Some excerpts from Walt Whitman

Tags

A child said what is the grass, A noiseless patient spider, classic poetry, nature, poems, poetry, Song of Myself, Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman is an excellent poet, and one of the first poets to draw me in.  When I was in primary school, we were learning about poetry and I remember being bored to death by classics like “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (Keats) and “The Patriot” (Browning).  I didn’t understand Blake’s “The Tyger” one bit. 

Then we read a poem of Whitman’s and one stanza in particular just struck me.  I sat in class, repeating that line to myself under my breath.  I still remember it to this day.  It is from “A child said, what is the grass”:

“I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?”

Whose?

So here is a post dedicated to Walt Whitman, including two excerpts from “Song of Myself” (which is quite long in its entirety).

1.  Excerpt from SONG OF MYSELF

I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.

Press close bare-bosom’d night – press close magnetic nourishing night!
Night of south winds – night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night – mad naked summer night.

Smile O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset – earth of mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbow’d earth – rich apple-blossom’d earth!
Smile, for your lover comes.

- Walt Whitman

2.  Excerpt from SONG OF MYSELF

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

- Walt Whitman

3. Quote from Walt Whitman

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches,
give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your
income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience
and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or
to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the
young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air of every
year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any
book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great
poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of
its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body . . . .
- Walt Whitman

4. A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

        — Walt Whitman

Mars One, and Earth, by Ronin Waters

Tags

earth, exploration, Mars, Mars One, nature, Ronin Waters, space travel, travel

I was having a conversation with my father on the phone the other day, and I happened to mention how much I like Earth Day, because we get to celebrate, well, the Earth!  Which I think is a pretty great place.

Grumbling, as dads sometimes do, he said many people just use the day as an excuse to advocate their own agendas.

I said, “But daadddd, you have to love the Earth!  Where else would you rather live?  Venus?”

To which he replied stoically, “I hear they are taking volunteers to go to Mars.”

Indeed, there is a company whose mission it is to “establish a human settlement on the planet Mars in 2023″, Mars One.  They accepted applications from volunteers for the mission last month, and had something like 100,000 applicants!

Now, my father is an astrophysicist and he works for NASA, so a trip to Mars kind of sounds like a fun adventure to him.  And all of those other people?  I don’t know.  I personally have no desire to leave this planet.  And I’ve read Pohl’s Man Plus, thankyouverymuch.

I said to my father, “Dad, you must agree that, as a human, Earth is pretty much the best place to live.”

Which, after a bit of hemming and hawing, he did.

What do you think?  Do you want to go to Mars, to explore new planets?  Or are you happy here on our little blue marble?

But all of this reminded me of a poem by Ronin Waters, so here you go.

Earth

I love the earth
And I don’t just mean
that floating blue marble
Dotted with clouds

I mean you must love
The Earth
Where would you rather live
Venus?

No, I mean
I love earth
Soil
Dirt

Sometimes, you can smell the heat
Of the sun baking it into clay
The way you would smell
A loaf of bread in the oven.

And sometimes, it smells cool and rich
Dark and moist
As a chocolate
Mousse

Earth has all the colours
of humanity
Boldly showing its
Chemical qualities

I love when it is coarse
Like stubble on a man’s cheek
Or soft
Like the skin on a woman’s belly

I love to press my face against it
whisper secrets
to the trillions of living things beneath my lips
Who will only love me when I am dead.

~Ronin Waters

A Final Affection, by Paul Zimmer

Tags

A Final Affection, nature, nature poetry, Paul Zimmer, poems, poetry, trees

A Final Affection

I love the accomplishments of trees,
How they try to restrain great storms
And pacify the very worms that eat them.
Even their deaths seem to be considered.
I fear for trees, loving them so much.
I am nervous about each scar on bark,
Each leaf that browns. I want to
Lie in their crotches and sigh,
Whisper of sun and rains to come.

Sometimes on summer evenings I step
Out of my house to look at trees
Propping darkness up to the silence.

When I die I want to slant up
Through those trunks so slowly
I will see each rib of bark, each whorl;
Up through the canopy, the subtle veins
And lobes touching me with final affection;
Then to hover above and look down
One last time on the rich upliftings,
The circle that loves the sun and moon,
To see at last what held the darkness up.

