Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Gardens


“A visitor to a garden sees the successes, usually. The gardener remembers mistakes and losses, some for a long time, and imagines the garden in a year, and in an unimaginable future.”
W.S. Merwin

Matilda Browne Peonies 1907.jpg
Peonies by Matilda Browne (1907)

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”
Abraham Lincoln 
 
“We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our lives.”
Parker J. Palmer

  

Midweek Motif ~ Gardens

 "How does your garden grow?"  ~  is a line from a nursery rhyme, and it is today's challenge.  Your garden can be vegetables or flowers or herbs or mythic or futuristic or a memory.  It can be quite famous or one only you know.  Let us experience it in your new poem.
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I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not. writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore. 

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.






A black cat among roses,
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.
The garden is very still,   
It is dazed with moonlight,
Contented with perfume,
Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.
Firefly lights open and vanish   
High as the tip buds of the golden glow
Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.
Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,
Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush.   
Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring,
Only the cat, padding between the roses,
Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern
As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.
Then you come,
And you are quiet like the garden,
And white like the alyssum flowers,   
And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies.
Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies?
They knew my mother,
But who belonging to me will they know
When I am gone.
By H. D.

I have had enough.
I gasp for breath.

Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest—
then you retrace your steps,
or find the same slope on the other side,
precipitate.

I have had enough—
border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,
herbs, sweet-cress.

O for some sharp swish of a branch—
there is no scent of resin
in this place,
no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,
aromatic, astringent—
only border on border of scented pinks.

Have you seen fruit under cover
that wanted light—
pears wadded in cloth,
protected from the frost,
melons, almost ripe,
smothered in straw?

Why not let the pears cling
to the empty branch?
All your coaxing will only make
a bitter fruit—
let them cling, ripen of themselves,
test their own worth,
nipped, shriveled by the frost,
to fall at last but fair
with a russet coat.

Or the melon—
let it bleach yellow
in the winter light,
even tart to the taste—
it is better to taste of frost—
the exquisite frost—
than of wadding and of dead grass.

For this beauty,
beauty without strength,
chokes out life.
I want wind to break,
scatter these pink-stalks,
snap off their spiced heads,
fling them about with dead leaves—
spread the paths with twigs,
limbs broken off,
trail great pine branches,
hurled from some far wood
right across the melon-patch,
break pear and quince—
leave half-trees, torn, twisted
but showing the fight was valiant.

O to blot out this garden
to forget, to find a new beauty
in some terrible
wind-tortured place.

Thomas Cole The Garden of Eden detail Amon Carter Museum.jpg
The Garden of Eden by Thomas Cole 1828

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—
(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Walk.)

15 comments:

  1. Hello everyone! Enjoy your day with poetry. Today we are missing Susan as she has to be be off-line for the day.

    Thanks Susan for the wonderful prompt.

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  2. Afternoon Everyone! Hope your gardens smell of sweet scent. Thanks Susan for this delightful prompt.

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  3. Good morning, its a holiday here in T&T today. Labour Day and tomorrow its another holiday Corpus Christi
    Have a beautiful day everyone

    much love...

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  4. What a lovely prompt as things are finally starting to bloom here!

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  5. A marvelous prompt susan on one of my favorite subjects!

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  6. Oh, Sumana, just saw your post. Thanks for hosting!

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  7. Hi Sumana, thanks for stepping in. Susan, your prompt took me back to summer days in Kelowna.

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  8. I am just heading out and will be back to make the rounds on return this afternoon.

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  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  10. Hello all!
    My back is acting up so I'm having some R and R at home. It's a beautiful weekend here in the Bay Area. Last week we had a hot one but this is much better. Have a wonderful week. Group hug!!!

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  11. Bekkie, how wonderful to see you popping by!

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  12. Susan and Sumana,
    Thank you for hosting this excellent prompt, Gardens.
    Have a lovely week:)

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  13. Lovely to see you, Eileen. I loved your poem!

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  14. Good Evening All! Looking forward to reading in the poetic gardens.

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