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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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 ~ Honey / Bee

 

“Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.”— Robert Green Ingersoll

Mesolithic rock painting of a honey hunter harvesting honey and wax from a bees nest in a tree. At Cuevas de la Araña en Bicorp. (Dating around 8000 to 6000 BC)

“Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt – marvelous error! – that I had a bee hive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.”— Antonio Machado

Midweek Motif ~ Honey / Bee

Recently I read a beautiful poem, 'Where Honey Comes From' by Maggie Smith and Honey/Bee– motif for our poets came instantly.

With honey and bee humans have been having a pretty long hunter-hunted relationship. Is it the same today or has it changed? Let your words buzz.

Your words may be connected to the sweet, sticky fluid that bees make from nectar; to the bee itself; to the flower, storehouse of the nectar; to the honeycomb or even to the deadly humans for we must not forget we are facing bee-loss globally in an increasing rate; among other factors human factor is one that has contributed to this sharp decline. However honey bee is not on the endangered species list yet.

Sharing some honey / bee poems here:

Fame Is A Bee

by Emily Dickinson

Fame is a bee.

It has a song—

It has a sting—

Ah, too, it has a wing.

A Bee

by Matsuo Basho

A bee

staggers out

of the peony

Bees

by Norman Rowland Gale

You voluble,
Velvety
Vehement fellows
That play on your
Flying and
Musical cellos,
All goldenly
Girdled you
Senerade clover,
Each artist in
Bass but a
Bibulous rover!

You passionate,
Powdery
Pastoral bandits,
Who gave you your
Roaming and
Rollicking mandates?
Come out of my
Foxglove; come
Out of my roses
You bees with the
Plushy and
Plausible noses!

An extract from Kahlil Gibran’s Prophet :

                       And now you ask in your heart,
"How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from

                that which is not good?"
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is

            the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the

                       bee.
             For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
     And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
  And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of  

                    pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the        bees.

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 ~ Truth / in honor of Gandhi)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Solitude

“The cure for loneliness is solitude”— Marianne Moore

SOURCE

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is a society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar;

I love not man the less, but Nature more”— Lord Byron

     Midweek Motif ~ Solitude

We all have an inner space within us to house our own thoughts, feelings. It’s wonderful to be lost there; to be alone; to find the ‘self’ and the ‘bliss of solitude’.

Solitude is an essential human need to replenish the soul. It does clear the weary mind of the clutter and gives élan to your existence.

No wonder poets and artists often choose to be solitary.

Our Motif today is Solitude:

Winter Solitude

by Matsuo Basho

Winter solitude--
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.

(Translated by Robert Hass) 

The Solitude of Night

by Li Po

It was at a wine party—

I lay in a drowse, knowing it not.

The blown flowers fell and filled my lap.

When I arose, still drunken,

The birds had all gone to their nests,

And there remained but few of my comrades.

I went along the river—alone in the moonlight.

   (Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata)

Solitude

by Harold Monro

WHEN you have tidied all things for the night,
And while your thoughts are fading to their sleep,
You'll pause a moment in the late firelight,
Too sorrowful to weep.

The large and gentle furniture has stood
In sympathetic silence all the day
With that old kindness of domestic wood;
Nevertheless the haunted room will say:
'Someone must be away.'

The little dog rolls over half awake,
Stretches his paws, yawns, looking up at you,
Wags his tail very slightly for your sake,
That you may feel he is unhappy too.

A distant engine whistles, or the floor
Creaks, or the wandering night-wind bangs a door

Silence is scattered like a broken glass.
The minutes prick their ears and run about,
Then one by one subside again and pass
Sedately in, monotonously out.

You bend your head and wipe away a tear.
Solitude walks one heavy step more near. 

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 ~ Writing Poetry)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Neighbors

 

“….O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'’— W.H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening

IMPORTUNATE NEIGHBOUR: By William Holman Hunt

“I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation. He replied, that Providence was his next door neighbor.”— Lawrence Stern

Midweek Motif ~ Neighbors

Everyone on this planet desperately needs a peaceful living. A good neighbor assures that. How well connected people are with those close by?