- Paul Zimmer

Oda a la manzana, or Ode to the Apple, by Pablo Neruda

Tags

apples, fruit, nature, nature poems, Oda a la manzana, Ode to the apple, Pablo Neruda, poetry, spanish poetry

Pablo Neruda is still one of my favourite Spanish poets, he and I are clearly kindred souls.  I am an appleholic and have at times subsisted on nothing but.  See the translation below if you don’t read Spanish.

Apple Flowers

Oda a la manzana

A ti, manzana,
quiero
celebrarte
llenándome
con tu nombre
la boca,
comiéndote.

Siempre
eres nueva como nada
o nadie,
siempre
recién caída
del Paraíso:
plena
y pura
mejilla arrebolada
de la aurora!
Qué difíciles
son
comparados
contigo
los frutos de la tierra,
las celulares uvas,
los mangos
tenebrosos,
las huesudas
ciruelas, los higos
submarinos:
tú eres pomada pura,
pan fragante,
queso
de la vegetación.

Cuando mordemos
tu redonda inocencia
volvemos
por un instante
a ser
también recién creadas criaturas:
aún tenemos algo de manzana.

Yo quiero
una abundancia
total, la multiplicación
de tu familia,
quiero
una ciudad,
una república,
un río Mississipi
de manzanas,
y en sus orillas
quiero ver
a toda
la población
del mundo
unida, reunida,
en el acto más simple de la tierra:
mordiendo una manzana.

Pablo Neruda

Ode to Apples

To you, apple,
I want to
celebrate you
filling me
with your name
With my mouth,
by eating you.

Always
You are new like nothing
and no one,
always
freshly fallen
from Paradise:
full
and pure
flushed cheek
of the dawn!

How difficult it is to
compare
with you
the fruits of the earth,
the cellular grapes,
the dark mangoes,
bony
plums, submarine figs:
you are pure ointment,
fragrant bread,
cheese of the
vegetation.

When we bite
Round your innocence
We return
for a moment
To be
also newly created creatures:
Then we have something of the apple.

I want
a total abundance
The multiplication
of your family,
I want
a city,
a republic,
Mississippi river
of apples,
and on its banks
I want to see
The whole
population
of the World
united, reunited,
in the simplest act of the land:
biting an apple.

A prayer in Spring, by Robert Frost

Tags

A prayer in spring, apple flowers, flowers, nature, nature poetry, photography, poems, robert frost, spring

One of Frost’s lesser known poems, I think, and a tragedy that it should be so.

Apple flowers!

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

- by Robert Frost

Nuclear Physicists use Astounding Comparisons to Make Clear the Nature of Infinite Numbers, by Bill Holm

Tags

Bill Holm, boxelder bugs, nature poetry, Norwegians, nuclear physicists, numbers, poems, the nature of infinite numbers

Had to share this fabulous poem…

Nuclear Physicists use Astounding
Comparisons to Make Clear the Nature
of Infinite Numbers

An adult male Norwegian
weighs as much as
two and a half billion
boxelder bugs.
Is it any surprise that
there are more boxelder bugs
than Norwegians?
Imagine a planet in which
Norwegians crawled up
and down your kitchen walls
by the thousands, hid
under the warm coffee pot,
fell like discolored noodles out
of the noodle bags where they slept;
after the blizzards started,
you would find Norwegians
dried inside light fixtures, Norwegians
clogging up the vacuum cleaner,
Norwegians floating in
cups of lukewarem coffee.
-Bill Holm

April Chores, by Jane Kenyon

Tags

April, April Chores, Jane Kenyon, nature, nature poetry, poems, poetry, seasons, spring

I just found this poem.  And I liked it!  So…I’m sharing it with you!  Happy Thursday!

April Chores

When I take the chilly tools
from the shed’s darkness, I come
out to a world made new
by heat and light.

The snake basks and dozes
on a large flat stone.
It reared and scolded me
for raking too close to its hole.

Like a mad red brain
the involute rhubarb leaf
thinks its way up
through loam.

- Jane Kenyon

Bud burst!, and Metamorphosis by May Sarton

Tags

bud burst, leaves, May Sarton, Metamorphosis, nature, nature poetry, outdoors, spring, trees

Whee! Spring! (This is a Tulip Tree)

Metamorphosis

Always it happens when we are not there–
The tree leaps up alive into the air,
Small open parasols of Chinese green
Wave on each twig. But who has ever seen
The latch sprung, the bud as it burst?
Spring always manages to get there first.

