Poet Speaks

So early it’s still almost dark out. I’m near the window with coffee, And the usual early morning stuff That passes for thought. When I see the boy and his friend Walking up the road To deliver the newspaper. They wear caps and sweaters, And one boy has a bag over his shoulder. They are so happy They aren’t saying anything, these boys. I think if they could, they would take Each other’s arm. It’s early in the morning, And they are doing this thing together. They come on, slowly, The sky is taking on light, Though the moon still hangs pale over the water. Such beauty that for a minute Death and ambition, even love Dosen’t enter into this Happiness. It comes on Unexpectedly, and goes beyond, really, And early morning talk about it. “Happiness” ~ Raymond Carver

Art by Fragonard en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Honor%C3%A9_Fragonard www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ8ovJHHw4U&t=511s I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. "Introduction to Poetry" ~ Billy Collins

THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds; Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bow'r, Molest her ancient solitary reign. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn, The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. .............................. Excerpt: : " Elegy written in a Country Churchyard" ~ Thomas Gray (1716-1771) www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44299/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last. The woods around it have it - it is theirs. All animals are smothered in their lairs. I am too absent-spirited to count; The loneliness includes me unawares. And lonely as it is, that loneliness Will be more lonely ere it will be less - A blanker whiteness of benighted snow WIth no expression, nothing to express. They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars - on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places. "Desert Places" ~ Robert Frost

No leaf stirs. I am alone In the midst of a hundred Empty mountains. Cicadas, Locusts, katydids, crickets, Have fallen still, one after Another. Even the wind Bells hang motionless. In the Blue dusk, widely spaced snowflakes Fall in perfect verticals. Yet, under my cabin porch, The thin, clear Autumn water Rustles softly like fine silk ~Kenneth Rexroth

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips: maybe it was the voice of the rain crying, a cracked bell, or a torn heart. Something from far off it seemed deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth, a shout muffled by huge autumns, by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves. Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood--- and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent. ~ Pablo Neruda

You sit in a chair, touched by nothing, feeling The old self become older self, imagining Only the patience of water, the boredom of a stone. You think that silence is the extra page, You think nothing is good or bad, not even the Darkness that fills the house while you sit watching It happen. You’ve seen it happen before. Your friends Move past the window their face soiled with regret. You want to wave but cannot raise your hand. You sit in a chair, you turn to the night shade spreading A poisonous net around the house. You taste The honey of absence. It is the same wherever You are, the same if the voice rots before The body, or the body rots before the voice. You know that desire leads only to sorrow, that sorrow Leads to achievements which leads to emptiness. You know that this is different, that this Is a celebration, the only celebration That by giving yourself over to nothing, You shall be healed. You know that there is joy in feeling Your lungs prepare themselves for an ashen future, so you wait, you stare and wait, and the dust settles And the miraculous hours of childhood wander in darkness “In celebration” ~ Mark Strand

It isn’t very far as highways lie. I might be back by nightfall, having seen The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water. Friends argue that I might be wiser for it. They do not hear the far-off Yankee whisper: How dull we grow from hurrying here and there! Many have gone, and think me half a fool To miss a day away in the cool country. Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish, Going to Walden is not so easy a thing As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult Trick of living, and finding it where you are. “Going to Walden” ~ Mary Oliver

I caught a stomach-sorrow while traipsing October’s fogs I ate to nourish it made a cocoon for it laid it with slow reverence in a hollow For fourteen nights some cursed sleep’s been after me while I’ve been up feeding on darkness Don’t say a word Don’t look in my direction There’s something on my heart that can’t be lifted – I give in to wintering – You won't see me till the buds start to blossom ~ Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh youtu.be/fhViseYiqgo?si=CIHdL5cScdiaSapu

You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest, and I smile, and am silent, and even my soul remains quiet: it lives in the other world which no one owns. The peach trees blossom, The water flows. ~ Li Po

I want to write you a love poem as headlong as our creek after thaw when we stand on its dangerous banks and watch it carry with it every twig every dry leaf and branch in its path every scruple when we see it so swollen with runoff that even as we watch we must grab each other and step back we must grab each other or get our shoes soaked we must grab each other "Love poem" ~ Linda Pastan

Like the little stream Making its way Through the mossy crevices I, too, quietly Turn clear and transparent. -Basho

The Spring lingers on In the scent of damp log Rotting in the sun ~ Richard Wright

Anthropomorphism has its place. It's a starting point, at least. So, I'll say if i have eyes, then a mountain has eyes, and whatever happens after that is poetry, where i become lost, and there are no conditions, no consequences. There's only the mountain, ......................... Watery springs gossip sweet news, gurgling falling from my throat, calling, calling, calling: come, always, I Am here; I Am Mountain all around, above, below, within. Come, there is nowhere to go.... I AM singing , the Sound that is always here... Excerpt: "How to Talk with A Mountain" ~ Elaine Maria Upton

Before my bed There is bright-lit moonlight So that it seems Like frost on the ground: Lifting my head I watch the bright moon Lowering my head I dream that I'm home. ~ Li Bai

All crying, 'We will go with you, O Wind!' The foliage follow him, leaf and stem; But a sleep oppresses them as they go, And they end by bidding them as they go, And they end by bidding him stay with them. Since ever they flung abroad in spring The leaves had promised themselves this flight, Who now would fain seek sheltering wall, Or thicket, or hollow place for the night. And now they answer his summoning blast With an ever vaguer and vaguer stir, Or at utmost a little reluctant whirl That drops them no further than where they were. I only hope that when I am free As they are free to go in quest Of the knowledge beyond the bounds of life It may not seem better to me to rest. ~ Robert Frost

I'd watched the sorrow of the evening sky, And smelt the sea, and earth, and the warm clover, And heard the waves, and the seagull's mocking cry. And in them all was only the old cry, That song they always sing -- "The best is over! You may remember now, and think, and sigh, O silly lover!" And I was tired and sick that all was over, And because I, For all my thinking, never could recover One moment of the good hours that were over. And I was sorry and sick, and wished to die. Then from the sad west turning wearily, I saw the pines against the white north sky, Very beautiful, and still, and bending over Their sharp black heads against a quiet sky. And there was peace in them; and I Was happy, and forgot to play the lover, And laughed, and did no longer wish to die; Being glad of you, O pine-trees and the sky! "Pine Trees and the sky" ~ Rupert Brooke