A few years ago a Spanish town granted cats and dogs rights as ‘non-human neighbors’. They definitely sought to dignify the lives of our furry friends.

A single date-palm tree was once my neighbor. It invited birds and even humans during winter mostly for its sugary juice. Then a day came. There was much hacking and chopping and it vanished.

I wonder if humans make good neighbors to all surrounding them?

Write a neighbor poem today:

Deep autumn

by Matsuo Basho

Deep autumn

My neighbor,

How does he live, I wonder

The People Upstairs

by Ogden Nash

The people upstairs all practise ballet

Their living room is a bowling alley

Their bedroom is full of conducted tours.

Their radio is louder than yours,

They celebrate week-ends all the week.

When they take a shower, your ceilings leak.

They try to get their parties to mix

By supplying their guests with Pogo sticks,

And when their fun at last abates,

They go to the bathroom on roller skates.

I might love the people upstairs more

If only they lived on another floor.

Poem of the Neighbours

by Charles Tomlinson

Bird neighbours the rising tree,

Leaf neighbours the waiting soil,

Flesh, fish, foal, all-kingdom-kind

Neighbour the other, sun to stone.

Man neighbours the sun in life,

Man neighbours the horse in life,

Horse neighbours the trodden grass,

Oak neighbours untrodden sky;

That life shall know increase.

Cat neighbours the bird in death,

Lion neighbours the doe in death,

Snake neighbours the hidden toad,

Hidden toad neighbours the fly:

That life shall know increase.

Hello, How Are You?

by Charles Bukowski

this fear of being what they are:
dead. 

at least they are not out on the street, they
are careful to stay indoors, those
pasty mad who sit alone before their tv sets,
their lives full of canned, mutilated laughter. 

their ideal neighborhood
of parked cars
of little green lawns
of little homes
the little doors that open and close
as their relatives visit
throughout the holidays
the doors closing
behind the dying who die so slowly
behind the dead who are still alive
in your quiet average neighborhood
of winding streets
of agony
of confusion
of horror
of fear
of ignorance. 

a dog standing behind a fence. 

a man silent at the window. 

       

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 ~ Empowerment)

        

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Cloud

 

“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud”— Maya Angelou

SOURCE

“Ultimately, the cloud is the latest example of Schumpeterian creative destruction: creating wealth for those who exploit it; and leading to the demise of those that don’t.” — Joe Weinman

Midweek Motif ~ Cloud

As a cloud you can be an actual cloud, that is a visible mass of condensed watery vapour floating in the atmosphere, above the general level of the ground; wandering in groups or absolutely lonely (may be being watched by some poets, intending to catch you in their lines); you can be a state or cause of gloom, threat; you can grow dim, less transparent as Wikipedia defines you.

Cloud can be ‘just a metaphor for the internet’ too. You know what I mean, all about this ‘storing and accessing data and programs over the internet instead of your own computer’s hard drive’. Not a lonely cloud here but a network cloud.

Choose your own ‘cloud’ and go on poeming:

 Clouds Come and Go

by Matsuo Basho

“The clouds come and go, 
providing a rest for all 
the moon viewers” — Matsuo Basho

THESE are the clouds

by W. B. Yeats

THESE are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye:
The weak lay hand on what the strong has done,
Till that be tumbled that was lifted high
And discord follow upon unison,
And all things at one common level lie.
And therefore, friend, if your great race were run
And these things came, So much the more thereby
Have you made greatness your companion,
Although it be for children that you sigh:
These are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye. 

Clouds

by Rupert brook

Down the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness.
Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,
And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,
As who would pray good for the world, but know
Their benediction empty as they bless.

They say that the Dead die not, but remain
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.
I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,
In wise majestic melancholy train,
And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,
And men, coming and going on the earth. 

Clouds Gathering

Charles Simic

(The poem is here)

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