be digging and hoeing,
While he is asleep, I get on with my growing.

I don't expect mercy, I won't ask for pardon,
And when you're all dead, I'll take over the garden.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on February 23, 2021, 01:01:26 pm

 :love: :bouquet: :roflanim:

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: doganjo on February 23, 2021, 03:38:58 pm

One fine morning in the middle of the night,

Two dead men got up to fight,

Back to back they faced each other,

Drew their swords and shot each other.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on July 26, 2021, 10:46:59 am

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.



- Margaret Atwood

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Q on July 26, 2021, 01:41:56 pm

Thank you - i just wish i could give more than 1 like.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: arobwk on July 27, 2021, 07:24:32 pm

A UK moment in time

In these new times
with crass numbers a measure of our health
and the EU looking for measures to curtail our wealth
it is not a time to dis-unite
Now is the time
to care for each other and find a way to make
the United Kingdom once again great
A bright international beacon of right

arobwk  2021



 

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on January 29, 2022, 10:28:47 am

I've just been singing this to the tune of "The Irish Rover". I'm going to hell, aren't I?  :o



In the Neolithic Age

In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
  For food and fame and woolly horses' pelt.
I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
     And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.

Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring
  Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;
And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg
  Were about  me and beneath me and above.

But a rival, of Solutré, told the tribe my style was outré—
  'Neath a tomahawk, of diorite,  he fell
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart
  Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.

Then I stripped them, scalp from skull,  and my hunting-dogs fed full,
  And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
And I wiped my mouth and said,  "It is well that they are dead,
  For I know  my work is right and theirs was wrong."

But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole-shrine he came,
  And he told me in a vision of the night: —
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
  "And every single one of them is right!"
     

Then the silence closed upon me till They put new clothing on me
  Of whiter, weaker flesh and bone more frail;         .
And I stepped beneath Time's finger, once again a tribal singer,
  And a minor poet certified by Traill!

Still they skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow
  When we headed off the aurochs turn for turn;
When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses,
  And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.

Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle, squeak, and rage,
  Still we pinch and slap and jabber, scratch and dirk;
Still we let our business slide—as we dropped the half-dressed hide—
  To show a fellow-savage how to work.

Still the world is wondrous large,—seven seas from marge to marge—
  And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;
And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu
  And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.

Here's my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose
  And the reindeer roamed where Paris roars to-night:—
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
  "And—every—single—one—of—them—is—right!"


By Rudyard Kipling

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on March 12, 2022, 08:35:13 am

The Genius

is standing at a stove in a bathrobe
stirring a pot of soup with a long wooden spoon.

Earlier this afternoon
he was busy in the margins of a heavy book

and tonight he will take a walk
in the garden of calculus,

but now there is only the vegetable soup,
the circling of the spoon,

the easy rotation of the wrist,
and the aroma of onion and rosemary

the kind of moment when a brainstorm
is very likely to roll in.

Not when you are concentrating
under a lamp in your study

but when you are up in the woods
lifting a stone onto a wall,

or washing a glass in the sink
you look up and see a cloud in the window

and then there is only you,
the wet glass, and that cloud

which is slowly taking the shape
of an astonishing idea.


                                        - Billy Collins

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: doganjo on March 12, 2022, 12:05:16 pm

LOVE and HATE

Words so different in meaning

I hear children keening
Their mums don't know what to do to keep them safe.
WE LOVE them do we not? Who do we not love, but hate?
Someone we do not know?  In a far away state?

But these poor folks in so much snow, and misery too much to bear
I can't watch anymore, and why should I care?
Because their misery is mine, that's why - above us all is one sky.
We are one species, one world - or are we?  Who interferes with that with impunity? We need unity.
Where can it come from?
So many questions, no answers, just love.

But hate? 
Is it there?
Do we hate folks who are ill?
How do we know who is ill?
Do ill folks stop the love? 

NO is the only answer

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on April 29, 2022, 08:16:04 am

Ouch.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on July 07, 2022, 11:46:31 am

Feeding the Worms
by Danusha Laméris


Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste buds
all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies,
I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine
the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples
permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley,
avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.


I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden,
almost vulgar—though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure
so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can,
forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on July 15, 2022, 12:21:16 pm

When you meet someone in deep grief

Slip off your shoes
and set them by the door

Enter barefoot,
this darkened chapel

hollowed by loss,
hallowed by sorrow.

its grey stone walls
and floor

You, congregation
of one

Are here to listen,
not to sing.

Kneel in the back pew,
make no sound

Let the candles
speak.



– Patricia Mckernon Runkle

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on December 11, 2022, 09:17:43 am

Out with Lanterns
(after Emily Dickinson)

Has anybody seen me?
I’ve been gone since 2010
I grew up and got married
like so many other men
 
Then things moved on so quickly
I lost where I was going
I let others set direction
Then plodded on, unknowing
 
I lost me, in the melee
Of the demands of adulthood
Of trying oh so hard to be
What people said I “should”
 
You see, that runs in my family
Of duty we are slaves
We spend ourselves for others
We never misbehave

“Your purpose here upon this earth
Is to serve the other people”
And I’ve never had a problem
With viewing all as equal
 
But that raises a question
I can no longer ignore:
If I’m here to serve the others
What are the others for?
 
So now I’m making changes
For the sake of mental health
You’ll find me out with lanterns
Looking for myself.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: Womble on December 02, 2023, 11:18:58 am

I'm just leaving this here.

Title: Re: A poem for the day
Post by: doganjo on December 02, 2023, 11:29:32 am

Just think how many more poignant songs he could have written if he hadn't been drunk all the time - oh wait a minute, .......................... by his own admission he wrote his best songs when he was 'out if it'

RIP Shane, hope you have peace now, and have forgotten us. Every Christmas we'll hear your best ever song, we'll never forget you