Poetry

Elegy IX: The Autumnal

By John Donne

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape,
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape.
If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame;
Affection here takes reverence's name.
Were her first years the golden age? That's true,
But now she's gold oft tried and ever new.
That was her torrid and inflaming time,

The Pinewoods

Mary Oliver

This morning
Two deer
In the pinewoods
In the five A.M. mist,

In a silky agitation,
Went leaping
Down into the shadows
Of the bog

And together
Across the bog
And up the hill
And into the dense trees --

But once
Years ago,
In some kind of rapturous mistake
The deer did not run away

But walked toward me
And touched my hands--
And I have been, ever since,
Separated from my old, comfortable life

Of experience and deduction--

Lughnasadh, August 1, the Celtic festival of the first harvest.

Fields of Gold
Sting

You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we walk in fields of gold

So she took her love
For to gaze awhile
Upon the fields of barley
In his arms she fell as her hair came down
Among the fields of gold

Will you stay with me, will you be my love

Walker Art Center
Minneapolis
Alexander Calder Exhibit

Just people, you know -
Their shapes and sizes
And the things they do
With their hands;
How they move their feet and fingers,
All crossed and stretched and moving together;
The movement of faces,
Lifting lips and eyebrows.
Nodding and turning.
The free-form people, you know.
They were all there

.

Barbara Stoner
Poems from the Heartland Read more about At the Gallery

Longfellow month has come round again.

You see, every (or nearly every) morning, I do a few yoga poses. I can't say they have made me any more limber, but at this stage of the game, I'm afraid to stop. I'm afraid I'll just rust up. So I don't fool myself that I'm doing my body that much good. These days I do it for the poetry. Read more about How To Build a Canoe

Yes, back to the trees. Because where else do you go for shelter in high summer? And what better vision can there be for the last third of life than drilling for sweet honey in the rock?

Green Figs

By Edward Hirsch

I want to live like that little fig tree

that sprouted up at the beach last spring

and spread its leaves over the sandy rock.

All summer its stubborn green fruit

(tiny flowers covered with a soft skin)

ripened and grew in the bright salt spray.

Door County is a friend of mine. On Facebook. So a couple of days ago, when they posted a picture of Cave Point, I remembered a poem I wrote years ago. My then husband was doing a documentary of some sort about Door County, and we went to Cave Point to get some audio of waves crashing on rocks. Read more about Door County

Caught up with Bill Moyers last night and caught this segment with Philip Appleman. Read more about The Power of Love

U.S. Blues
Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia
Copyright Ice Nine Publishing

Red and white/blue suede shoes
I'm Uncle Sam /how do you do?
Gimme five/I'm still alive
Ain't no luck/I learned to duck

Check my pulse/it don't change
Stay seventy two/come shine or rain

Still June, I'm still on a tree kick. And I've got another old chestnut for you. I wish I had more, but the fact is, there aren't many old chestnuts around these days. Haven't been for quite some time. As a matter of fact, I was thrilled to discover, researching for today, that there are, in fact, American Chestnuts still standing somewhere in Wisconsin. Read more about Another Old Chestnut