Lovers of wind, who will have been aware
Of a faint stirring in the empty air,
Look up one day through a dissolving screen
To find no star, but this multiplied green,
Shadow on shadow, singing sweet and clear.
Listen, lovers of wind, the leaves are here!

- May Sarton

Echinacea purpurea, and I hide myself within a flower, by Emily Dickinson

Tags

cone flower, echinacea purpurea, Emily Dickinson, flowers, I hide myself within a flower, nature, nature poetry, photography

Guys, I just stumbled on this photo I took last summer.  How did I not notice how pretty this was before?

I love Echinacea purpurea

I hide myself within my flower,
That wearing on your breast,
You, unsuspecting, wear me too –
And angels know the rest.
I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me
Almost a loneliness.

- Emily Dickinson

Ed: I just realized I probably did not notice it was pretty because it does not have a bee.

If I were a moose, by Fred Small (and another blue fox)

Tags

blue fox, drawings, fox, Fred Small, If I were a moose, nature, nature poetry, on being different

I drew this for a friend’s birthday, but I never gave it to him because I couldn’t decide if it was good enough. But I found this poem today, and I thought it suited the fox, and vice versa, so here they are together.

If I were a moose
alternative title…
a song with the subjunctive

If I were a moose and you were a cow
Would you love me anyhow?
Would you introduce me to your folks
Would you tell your friends “No moose jokes!”
If I were a moose and you were a cow.

Would you invite me to your club
And risk a cruel bovine snub
Would you lead me down the receiving line
And boldly boast “This moose is mine!”

Would your parents watch us graze
Shake their heads, “It’s just a phase”
Or would they thank the stars above
Their precious heifer’s found her love?

Would your grandparents change their will?
They’d really expected a Holstein bull
“For this we toiled before the plow –
You bring home someone who’s not even a cow.

There’s lot’s of proper stock around
Like that nice young Guernsey at Farmer Brown’s
Or that last one we ridiculed and cursed
On second thought you could do worse.

But if you think this thing will last
Could he learn to moo and eat our grass
Shed his antlers in the dirt
Could you persuade him to convert?”

If our anatomies did not quite fit
Would you make the best of it
Would you nuzzle up so near
And hum sweet cow tunes in my ear?

Or would you sadly break it off
When all the hillside sneered and scoffed
“You know those moose are all the same
They’re lazy, they’re stupid, they come from Maine.”

It’s true things slip a moose’s mind
That cows remember all the time
Bulbous nose and knobby knees
A coat that harbors ticks and fleas

But a moose can be a handy thing
When hungry wolves come visiting
In icy gust of winter storm
Our fur is deep and dry and warm.

And someday should your milk run dry
And farmer stare with baleful eye
In dead of night I’d slip your noose
And lead you home to the land of moose
If I were a moose and you were a cow.

If hunters came to do me harm
Would you hide me in the barn
Would all the herd come on the run
And glare until they dropped their guns?

Might you permit a goodnight kiss
Could you learn to love wet moose lips?
If I were a moose and you were a cow
If you were a cow and I were a moose

- Fred Small

Reasons to be happy, by Tony Hoagland (and a kitten by me)

Tags

contentment, cute, drawing, kitten, nature, nature poetry, reasons to be happy, tony hoagland

Sleepy kitten doodle for a Thursday

Reasons to Be Happy

Some birds are people-watchers.
The worms can hear us walking over them.
The loaves and fishes multiplied the Christians.

We were wrong about so many things.
We thought the world was mute,
or just disinterested, or dead.

Yet the sunrise liked being looked at
by sleepy cabdrivers. The billboard was unashamed
of its live nude 24-hour girls.

The night-wind rustled
through the tops of cedar trees
standing all around a certain house

where worried people
lay in bed and listened.
What were the names

of those old Greek gods?
And where did they go?
Atlas—that’s the one

who spent a long time
holding up
what did not belong to him.

- TONY HOAGLAND

Lower your expectations, and Snow fall, by May Sartonx

Tags

blogging, lower your expectations, May Sarton, photography, snow, Snow Fall, spring, weather

Snow Fall

With no wind blowing
It sifts gently down,
Enclosing my world in
A cool white down,
A tenderness of snowing.

