Poetry

Ilka Blade O' Grass Keps Its Ain Drap O' Dew

Confide ye aye in Providence, for Providence is kind,
And bear ye a' life's changes, wi' a calm and tranquil mind,
Though pressed and hemmed on every side, ha'e faith and ye 'll win through,
For ilka blade o' grass keps its ain drap o' dew.

Gin reft frae friends or crest in love, as whiles nae doubt ye've been,
Grief lies deep hidden in your heart or tears flow frae your een,

I don't think I've posted this one before. My friend Mary is a Scotswoman, now living in Massachusetts, who likes to ski. We were two of the Radical Women of Door County back in the 70's. I wrote a series of poems about a few of the women I knew then. This one is Mary's. She always reminds me of my favorite things.

Mary gentle hands to touch
Blackberry a wilding bramble
Butternut a sapling springing
Hundred feet a hundred years.

Silent snow is soft and cold
And deep along the river shallows
Down she follows, glistening rocks
An ice-glow road of full moon tears

Just back from a trip to California on the Coast Starlight and, having foregone a gathering of friends, I can offer no better excuse than this confession by Ms. Millay.

Travel

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

Frozen by Fire, by Donald Kentop, is a collection of poems imagining the lives of those who are forever frozen in those few moments after 4:40 p.m. on March 25, 1911. It is available from Paper Wings Press (paperwingspress@comcast.net).

1911

In England, the Edwardians were poised
upon the peak of power, while the French
reveled gaily in La Belle Époque,
and in America, a hangover

For the Koch Brothers, et al. A cautionary tale from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

From The Spanish Jew's Tale, Kambalu
Tales of a Wayside Inn

As in at the gate we rode, behold,
A tower that is called the Tower of Gold!
For there the Kalif had hidden his wealth,
Heaped and hoarded and piled on high,
Like sacks of wheat in a granary;
And thither the miser crept by stealth
To feel of the gold that gave him health,

In his introduction to Frozen by Fire, Donald Kentop writes: Read more about Frozen by Fire

This is a hymn sung every Christmas Eve during midnight mass at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, Renee Fleming sings it with Rufus Wainwright on her recent Christmas album, and it reinforces my assertion that December 21st is the middle, not the beginning, of winter.

In the Bleak Midwinter

Christina Rossetti

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

With our national holiday of praise and thanksgiving for the Native Americans, who welcomed us to this new world, nearly upon us, I choose this poem by Mary Oliver, one of us, who wrote in honest tribute to one of them.

Tecumseh

I went down not long ago
to the Mad River, under the willows
I knelt and drank from that crumpled flow, call it
what madness you will, there's a sickness
worse than the risk of death and that's

A child looking at ruins grows younger
but cold
and wants to wake to a new name
I have been younger in October
than in all the months of spring
walnut and may leaves the color
of shoulders at the end of summer
a month that has been to the mountain
and become light there
the long grass lies pointing uphill
even in death for a reason
that none of us knows
and the wren laughs in the early shade now
come again shining glance in your good time
naked air late morning
my love is for lightness
of touch foot feather
the day is yet one more yellow leaf

It's hard, sometimes, to find a reason to be happy. Happiness can seem so trivial, so selfish. How can we be happy, we ask, when the world is what the world is? How can we laugh, while the Nigerian girls are still captive? How can we forgive golf in the face of a beheading? Where is the activism in a smile?

I try to take my cue from Mary Oliver, who cites

Mozart, For Example Read more about Smile for Peace