Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Bridge

 

     

        “Build bridges not walls”— Suzy Kassem

SOURCE

“Poetry isn’t an island, it is the bridge. 
Poetry isn’t a ship, it is the lifeboat. 
Poetry isn’t swimming. Poetry is water.” 
― Kamand Kojouri

         Midweek Motif ~ Bridge

Bridge fills up the in between empty / awkward space and helps to cross over. Bridges over small freeway or deep gorge or huge water way have always made our journeys smooth.

Though I have seen in videos terrified tourists screaming in fear while walking on the China Glass Bridge with its crack effect, bridges as such are of absolutely amazing structural magnificence.

In the tarot the bridge card means connections, assistance, stability and progress: it’s a symbol of hope.

However bridges also are silent witnesses to unfortunate happenings. Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge or Thomas Hood’s Bridge of Sighs dwell on such events.

Write a Bridge poem today.

Sharing a few poems here on Bridge:

The Bridge

by Octavio Paz

Between now and now,

between I am and you are,

the word bridge.

Entering it

you enter yourself:

the world connects

and closes like a ring.

From one bank to another,

there is always

a body stretched:

a rainbow.

I’ll sleep beneath its arches.

The Iron Bridge

by Billy Collins

I am standing on a disused iron bridge
that was erected in 1902,
according to the iron plaque bolted into a beam,
the year my mother turned one.
Imagine--a mother in her infancy,
and she was a Canadian infant at that,
one of the great infants of the province of Ontario.

But here I am leaning on the rusted railing
looking at the water below,
which is flat and reflective this morning,
sky-blue and streaked with high clouds,
and the more I look at the water,
which is like a talking picture,
the more I think of 1902
when workmen in shirts and caps
riveted this iron bridge together
across a thin channel joining two lakes
where wildflowers blow along the shore now
and pairs of swans float in the leafy coves.

1902--my mother was so tiny
she could have fit into one of those oval
baskets for holding apples,
which her mother could have lined with a soft cloth
and placed on the kitchen table
so she could keep an eye on infant Katherine
while she scrubbed potatoes or shelled a bag of peas,

the way I am keeping an eye on that cormorant
who just broke the glassy surface
and is moving away from me and the iron bridge,
swiveling his curious head,
slipping out to where the sun rakes the water
and filters through the trees that crowd the shore.

And now he dives,
disappears below the surface,
and while I wait for him to pop up,
I picture him flying underwater with his strange wings,

as I picture you, my tiny mother,
who disappeared last year,
flying somewhere with your strange wings,
your wide eyes, and your heavy wet dress,
kicking deeper down into a lake
with no end or name, some boundless province of water. 

 Mirabeau Bridge

by Guillaume Apollinaire

Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away
And lovers
Must I be reminded
Joy came always after pain

The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I

We're face to face and hand in hand
While under the bridges
Of embrace expire
Eternal tired tidal eyes

The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I

Love elapses like the river
Love goes by
Poor life is indolent
And expectation always violent

The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I

The days and equally the weeks elapse
The past remains the past
Love remains lost
Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away

The night is a clock chiming
The days go by not I 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

              (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Gardens)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Of Poems

    “Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?” —  Spike Milligan, A Silly Poem

SOURCE

“it
takes
a lot of
desperation
dissatisfaction

and
di sillusion
to
write
a
few
good
p oems.
it's not
for
everybody
either to

write
it
or even to
read
it” — Charles Bukowski, Poetry

      Midweek Motif ~ Of Poems

Okay, poem a poem about poem this week J

           

For your inspiration here are a handful of poems J

Introduction To Poetry

by Billy Collins

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. 

Poetry

by Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind. 

A Quiet Poem

by Frank O’Hara

When music is far enough away
the eyelid does not often move

and objects are still as lavender
without breath or distant rejoinder.

The cloud is then so subtly dragged
away by the silver flying machine

that the thought of it alone echoes
unbelievably; the sound of the motor falls

like a coin toward the ocean's floor
and the eye does not flicker

as it does when in the loud sun a coin
rises and nicks the near air. Now,

slowly, the heart breathes to music
while the coins lie in wet yellow sand. 

Willow Poem

by William Carlos Williams

It is a willow when summer is over,
a willow by the river
from which no leaf has fallen nor
bitten by the sun
turned orange or crimson.
The leaves cling and grow paler,
swing and grow paler
over the swirling waters of the river
as if loath to let go,
they are so cool, so drunk with
the swirl of the wind and of the river --
oblivious to winter,
the last to let go and fall
into the water and on the ground. 

Million Man March Poem

by Maya Angelou

The night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark,
And the walls have been steep.