It falls and falls like sleep
Till wakeful eyes can close
On all the waste and loss
As peace comes in and flows,
Snow-dreaming what I keep.

Silence assumes the air
And the five senses all
Are wafted on the fall
To somewhere magical
Beyond hope and despair.

There is nothing to do
But drift now, more or less
On some great lovingness,
On something that does bless,
The silent, tender snow.

- May Sarton

So, as usual, I jumped on the spring bandwagon a bit too early this year.  I opened my arms wide to embrace the warming spring…and got hit in the face with a snow ball.  *sigh*  Oh well.  I think there is a gif for this:

Ah, yes.

And speaking of lowering your expectations…I’ve come up with a solution for the size limits on my blog.  In order to keep on writing, I have to remove the large photos from my media library (they are taking up the most space).  I experimented with this yesterday, and you can still look at the photos, but you can’t look at the large sizes.  So if there is a photo you want full size, you should let me know!

The archive photos from old posts will be the first to go.

Thanks for reading!

Out of Space, and Natural History, by EB White

Tags

EB White, GPS, natural history, satellites, space, space junk, writing

NATURAL HISTORY

The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.

Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.

- E.B. White

My father is an astrophysicist and, despite his disappointment in my obsession with difficult-to-quantify things, I adore being able to chat with him about astronomical phenomena.  He was the first person I called to grill about the asteroid meteor meteorite that struck Russia recently, and I chatted with him on the phone about the solar eclipse last year.

He is smart and interesting to talk to.  Also, dads are always right, you know?

Anyway, I am always learning new things from him, and recently he was discussing how little space there is in space.  Or at least, in the space that humans are directly invested in, where the satellites roam and particularly in geosynchronous orbit.

He related a tale to me about how they were recently trying to move a satellite out of the path of debris that could potentially damage it, but for every trajectory they calculated, there was another satellite in the way.  In the end, they just had to let the debris hit it (fortunately, it was not damaged).

Space debris mapped by NASA models, image courtesy of Wikipedia.org.

And it is not just functioning satellites taking up space, it is also a lot of junk that got left up there, back when people were not required to have a plan to get it back down.  This problem was highlighted a few days ago when Chinese space junk hit a Russian satellite.

A NASA image of the oldest piece of space junk…Vanguard, which was sent up in 1958 and is expected to remain in orbit for another 240 years.  Image courtesy of Wikipedia.org

It is difficult to realize how much we are able to change our world, but the amount of space junk up there really brings it to light!  We walk around on the surface of the planet, and we use satellites all the time.  For example, almost everyone seems to have a GPS device in their car for finding their way around these days.  We depend on GPS for agriculture, for research, and even for landing planes.

Precision agriculture using GPS…forgive me I do not remember where I found this!

And what is harder to grasp is just how much infrastructure is required to support these modern day miracles.  i.e.  A lot of infrastructure.

Somewhat tangentially, I am also running out of space on my blog!  I am currently at 99% of my capacity.  What happens when you hit 100%?  Does the whole blog vanish?  With a bang?!  If I’m not here tomorrow, you know why, but sometimes I can fit a couple of posts into a percentage point.

(Is that like angels dancing on the head of a pin?)

I know I’m weird, forgive me.

Swamped, and March by David Budbill

Tags

cold, David Budbill, icy mud, March, nature, poetry, running, spring, weather

Sorry for the lack of posts lately…I am swamped! 

I went running the other day when it briefly got above freezing, which I thought was heavenly until I realized that the trail was 10 cm of icy mud.  6 miles of trail running with my feet under icy mud is the exact opposite of heavenly.  I’m hanging on gaunt dreams of spring, and speaking the dream before I see the fact.  I <3 this poem.

March

Rain-glaze on snow. Mud and ice and snow.
Coyotes feed themselves on gaunt dreams of spring. Then
what comes slowly suddenly he sees.

Light hovers longer in the southern sky.
Brooks uncover themselves. Alders redden.
Grosbeaks’ beaks turn green. Chickadee finds the song
he lost last November, and blue jay abandons
argument and gluttony. He cranes his neck,
bobs his mitered head; he bounces on a naked branch
crying: Spring!
But, like all winter’s keepers
he speaks his dream before
he sees the fact.
Did you hear a phoebe?
And he out again and walking on the earth,
in the air, in the sun, ankle deep in mud.

