Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Wilderness

   

   “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.”— Edward Abbey

Christ in the Wilderness by Ivan Kramskoi

“To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.”— Tacitus

Midweek Motif ~ Wilderness

This week we are away from our frenzied, civilized lives into the wilderness, places untrammeled by man: in reality or in imagination (like hikes with friends or solitary day trips).

You might also discover a bit of wilderness, traces of the wild in the cities / in people too.

Is wilderness a place? Is it an instinct? Is it an idea?

How does wilderness make you feel?

Share some wilderness moments in your poems today:

A Voice In The Wilderness

by Audrey Hepburn

            

I roamed the streets of Rome,
It felt like home,
People told me to stay,
But I said no 'This is my Roman Holiday',

I was a flower seller, poor and dirty,
but sang like a canary,
Henry Higgins said maybe,
And called me his Fair Lady.

I was being chased,
Life was a maze,
Four men made it a craze,
It was more like a game of charades. 

Wilderness

by Carl Sandburg

There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.    

               

There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot’s hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

 Anecdote of the Jar

by Wallace Stevens

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

    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 ~ "a bundle of contradictions" or Anne Frank's last letter)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Summer

     

“People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy” — Anton Chekov

SOURCE

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” — John Lubbock, The Use Of life

Midweek Motif ~ Summer

Write a Summer poem today.

In cold countries summer is a brief and enjoyable time and in a country like India it’s endless torture.

Yet Mother Nature knows well how and with what to fill in summer time. So do our poets J

Sonnet 18

by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 

Tis The Last Rose Of Summer

by Thomas Moore

Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone:
No flower of her kindred,
No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh. 

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one!
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o'er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead. 

So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love's shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie wither'd,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone? 

Summer Stars

by Carl Sandburg

Bend low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars,
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
So near you are, summer stars,
So near, strumming, strumming,
So lazy and hum-strumming. 

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 ~ Barter / Trade)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Silence

       “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

SOURCE

“The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.” — Charlotte Brontë

       Midweek Motif ~ Silence

We all know how still, quiet or at rest Silence is. What an absolutely soundless world we enter into if we could really step into Silence!

How to bring Silence into this cacophonous, noisy world?

Where to find that soundlessness? Is Silence merely absence of sound or more than that?

Or is it this Silence that we fear most so we fill up every inch of it with sound? Is Silence oppressive?

Let’s explore the world of Silence today:

Silence

by Thomas Hood

There is a silence where hath been no sound,
There is a silence where no sound may be,
In the cold grave—under the deep, deep sea,
Or in wide desert where no life is found,
Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
No voice is hush’d—no life treads silently,
But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,
That never spoke, over the idle ground:
But in green ruins, in the desolate walls
Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
Though the dun fox or wild hyæna calls,
And owls, that flit continually between,
Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan—
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone. 

           

After Long Silence

by William Butler Yeats

Speech after long silence; it is right,
All other lovers being estranged or dead,
Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade,
The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,
That we descant and yet again descant
Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:
Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
We loved each other and were ignorant. 

Silence

by Marianne Moore

My father used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat --
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint."
Nor was he insincere in saying, "`Make my house your inn'."
Inns are not residences. 

Aprons Of silence

By Carl Sandburg

Many things I might have said today.
And I kept my mouth shut.
So many times I was asked
To come and say the same things
Everybody was saying, no end
To the yes-yes, yes-yes,
me-too, me-too.

The aprons of silence covered me.
A wire and hatch held my tongue.
I spit nails into an abyss and listened.
I shut off the gable of Jones, Johnson, Smith,
All whose names take pages in the city directory.

I fixed up a padded cell and lugged it around.
I locked myself in and nobody knew it.
Only the keeper and the kept in the hoosegow
Knew it--on the streets, in the post office,
On the cars, into the railroad station
Where the caller was calling, "All a-board,
All a-board for . . . Blaa-blaa . . . Blaa-blaa,
Blaa-blaa . . . and all points northwest . . .all a-board."
Here I took along my own hoosegow
And did business with my own thoughts.
Do you see? It must be the aprons of silence. 

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 ~ Meteor Showers)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Peace

Antonio Balestra, Justice and Peace Embracing, ca. 1700

Mercy and truth meet together: righteousness and peace kiss each other.
Psalm 85:10

If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation. Indeed, among hunter-gatherers, peace is common 90 percent of the time, and war takes place only a small part of the time. . . .
Jane Goodall

Without peace, all other dreams vanish and are reduced to ashes.
Jawaharlal Nehru

source

If you cannot find peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else.

