Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Year's End

"A year of ending and beginning, a year of loss and finding and all of you were with me through the storm. I drink your health, your wealth, your fortune for long years to come, and I hope for many more days in which we can gather like this. ~ C.J. Cherryh, Fortress of Eagles

Capricorn zodiac sign, Jantar Mantar, Jaipur, India. 18th century CE.

© Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right. ~ Oprah Winfrey

December, fragment of a mosaic 

Archeological Museum of Sousse

Midweek Motif ~ Year's End

I nearly left out the apostrophe to speak of Years Ends, but decided to stick with 2019, this year's end, full of trouble and joy, suspense and certainty.  

Perhaps you will use your new poem to record the details.  Perhaps you will use it to spread cheer and blessings.  Perhaps you will write an ode to rest, and its role in creativity.  

Your Challenge: Let's write to each other in this new poem about the end of 2019.

Bouquet de roses by Suzanne Valadon (1936)

 Year's End
  by Ted Kooser

Now the seasons are closing their files
on each of us, the heavy drawers
full of certificates rolling back
into the tree trunks, a few old papers
flocking away. Someone we loved
has fallen from our thoughts,
making a little, glittering splash
like a bicycle pushed by a breeze.
Otherwise, not much has happened;
we fell in love again, finding
that one red feather on the wind.

from Matsuo Bashō:

I’ve hit the bottom
of my bag of discretion:
year’s end.

another from Matsuo Basho

English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto

Year’s end,
all corners
of this floating world, swept.

  The Year (1910)                        

          by Ella Wheeler Wilcox                                   

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?
The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.
We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.
We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.
We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of the year.

Burning the Old Year

By Naomi Shihab Nye

 

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies.

"Songs to aging children come / This is one"

Lyrics are HERE

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below 

and visit others in the spirit of the community—

Best wishes for this year's end and the new years to come!

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Aviation

Civil aircraft. Photo: ICAO

“Working Together to Ensure 
No Country is Left Behind”

(Theme of International Civil Aviation Day for 2015-2019)

International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Flag

“The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who... looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space... on the infinite highway of the air.” ― Wilbur Wright

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.” ― Henry David Thoreau

"Aviation, this young modern giant, exemplifies the possible relationship of women and the creations of science. Although women have not taken full advantage of its use and benefits, air travel is as available to them as to men."--Amelia Earhart

“Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.”― Amelia Earhart

Midweek Motif ~ Aviation

Today's motif may feel like a complete change of subject, 

but it can be as political or non-political as you make it.

7 December is International Civil Aviation Day. Interesting that it is the same day as the USA National Pearl Harbor Remembrance. Do the two uses of aviation~for war and for peace~balance each other out? 

I rarely fly.  I've been finding flying increasingly uncomfortable from airport security and wait time to take off, flight service and landing. But still, flying to a remote location for vacation is a privilege that carries romance as well as discomfort and danger.

Our Challenge: Compose a new poem from the point of view of someone looking out the window of a flying machine.

Laurie Anderson's "From the Air"

FLIGHT TO LIMBO

Related Poem Content Details

BY JOHN UPDIKE

(At What Used to Be Called Idlewild)

The line didn’t move, though there were not 

many people in it. In a half-hearted light 

the lone agent dealt patiently, noiselessly, endlessly 

with a large dazed family ranging 

from twin toddlers in strollers to an old lady 

in a bent wheelchair. Their baggage 

was all in cardboard boxes. The plane was delayed, 

the rumor went through the line. We shrugged, 

in our hopeless overcoats. Aviation 

had never seemed a very natural idea. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

excerpt from New York to San Fran

Related Poem Content Details

BY ALLEN GINSBERG

. . . . 

Once more wingtip lifting to the sun

& whine of dynamos in the

stunned ear,

and shafts of light on the page

in the airplane cabin — 

Once more the cities of cloud

advancing over New York — ­

Once more the houses parked like used

cars in myriad row lots — 

I plug in the Jetarama Theater

sterilized Earphones — ­

it’s wagner!

the ride of the valkyries!

We’re above the clouds! The

Sunlight flashes on a giant bay!

Earth is below! The horns of

Siegfried sound gigantic in my ear — 

The banks of silver clouds 
like mountain ranges

I spread my giant green map

on the air-table — 

The Hudson curved below to the

floor-drop of the World,

Mountain range after mountain range,

Thunder after thunder,

Cumulus above cumulus,

World after world reborn,

in the ears 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

Courage 

BY Amelia Earhart

Courage is the price that Life exacts

     for granting peace.

The soul that knows it not

Knows no release from little things:

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,

Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear

     The sound of wings.

How can life grant us boon of living, compensate

For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate

Unless we dare

The soul's dominion? Each time we

make a choice, we pay

With courage to behold the resistless day,

And count it fair. 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.  AND: please put a link to this prompt with your poem.  

(Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be Music. )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Conversation

Leslie Hunter's Figures in conversation, Étaples, 1914

“Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them.” 
― Evelyn Waugh

“And once again, only the Small Things were said. 
The Big Things lurked unsaid inside.” 
― Arundhati Roy

 He Comes for Conversation

"Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded 

very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil 

with which words are eaten.”      

-- Chinua Achebe

"The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty

observations, has a romance of its own." 

--Virginia Woolf 

Midweek Motif ~ Conversation

The thing about conversation 
is that no one can do it alone.

I prefer one-on-one, but have had some stunning group conversations.

How about you?

Your Challenge: Write a new poem with conversation in it OR about conversation(s).

   

The Dangling Conversation

The Little Boy and the Old Man

by Shel Silverstein

Said the little boy, ‘Sometimes I drop my spoon.’

Said the little old man, ‘I do that too.’

The little boy whispered, ‘I wet my pants.’

‘I do that too,’ laughed the little old man.

Said the little boy, ‘I often cry.’

The old man nodded, ‘So do I.’

‘But worse of all,’ said the boy, ‘it seems

Grown-ups don’t pay attention to me.’

And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.

‘I know what you mean,’ said the old man.
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Excerpt from The Mango

by Mary Oliver

. . . 

After salmon and salads,

mangoes for everyone appeared on blue plates,

each one cut in half and scored

and shoved forward from its rind, like an orange flower,

cubist and juicy.

When I began to eat

things happened.

All through the sweetness I heard voices,

men and women talking about something—

another country, and trouble.

It wasn’t my language, but I understood enough.

Jungles, and death. The ships

leaving the harbors, their holds

filled with mangoes.

Children, brushing the flies away

from their hot faces

as they worked in the fields.

Men, and guns.

The voices all ran together

so that I tasted them in the taste of the mango,

a sharp gravel in the flesh.

Later, in the kitchen, I saw the stones

like torn-out tongues

embedded in the honeyed centers.

They were talking among themselves—

family news,

a few lines of a song

(Read the rest HERE)

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Excerpt from Telephone Conversation

by Wole Soyinka

The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived

Off premises. Nothing remained

But self-confession. "Madam," I warned,

"I hate a wasted journey—I am African."

Silence. Silenced transmission of

Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,

Lipstick coated, long gold rolled

Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was foully.

"HOW DARK?" . . . I had not misheard . . . "ARE YOU LIGHT

OR VERY DARK?" Button B, Button A.* Stench

Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.

Red booth. Red pillar box. Red double-tiered

Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed

By ill-mannered silence, surrender

Pushed dumbfounded to beg simplification.

Considerate she was, varying the emphasis--

"ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?" Revelation came.

"You mean--like plain or milk chocolate?"

Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light

Impersonality.

 . . . .

(Read the rest HERE.)

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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 ~ Neutrality / Objectivity )