Under a dead blue sky on a distant beach,
I was dragged by my braids just beyond your reach.
Your hands were tied, your mouth was bound,
You couldn't even call out my name.
You were helpless and so was I,
But unfortunately throughout history
You've worn a badge of shame.

I say, the night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark
And the walls have been steep.

But today, voices of old spirit sound
Speak to us in words profound,
Across the years, across the centuries,
Across the oceans, and across the seas.
They say, draw near to one another,
Save your race.
You have been paid for in a distant place,
The old ones remind us that slavery's chains
Have paid for our freedom again and again.

The night has been long,
The pit has been deep,
The night has been dark,
And the walls have been steep.

The hells we have lived through and live through still,
Have sharpened our senses and toughened our will.
The night has been long.
This morning I look through your anguish
Right down to your soul.
I know that with each other we can make ourselves whole.
I look through the posture and past your disguise,
And see your love for family in your big brown eyes.

I say, clap hands and let's come together in this meeting ground,
I say, clap hands and let's deal with each other with love,
I say, clap hands and let us get from the low road of indifference,
Clap hands, let us come together and reveal our hearts,
Let us come together and revise our spirits,
Let us come together and cleanse our souls,
Clap hands, let's leave the preening
And stop impostering our own history.
Clap hands, call the spirits back from the ledge,
Clap hands, let us invite joy into our conversation,
Courtesy into our bedrooms,
Gentleness into our kitchen,
Care into our nursery.

The ancestors remind us, despite the history of pain
We are a going-on people who will rise again.

And still we rise. 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ National flag(s))

          

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Flood

The Waving Surface of the Autumn Flood, Ma Yuan - Water Album - circa 1160

“I wish I hadn't cried so much!" said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. "I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears!” 
― Lewis Carroll

“Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, 

which is one of the oldest subjects of art.” 
― Susan Sontag

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” 
― Fred Rogers

Monsoon in India 2017
(So many have lost everything and died in floods, I found it hard to choose a picture.)

Midweek Motif ~ Flood

Flood in metaphor is often a positive, delightful gift and surprise; whereas flood in reality is often devastating, especially when disaster preparation is missing.  When the idea of flooding enters poets' hearts, when we are flooded with it, we are prepared with the tools of capture and taming even if we are overwhelmed.  So where to begin today? With an actual flood and its stories?  Or with the concept overpowering the will?  You decide.

Your challenge:  
Write a new poem with a flood motif 

and post it below.

The Art Of Drowning

by Billy Collins

I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.

After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

The Flood 

by Robert Frost

Blood has been harder to dam back than water.

Just when we think we have it impounded safe 

Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),

It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.

We choose to say it is let loose by the devil;

But power of blood itself releases blood.

It goes by might of being such a flood

Held high at so unnatural a level.

It will have outlet, brave and not so brave.

weapons of war and implements of peace

Are but the points at which it finds release.

And now it is once more the tidal wave

That when it has swept by leaves summits stained.

Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained.

Arroyo: Flash Flood

BY JOHN UNTERECKER

The canyon walls close in again,

slant light a silver glare in brown water.

The water is only knee deep, but when the boy reaches the

   boulders—

purple dark, silvered by the smash of brute water—

water will tear at his chest and arms.

The walls of the canyon are brilliant in late light.

They would have glared red and gold for his drowned camera:

splashed blood to his left, to his right a wall of sun laddered

   with boulders.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

A Leak in the Dike

BY PHOEBE CARY

A Story of Holland
 . . . . 

But where was the child delaying? 

      On the homeward way was he, 

And across the dike while the sun was up 

      An hour above the sea. 

He was stopping now to gather flowers, 

      Now listening to the sound, 

As the angry waters dashed themselves 

      Against their narrow bound. 

“Ah! well for us,” said Peter, 

      “That the gates are good and strong, 

And my father tends them carefully, 

      Or they would not hold you long! 

You ’re a wicked sea,” said Peter; 

      “I know why you fret and chafe; 

You would like to spoil our lands and homes; 

      But our sluices keep you safe!” 

But hark! Through the noise of waters 

      Comes a low, clear, trickling sound; 

And the child’s face pales with terror, 

      And his blossoms drop to the ground. 

He is up the bank in a moment, 

      And, stealing through the sand, 

He sees a stream not yet so large 

      As his slender, childish hand. 

’T is a leak in the dike! He is but a boy, 

      Unused to fearful scenes; 

But, young as he is, he has learned to know 

      The dreadful thing that means. 

A leak in the dike! The stoutest heart 

      Grows faint that cry to hear, 

And the bravest man in all the land 

      Turns white with mortal fear. 

For he knows the smallest leak may grow 

      To a flood in a single night; 

And he knows the strength of the cruel sea 

      When loosed in its angry might. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

🌏

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 "Nature: Her Words."