stonepicnicking_okapi

Anne Hathaway by Carol Ann Duffy

‘Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…’
(from Shakespeare’s will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seas
where he would dive for pearls. My lover’s words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights I dreamed he’d written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love –
I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

from Leaves of Grass

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the
ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

Adlestrop by Edward Thomas

Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

The Hurting Kind is a collection of poetry by the US Poet Laureate Ada Limón. I enjoyed it. I listened to an audiobook of her reading it and I recommend that. Her voice adds a lot. A bit like Mary Oliver but not as focused on nature as Mary Oliver (but there is a lot of nature, animals, bird, plants, flowers, etc.).

So I am going to post one of my favorites and link to the others.

The Magnificent Frigatebird by Ada Limon

Is it okay to begin with the obvious? I am full of stones—
is it okay not to look out this window, but to look out another?

A mentor once said, You can't start a poem with a man looking
out a window. Too many men looking out a window.

What about a woman? Today is a haunting. One last orange
on the counter: it is a dead fruit. We swallow dead things.
( Read more... )

The Earth-Child in the Grass by Katherine Mansfield

In the very early morning
Long before Dawn time
I lay down in the paddock
And listened to the cold song of the grass.
Between my fingers the green blades,
And the green blades pressed against my body.
“Who is she leaning so heavily upon me?”
Sang the grass.
“Why does she weep on my bosom,
Mingling her tears with the tears of my mystic lover?
Foolish little earth child!
It is not yet time.
One day I shall open my bosom
And you shall slip in—but not weeping.
Then in the early morning
Long before Dawn time
Your lover will lie in the paddock.
Between his fingers the green blades
And the green blades pressed against his body . . .
My song shall not sound cold to him
In my deep wave he will find the wave of your hair
In my strong sweet perfume, the perfume of your kisses.
Long and long he will lie there . . .
Laughing—not weeping.”

---

And I just listened to a story by Katherine Mansfield I enjoyed very much by a podcaster I enjoy very much. This isn't really a ghost story, it is more a story of psychology and grief, but very well written.

What I am appreciating most about the poem-a-day is the little blurb after the poem about the poem. The first poem was inspired by the second.

alameda point by David Maduli

—after lucille clifton

the estuary opens to the bay
and the bay stretches into the pacific and so on
therefore and such-and-such,
none of them empty or full
in the way no frame can minimize nor contain horizon—
yet the ocean can be it, even when sky
and sea are the same late summer gray
they blend together erasing, making
each other. the humpback whale
breaching the slate screen is the only
one who knows the tension between.
here arrive two children winding bikes
on the path to the point passing succulents
and ground squirrels, and three pelicans
follow in spinning dives to slash
down on this estuary guarded
by gurgling sea lions. the children
collecting rocks and examining mussel shells,
millennia in their hands, nod to each other and laugh
racing childhood to the pier’s edge.

the mississippi river empties into the gulf by Lucille Clifton

and the gulf enters the sea and so forth,
none of them emptying anything,
all of them carrying yesterday
forever on their white tipped backs,
all of them dragging forward tomorrow
. it is the great circulation
of the earth's body, like the blood
of the gods, this river in which the past
is always flowing. every water
is the same water coming round.
everyday someone is standing on the edge
of this river, staring into time,
whispering mistakenly:
only here. only now.

Sonnetto Rispetto in Praise of Literary Devices by okapi

the last carried away by ants, the power
of words at heartbeat until breath expires,
a pocket watch which tells more than the hour,
inflection, misdirection, wit which fires
wonder, a nemesis in pale pink wool,
descriptions which show-and-tell, prank-and-pull,
confirmed opinion of the Church of Rome,
and endings which stick, and clues which come home

for the breadth of an Ave Maria
a respite from the everyday, mundane
at play, anodyne and panacea
what’s gnawing inside is given a name
and maps and diagrams of Pangaea
and contranym, the same and never-same

Alma Perdida by Valéry Larbaud [trans. by Ron Padgett and Bill Zavatsky]

To you, vague aspirations, enthusiasms,
Thoughts after lunch, emotional impulses,
Feelings that follow the gratification
Of natural needs, flashes of genius, agitation
Of the digestive process, appeasement
Of good digestion, inexplicable joys,
Circulatory problems, memories of love,
Scent of benzoin in the morning tub, dreams of love,
My tremendous Castilian joking, my vast
Puritan sadness, my special tastes,
Chocolate, candies so sweet they almost burn, iced drinks,
Drowsy cigars, you, sleepy cigarettes,
Joys of speed, sweetness of being seated, excellence
Of sleeping in total darkness,
Great poetry of banal things: news items, trips,
Gypsies, sleigh rides, rain on the sea,
Delirium of feverish nights, alone with a few books,
Ups and downs of temperature and temperament,
Recurring moments from another life, memories, prophecies,
O splendors of the common life and the usual this and that,
To you this lost soul.


The Way We Live by Kathleen Jamie

Pass the tambourine, let me bash out praises
to the Lord God of movement, to Absolute
non-friction, flight, and the scarey side:
death by avalanche, birth by failed contraception.
Of chicken tandoori and reggae, loud, from tenements,
commitment, driving fast and unswerving
friendship. Of tee-shirts on pulleys, giros and Bombay,
barmen, dreaming waitresses with many fake-gold
bangles. Of airports, impulse, and waking to uncertainty,
to strip-lights, motorways, or that pantheon -
the mountains. To overdrafts and grafting

and the fit slow pulse of wipers as you're
creeping over Rannoch, while the God of moorland
walks abroad with his entourage of freezing fog,
his bodyguard of snow.
Of endless gloaming in the North, of Asiatic swelter,
to launderettes, anecdotes, passions and exhaustion,
Final Demands and dead men, the skeletal grip
of government. To misery and elation; mixed,
the sod and caprice of landlords.
To the way it fits, the way it is, the way it seems
to be: let me bash out praises - pass the tambourine.

Title: Altamont in Paris
Rating: Teen for dark themes (murder, serial murder, made-up corpses)
No of lines: 14
Poetic form: Bref double
Prompt:
Notes: Lines taken from "The Mirabeau Bridge" by Guillume Apollinaire [trans. by W.S. Merwin] I have included this poem (both the translation and the original French) below mine.
Summary: A spy comes across a crime scene and uses it to his advantage.

Altamont in Paris by okapi

Night comes the hour is rung for Mister Altamont
who is taking cover under Mirabeau Bridge.
Disturbing lies and spies, schemes and dreams, the Seine calls
an unforeseen dance, a chance rendezvous with fate.

Hand within hand, the lovers are blind to all, but death
has left a grotesque rouge on cheeks, a carmine haunt,
and stains of walnut leaves about unblinking lids
burnt cloves and troves of pearly sheen gild love’s last wait

And hope is so violent a thing. Altamont palls
before the scene, lined in fine soot, arranged in strange
folie à deux, but only for a breath, these deaths
absurd might serve to deconcoct affairs of state

The days pass the weeks pass and are gone. Murders taunt
multiply in disguise, distracting wicked dolls.

( The Mirabeau Bridge & Le pont Mirabeau )

Prose in a Small Space by Rita Dove

It’s supposed to be prose if it runs on and on, isn’t it? All those words, too many to fall into rank and file, stumbling bareassed drunk onto the field reporting for duty, yessir, spilling out as shamelessly as the glut from a megabillion dollar chemical facility, just the amount of glittering effluvium it takes to transport a little girl across a room, beige carpet thick under her oxfords, curtains blowzy with spring — is that the scent of daffodils drifting in?
( Read more... )

Piano by D. H. Lawrence

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.