Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Changes

Autumn in Lodhi Garden, New Delhi

I am crooning a Tagore song as I write this prompt ‘Changes’ together with Susan: 

“Fallen leaves, I’m one of you dear.

With much laughter and many a tear

Phagun* chanted the farewell song into my core.”

(*Phagun / Phalgun is one of the last months

of the Bengali calendar.)

This year now rolls into its last month. There is an aroma of change everywhere; in every sphere of life. So it is in our dearest home Poets United. Mary and Sherry left in October, and both Susan and I are taking leave of Midweek Motif this December:

“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.”

Our last prompt will be 18 December 2019, though we will continue to write and blog our poetry.   We will write more about this change in Rosemary's feature this Friday.  So stay tuned, and stay in tune, too, for your new Wednesday prompt hosts in January 2020.

Much love, Sumana and Susan        

source

Midweek Motif  ~ Changes

  

We try to learn to appreciate change, as it cannot be avoided.  We would have to set life in bronze or stone or amber to preserve it.  Would it then be alive?  Can we then celebrate change, or at least find the words to recognize its power?   Adrienne Rich wrote in "Images for Godard":

 the mind of the poet is changing
the moment of change is the only poem.  

 What do you think?

Here are more poems to inspire you as you find the poetry in change:  

Want the change
 
by Rainer Maria Rilke
English version by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

The Journey

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice – – –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations – – –
though their melancholy
was terrible. It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do – – – determined to save
the only life you could save. 

Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change

By Naomi Shihab Nye
 

Roselva says the only thing that doesn’t change

is train tracks. She’s sure of it.

The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery

by the side, but not the tracks.

I’ve watched one for three years, she says,

and it doesn’t curve, doesn’t break, doesn’t grow.

Peter isn’t sure. He saw an abandoned track

near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train

is a changed track. The metal wasn’t shiny anymore.

The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.

Every Tuesday on Morales Street

butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.

The widow in the tilted house

spices her soup with cinnamon.

Ask her what doesn’t change.

Stars explode.

The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.

The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.

The train whistle still wails its ancient sound

but when it goes away, shrinking back

from the walls of the brain,

it takes something different with it every time.

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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 ~  A / The Moment.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Awakening

“If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow to the head, why bother reading it in the first place?.... A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us." --Franz Kafka in a letter to Oskar Pollak dated January 27, 1904” ― Franz Kafka

My heart in your hands by Louise Docker

 

 If you say to someone who has ears to hear: 

"What you are doing to me is not just," 

you may touch and awaken at its source

 the spirit of attention and love... ~ Simone Weil

“When one realises one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake.”

― P.D. Ouspensky

Sculpture of the Buddha meditating under the Bodhi Tree, 800 C.E.

  Midweek Motif ~ Awakening

Awakening is more than waking after sleep, it involves coming to a realization that is personally transforming.  It may be rational, but more often the path is visceral, emotional or spiritual.  

Have you had an awakening?  

Where is one needed?

Take us there in today's poem. 

Frances MacDonald - The Sleeping Princess 1896

The Waking

By Theodore Roethke
 

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

 

Excerpt from "To Begin With, the Sweet Grass"

by Mary Oliver
  

1.

Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat
    of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or
    forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?

Behold, I say—behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
    of this gritty earth gift.

2.
Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
    are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
    thrillingly gluttonous.

For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.

And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.
. . . . 

 
  7.
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements,
   though with difficulty.
I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment
somehow or another).

And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
 

(Read the rest HERE 

or in Mary Oliver's book Evidence: Poems, Beacon Press, 2010.)

Waking from Sleep

By Robert Bly
 

Inside the veins there are navies setting forth,

Tiny explosions at the waterlines,

And seagulls weaving in the wind of the salty blood.

It is the morning. The country has slept the whole winter.

Window seats were covered with fur skins, the yard was full

Of stiff dogs, and hands that clumsily held heavy books.

Now we wake, and rise from bed, and eat breakfast!

Shouts rise from the harbor of the blood,

Mist, and masts rising, the knock of wooden tackle in the sunlight.

Now we sing, and do tiny dances on the kitchen floor.

Our whole body is like a harbor at dawn;

We know that our master has left us for the day.

*********

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 ~ Longing.)

The Living Dead

 ~ Honouring our poetic ancestors ~

Five A.M. in the Pinewoods

I'd seen 
their hoofprints in the deep

needles and knew

they ended the long night

under the pines, walking

like two mute

and beautiful women toward

the deeper woods, so I

got up in the dark and

went there. They came

slowly down the hill

and looked at me sitting under

the blue trees, shyly

they stepped

closer and stared

from under their thick lashes and even

nibbled some damp

tassels of weeds. This

is not a poem about a dream,

though it could be.

This is a poem about the world

that is ours, or could be.

Finally

one of them—I swear it!—

would have come to my arms.