- David Budbill

On Being Kind, and The River, by Sara Teasdale

Tags

hope, kindness, nature poem, random, Sara Teasdale, The River

My sister and I got into an argument a while back.  You see, she was experiencing friction at her work place, and, being older, she wanted to instruct me in the ways of the world.

“People are selfish and mean, standingoutinmyfield,” she said, “You must always look out for your own best interest, because that is all anyone is out to do.”

“I’m sorry, I must beg to differ,” I disagreed, “People are kind.”

“You’re naive,” she snorted derisively, “People are not kind unless they benefit in some way.”

Well, I thought, perhaps it is so at her work place.  She is a lawyer and, no offense to lawyers, but I think their work tends to be more competitive, while science tends to be more collaborative (well, not always, but there are trends…).

But no, I still believe that people are kind.  Not all people, and not all the time.  And I mean, people will not actively harm themselves to be kind, but if it does not harm them, and it does not take too much time, they will choose to be kind.

Or perhaps more precisely, people wish to be kind.  They spend the majority of their energies finding food, ensuring that they and theirs will be taken care of, dealing with day to day niceties, and if they have anything left, they will choose to be kind.

Now perhaps you are rolling your eyes.  But it is not as if I have not seen the world.  I have seen cruelty.  I know what it means to have my face shoved in a school locker, to have someone kick me in the back after I have fallen, to be pelted with rocks and taunts.  Yet, I have also seen complete strangers take me in off the street when I was in desperate need.  I have seen people with very little share their hospitality.  I have seen people face their greatest fears to help the ones they love.

I strive to be kind.  I think there is some cosmic balance out there; a tally every day of all of the good things that happen, and all of the bad.  And by doing as many good things as I can in a day, perhaps I could manage to tip that balance.  If I could do so, even for one day, it would be worth the effort.

The River

I CAME from the sunny valleys
And sought for the open sea,
For I thought in its gray expanses
My peace would come to me.

I came at last to the ocean
And found it wild and black,
And I cried to the windless valleys,
“Be kind and take me back!”

But the thirsty tide ran inland,
And the salt waves drank of me,
And I who was fresh as the rainfall
Am bitter as the sea.

- Sara Teasdale

Just another beautiful winter day and, Blue Field, by Lavinia Greenlaw

Tags

Blue Field, Colour, Lavinia Greenlaw, nature, photography, snow, trees, winter

It’s an exceptionally beautiful day…

And I wanted to share this winter wonderland.

There is a wet, icy snow clinging to everything…

And the sky was so blue.

And every path looked like an adventure.

Sometimes the light amazes me.

The light this morning on campus was so breathtaking.

The light can make anything beautiful.

Especially this little tree.

These old elms, with their bare limbs above the path, like dancers…

My bike is safe and warm at home. I bet these guys are jealous!

But we all have different ways of carrying our burdens don’t we?

Some of us bow our heads…

Even my lovely hemlocks share the burden…

Blue Field

A flood as the day releases
and the whole snow world
is neither wet nor deep, but primary.
Colour so inherent, it does not fall
but rises from my skin,
the snow, the trees, the road.
This blue isn’t built or grown.
It has no tissue, nothing
to touch or taste or bring to mind
a memory, no iris or artery,
no gentian, aconite or anemone,
no slate, plum, oil-spill or gun,
no titanium or turquoise,
no mercury or magnesium,
no phosphorus, sapphire or silver foil,
no duck egg or milk jug,
no chambray, denim or navy,
no indigo, octopus ink, no ink,
no element. The blue moment,
sininen hetki in a language that claims
no relation but greets in passïng
picture blue, cyan. Ultraviolet
twilight, higher than the heaven
of swimming or flying – no splash.
A time without clouded objects,
in which you might become the glass
you swallowed through cold.
Light draws back
behind the rim of the eye as it closes.
I keep my distance, as things turn blue
through stillness and distance,
as everything blue is distant.

- Lavinia Greenlaw

Summer, by Ronin Waters

Tags

nature, nature poetry, poems, poetry, Ronin Waters, seasons, summer, winter

It’s been a while since I posted a poem, so here’s one from Ronin Waters about missing Summer in the dead of Winter.