― Marvin Gaye

She wanted so to be tranquil, to be someone who took walks in the late-afternoon sun, listening to the birds and crickets and feeling the whole world breathe. Instead, she lived in her head like a madwoman locked in a tower, hearing the wind howling through her hair and waiting for someone to come and rescue her from feeling things so deeply that her bones burned.

― Carrie Fisher

Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks (1834)

☮

Midweek Motif ~ Peace

Yearning for peace, I ask:

Where do we have peace in our lives?  How can we ~ as humans, as poets ~ help peace spread?  To whom would we give a peace prize?

Your Challenge:  Make peace the mood and motif of your new poem. Here is more food for thought:

List of all Nobel Peace Prize Laureates

List of all Nobel Peace Prize awarded organizations

John Lennon peace mural wall, Praha.(1993)

        

Grief There Is And Death

by Rabindranath Tagore, 

(Recipient of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature)

          (translated by Sumana Roy)

Grief there is, and Death; Partings char.

Yet Peace and Bliss and the Infinite stir.
Flows life ceaselessly, beam the sun, moon and stars
In striking tints and hues Spring shows up in bowers.
Waves ebb waves rise.
Wilt flowers and bloom buds.
Decays not, ends not, never ever depletes,
Unto that wholeness the mind begs a retreat.

        (The Song is Here sung by Lopamudra Mitra)

"Possibilities" by Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska

(Recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature.)

Pine Forest 

by Gabriela Mistral

(Recipient of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Literature.)

Let us go now into the forest.

Trees will pass by your face,

and I will stop and offer you to them,

but they cannot bend down.

The night watches over its creatures,

except for the pine trees that never change:

the old wounded springs that spring

blessed gum, eternal afternoons.

If they could, the trees would lift you

and carry you from valley to valley,

and you would pass from arm to arm,

a child running

from father to father.

For You

by Carl Sandburg

The peace of great doors be for you.
Wait at the knobs, at the panel oblongs.
Wait for the great hinges.

The peace of great churches be for you,
Where the players of loft pipe organs
Practice old lovely fragments, alone.

The peace of great books be for you,
Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages,
Bleach of the light of years held in leather.

The peace of great prairies be for you.
Listen among windplayers in cornfields,
The wind learning over its oldest music.

The peace of great seas be for you.
Wait on a hook of land, a rock footing
For you, wait in the salt wash.

The peace of great mountains be for you,
The sleep and the eyesight of eagles,
Sheet mist shadows and the long look across.

The peace of great hearts be for you,

Valves of the blood of the sun,

Pumps of the strongest wants we cry.

The peace of great silhouettes be for you,
Shadow dancers alive in your blood now,
Alive and crying, “Let us out, let us out.”

The peace of great changes be for you.
Whisper, Oh beginners in the hills.
Tumble, Oh cubs—tomorrow belongs to you.

The peace of great loves be for you.
Rain, soak these roots; wind, shatter the dry rot.
Bars of sunlight, grips of the earth, hug these.

The peace of great ghosts be for you,
Phantoms of night-gray eyes, ready to go
To the fog-star dumps, to the fire-white doors.

Yes, the peace of great phantoms be for you,
Phantom iron men, mothers of bronze,
Keepers of the lean clean breeds.

☮

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 "Rising Above."

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Nature: Her Words

  “Just living is not enough….one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.” — Hans Christian Andersen

Photo: Sumana Roy

 Modern science says: 'The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future. 'From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass

we shall return. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are

drawn to our doom" — Nikola Tesla

Midweek Motif ~ Nature: Her Words

We are back to Nature with our eyes open and heart ready to receive.

She is everywhere even within one self. Watch, listen and feel Her.

You might pay Her a visit by the riverside, sea-beach, or deep forest, mountains, in your innermost being or just might open the window and let Her in.

Captivate the form Nature reveals to you: animate, inanimate.

You might assume Her voice if you wish to and tell Her story: 

Fog

by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

On The Grasshopper and Cricket

by John Keats

The Poetry of earth is never dead:    

  When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,    

  And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run    

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;    

That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead       

  In summer luxury,—he has never done    

  With his delights; for when tired out with fun    

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.    

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:    

  On a lone winter evening, when the frost      

    Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills    

The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,    

  And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,    

    The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

      Nature Is What We See

   by Emily Dickinson 

"Nature" is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
Squirrel—Eclipse—the Bumble bee—
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Nature is what we hear—
The Bobolink—the Sea—
Thunder—the Cricket—
Nay—Nature is Harmony—
Nature is what we know—
Yet have no art to say—
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity. 

  A Minor Bird

by Robert Frost

I have wished a bird would fly away,

And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door

When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me.

The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong

In wanting to silence any song.

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 ~ Respect)