But the other

stamped sharp hoof in the

pine needles like

the tap of sanity,

and they went off together through

the trees. When I woke

I was alone,

I was thinking:

so this is how you swim inward,

so this is how you flow outward,

so this is how you pray.

– Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
from House of Light (Boston, Beacon Press, 1990)

This is my personal favourite Mary Oliver poem – though they are all wonderful and I love every poem of hers I've ever seen or heard. I first discovered her work when I found House of Light in my (then) local library many years ago, probably around 1993. I contemplated stealing the book! As a former librarian, and someone brought up to consider books sacred, you may understand what a huge departure it was for me even to think of such a thing, and how powerful the cause.

I didn't give in to such a nefarious impulse, but always meant to buy the book. I couldn't find it in Australia at that time; shops probably didn't keep it very long after the publication date. Only after she died I finally bethought myself to look on Amazon, and now have it at last, in Kindle. I love it as much as ever. Meantime, of course, I have been delighted by much more of her work. Thank God she was prolific, and has left us a wonderful legacy!

So many of us have had a love affair with Oliver's translucent work – work profound yet completely accessible. The day the world received the news of her death (one week ago, the day after it happened) my son and his family were visiting from interstate. We had a happy day together – yet all the time, in backdrop, was my consciousness of loss. All over facebook, other poets expressed shock and mourning too. So did many non-poets who also loved her poetry. She was undoubtedly the most popular contemporary poet in the English-speaking world, deservedly so. After her death, I read that her work was sometimes belittled by critics because of that popularity, as if it equated with a lack of literary merit – to which I can only say, 'Nonsense!' The apparent simplicity does not mean it wasn't meticulously crafted. She herself is famous for having opined that poetry shouldn't be 'fancy', and so obviously she set out to make sure hers wasn't. The right decision, clearly.  Yet she had a distinctively beautiful poetic voice, her simplicity and clarity far from banal. Like other greats, most notably Shakespeare, some of her more striking lines and phrases are widely remembered and quoted out of context. They are striking both for their powerful sentiments and the beauty of their wording.

She was primarily a nature poet, has been described as an ambassador for the environment, and stated in one poem (Messenger) that loving the world was her work. The link on her name, above, leads to her Wikipedia entry – if anyone needs to read it. I think it is well-known that she was American, a Pulitzer prize-winner, and a recipient of the National Book Award; that she lived a long time in Provincetown, Massachusetts with her partner, the photographer Mary Malone Cook, who pre-deceased her in 2005; and that her influences were Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, Rumi, Hafiz, Shelley and Keats.

There have been a number of obituaries, of course, which also give details of her life and work. You can find them here. If you simply Google her name, or 'Mary Oliver poems' you'll find a lot of material too. And of course her books are available through Amazon.

You can also find many examples of her reading her work and occasionally even being interviewed about it (though she seldom gave interviews) on YouTube. This is one I enjoyed:

Though she is greatly mourned, I'm sure everyone is thankful that her poetry remains with us. This one (the final poem in House of Light) seems appropriate to share with you just now, too:

White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

Coming down 

out of the freezing sky

with its depths of light,

like an angel, 
or a buddha with wings,

it was beautiful 
and accurate,

striking the snow and whatever was there

with a force that left the imprint

of the tips of its wings—
five feet apart—and the grabbing 
thrust of its feet,

and the indentation of what had been running

through the white valleys 
of the snow—

and then it rose, gracefully,

and flew back to the frozen marshes

to lurk there, 
like a little lighthouse,

in the blue shadows—

so I thought:

maybe death 
isn’t darkness, after all,

but so much light 
wrapping itself around us—

as soft as feathers—

that we are instantly weary 
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes, 
not without amazement,

and let ourselves be carried,

as through the translucence of mica,

to the river 
that is without the least dapple or shadow—

that is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light—

in which we are washed and washed

out of our bones.

Material shared in 'The Living Dead' is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, where applicable (older poems may be out of copyright).

Both poems reproduced here are set out as they are in the book.

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Climate Change

“Habitat Degradation: Deforestation” 

Art and caption by Jill Pelto
(Used here with permission.)
"This painting uses data showing the decline in rain forest area from 1970 to 2010.These lush ecosystems are disappearing before our eyes, and with them, millions of beautiful species. For this series, I chose to separate the animals from their habitat, because that is ultimately what we are doing.
The tiger is trapped outside the forest, cornered. "
(Read the full article and view more paintings HERE.)
☼

“Action is the antidote to despair.” ~ Edward Abbey

“Climate change ignores borders, but so do friendship and solidarity. It is time for national interests to give way to the global good.” ~ Dr Saleemul Huq

☼

See  "Climate Change, The Musical" !

(Warning: Tough Love)

☼

Midweek Motif ~ Climate Change

So many global statements have been made about climate change ~ both learned and popular ~ that I implore myself and you to do something different in our poetry: Make it personal and specific.  Amplify an aspect of the world so that others can see it too.  Whatever your politics and moral positions are when it comes to climate change ~ let us see details, the evidence of your senses, your time and your spirit.  Make us hear, see, touch your world.  

