Tag: poetry

Categories
Art Media Poetry Writing

Keys – A Poem

Hello there. I recently came across some poems I had written back in high school and college; while a lot of them are, well, not great, there were a few upon re-reading after all this time that I am still pretty happy with.

Here’s one I wrote about Ernest Hemingway back in May 2002. I hope that you like it. 🙂

Keys

The “last round” bell clanged, sending
Island night owls slowly shuffling out.
Drunkenly, Ernest eyed the lighthouse above tops of trees
Showing the way home, stumbling back from Sloppy Joe’s.
Cracked chips of paint cling
To his hands in the humidity, from clutching too tightly
At railings, mounting the porch steps where
Six-toed felines and a wife wait on Whitehead Street.
Frenetic keystrokes compose chapter after chapter, putting genius on paper
Before electroshock and shotgun solitude can take it away
Like Castro confiscated his Cuba, leaving
An old man and his sea of sorrow, stretching
Ninety miles to Havana Harbor.

Categories
Art Beauty Musings Reading

Wendell Berry – Like The Water

Autumn doesn’t officially start until Saturday, but we’ve been having a preview here in Charlottesville for the past week or so. Crisp mornings, cool evenings, leaves beginning to change. It’s raining today; everything is green-come-colorful outside, and there are drops on the windows. It’s a wonderful sound in the background as I work the day away.

It’s a Wendell Berry morning, for sure.

Like The Water

Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.
We did not make it.
Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.
In its abundance
it survives our thirst.

In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill,
and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us,
except we keep returning to its rich waters
thirsty.

We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth of its joy.

Categories
Art Life Reading

Georg Trakl – Music in the Mirabell

Picked up a beautiful book of poems by Georg Trakl today. Highly recommended.

Music in the Mirabell

A fountain sings. Clouds, white and tender,
Are set in the clear blueness
Engrossed, silent people walk
At evening through the ancient garden.

Ancestral marble has grown grey.
A flight of birds seeks far horizons.
A faun with lifeless pupils peers
At shadows gliding into darkness.

The leaves fall red from the old tree
And circle in through open windows.
A fiery gleam ignites indoors
And conjures up wan ghosts of fear.

A white stranger steps into the house.
A dog runs wild through ruined passages.
The maid extinguishes a lamp,
At night are heard sonata sounds.

– Georg Trakl

Categories
Art Life

Wild Geese

A beautiful poem by Mary Oliver.

 

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Categories
Art Reading

The Grain of Sound

Here’s a poem I read yesterday that reminded me of Ron Block, the banjo player for Alison Krauss and Union Station and a frequent poster / commentator over at The Rabbit Room. Thought I’d share:

The Grain of Sound

A banjo maker in the mountains,
when looking out for wood to carve
an instrument, will walk among
the trees and knock on trunks. He’ll hit
the bark and listen for a note.
A hickory makes the brightest sound;
the poplar has a mellow ease.
But only straightest grain will keep
the purity of tone, the sought-
for depth that makes the licks sparkle.
A banjo has a shining shiver.
Its twangs will glitter like the light
on splashing water, even though
its face is just a drum of hide
of cow, or cat, or even skunk.
The hide will magnify the note,
the sad of honest pain, the chill
blood-song, lament, confession, haunt,
as tree will sing again from root
and vein and sap and twig in wind
and cat will moan as hand plucks nerve,
picks bone and skin and gut and pricks
the heart as blood will answer blood
and love begins to knock along the grain.

– Robert Morgan