Summer

I love your long green hair
and your brown thighs
The way I blush and darken
when you kiss me.

I love your sultry nights
and warm sighs
against my neck
And the stars in your eyes.

I love your sudden storms
Your lightning and thunder
I love dancing in your rain
Warm rivulets on my skin.

I love your light
The way you linger
The smells of you
Cloyingly sweet.

Or fresh and green
Or dark as dirt.

Everything is alive in you
Vicious, passionate, wonderful
Everything is gold in you
hot and somehow wild.

Everything is ancient
And everything is new.

And now this old man
Is panting at my window
fogging up the glass
With his rattling breath.

Raking at my skin with his claws
His teeth chattering in his jaws
Howling in the panes
Shaking the leaves from the trees.

Where is your light?
Where is your warmth?
Don’t leave me to this old man
Don’t betray me to his knobby fingers
And brittle laugh.

Oh Summer…
When you return with your giggles
When you run your fingers through my hair again
And kiss me til I smile.

I’ll forget how you left me for lost
Your fickle nature.
Your blinding beauty.

~Ronin Waters

My face in the sky and The Fog Town School of Thought, by Maurice Manning

Tags

blue skies, Joy, Maurice Manning, nature, sky, The Fog Town School of Thought

Yesterday was a beautiful day, with bright blue skies and barely a cloud in the sky.  Sometimes, the sky is so beautiful that I just feel overwhelmed, and yesterday I turned my face up, closed my eyes, and felt a smile grow on my lips.

I was walking with a friend and when I heard him laugh, I turned and glared at him, “What?”

“Nothing,” he said, still laughing.

“Are you laughing at me because I have my face in the sky?”

“Face in the sky?”

“Well, who’s to say where the sky begins or ends?  I think the sky is just…up.”  And I turned my face up again, and felt the sun, and smiled.

The Fog Town School of Thought

They should have taught us birds and trees
in school, they should have taught us beauty
and weaving bees and had a class
on listening and standing alone—
the children should have studied light
reflected from a spider web,
we should have learned the branches of streams
spread out like fingers or the veins
of a leaf—we should have learned the sky
is the tallest steeple, we should have known
a hill is a voice inside the sky—
O, we should have had our school
on top and stayed until the night
for the fog to bloom in the hollows and rise
like cotton spinning off a wheel—
we should have learned a dream—a child’s
and even still a man’s—is made
from fog and love, my word, you’d think
with the book in front of us we should
have learned how Fog Town got its name.

- MAURICE MANNING

The Frogs After Dark, by Robert Bly

Tags

chorus, frogs, music, natural sounds, nature, nature poetry, poetry, slowness

The Frogs After Dark

I am so much in love with mournful music
That I don’t bother to look for violinists.
The aging peepers satisfy me for hours.

The ant moves on his tiny Sephardic feet.
The flute is always glad to repeat the same note.
The ocean rejoices in its dusky mansion.

Bears are often piled up close to each other.
In caves of bears, it’s just one hump
After another, and there is no one to sort it out.

You and I have spent so many hours working.
We have paid dearly for the life we have.
It’s all right if we do nothing tonight.

We’ve heard the fiddlers tuning their old fiddles,
And the singer urging the low notes to come.
We’ve heard her trying to keep the dawn from breaking.

There is some slowness in life that is right for us.
But we love to remember the way the soul leaps
Over and over into the lonely heavens.

- Robert Bly

A Calendar of Sonnets: January, by Helen Hunt Jackson

Tags

A Calendar of Sonnets: January, cold, Helen Hunt Jackson, nature, nature poetry, seasons, weather, winter

A Calendar of Sonnets: January

O Winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire,
What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn
Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn
Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire
The streams than under ice. June could not hire
Her roses to forego the strength they learn
In sleeping on thy breast. No fires can burn
The bridges thou dost lay where men desire
In vain to build.
O Heart, when Love’s sun goes
To northward, and the sounds of singing cease,
Keep warm by inner fires, and rest in peace.
Sleep on content, as sleeps the patient rose.
Walk boldly on the white untrodden snows,
The winter is the winter’s own release.

- Helen Hunt Jackson