This, then, is the challenge 
for your new poem. 

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.

☼

Love Poems in the Time of Climate Change

By CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ
March 3, 2017

Sonnet XVII

I don’t love you as if you were rare earth metals, diamonds,
or reserves of crude oil that propagate war:
I love you as one loves most vulnerable things,
urgently, between the habitat and its loss.

I love you as the seed that doesn’t sprout but carries
the heritage of our roots, secured, within a vault,
and thanks to your love the organic taste that ripens
from the fruit lives sweetly on my tongue.

I love you without knowing how, or when, the world will end—
I love you naturally without pesticides or pills—
I love you like this because we won’t survive any other way,
except in this form in which humans and nature are kin,
so close that your emissions of carbon are mine,
so close that your sea rises with my heat.

☼

See more poetry at CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS.COM

 "Burning Worlds: The Best Poems 

About Climate Change" 
BY AMY BRADY ON AUGUST 30, 2017 

☼

Listen to

UN Climate Summit Poem "Dear Matafele Peinem" 

by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner (Marshall Islands)

☼

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 ~ Darkness is . . . )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Morning Poem

“A monk sips morning tea,
it's quiet,
the chrysanthemum's flowering.”— Matsuo Basho

SOURCE

“In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”— Khalil Gibran

   Midweek Motif ~ Morning Poem

Capture the time in your lines when the day is new and you are out of your slumber.

Isn’t it always a good morning whether it’s bright, gray, cloudy or rainy? Or is it not?

A few lines from Langston Hughes:

Bad Morning

Here I sit
With my shoes mismated.
Lawdy-mercy!
I's frustrated! 

Today’s motif is Morning Poem. Let’s see where the morning takes you J

Morning Poem

by Mary Oliver

(here)

300

by Emily Dickinson

'Morning'—means 'Milking'—to the Farmer—
Dawn—to the Teneriffe—
Dice—to the Maid—
Morning means just Risk—to the Lover—
Just revelation—to the Beloved—

Epicures—date a Breakfast—by it—
Brides—an Apocalypse—
Worlds—a Flood—
Faint-going Lives—Their Lapse from Sighing—
Faith—The Experiment of Our Lord 

One O’Clock In The Morning

by Charles Baudelaire

Alone, at last! Not a sound to be heard but the rumbling of some belated and decrepit cabs. For a few hours 
we shall have silence, if not repose. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared, and I myself shall be the 
only cause of my sufferings.
At last, then, I am allowed to refresh myself in a bath of darkness! First of all, a double turn of the lock. It 
seems to me that this twist of the key will increase my solitude and fortify the barricades which at this instant 
separate me from the world.
Horrible life! Horrible town! Let us recapitulate the day: seen several men of letters, one of whom asked me 
whether one could go to Russia by a land route (no doubt he took Russia to be an island); disputed generously with the editor of a review, who, to each of my objections, replied: 'We represent the cause of decent people,' which 
implies that all the other newspapers are edited by scoundrels; greeted some twenty persons, with fifteen of whom I am not acquainted; distributed handshakes in the same proportion, and this without having taken the precaution of 
buying gloves; to kill time, during a shower, went to see an acrobat, who asked me to design for her the costume of a 
Venustra; paid court to the director of a theatre, who, while dismissing me, said to me: 'Perhaps you would do well to 
apply to Z------; he is the clumsiest, the stupidest and the most celebrated of my authors; together with him, perhaps, 
you would get somewhere. Go to see him, and after that we'll see;' boasted (why?) of several vile actions which I
have never committed, and faint-heartedly denied some other misdeeds which I accomplished with joy, an error of
bravado, an offence against human respect; refused a friend an easy service, and gave a written recommendation to a
perfect clown; oh, isn't that enough?
Discontented with everyone and discontented with myself, I would gladly redeem myself and elate myself a
little in the silence and solitude of night. Souls of those I have loved, souls of those I have sung, strengthen me,
support me, rid me of lies and the corrupting vapours of the world; and you, O Lord God, grant me the grace to
produce a few good verses, which shall prove to myself that I am not the lowest of men, that I am not inferior to
those whom I despise. 

Morning

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The mist has left the greening plain,
The dew-drops shine like fairy rain,
The coquette rose awakes again
Her lovely self adorning.

The Wind is hiding in the trees,
A sighing, soothing, laughing tease,
Until the rose says "Kiss me, please,"
'Tis morning, 'tis morning.

With staff in hand and careless-free,
The wanderer fares right jauntily,
For towns and houses are, thinks he,
For scorning, for scorning.
My soul is swift upon the wing,
And in its deeps a song I bring;
Come, Love, and we together sing,
"'Tis morning, 'tis morning." 

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 ~ Surprise!)