Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Picnic(s)

A book of verse beneath the bough,
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness –
Ah, wilderness were paradise enow!

— Omar Khayyam

"The countryside — usually a village by a river or ringed by hills — 
scores well as the family picnic destination."
 Photo: V Raju in "For the love of picnics" by Anjana Basu 

"A picnic may well be a metaphor for life. The essentials for happiness are the right company, moderate if sanguine expectations and a reasonable standard of physical sustenance and comfort, the whole being bedeviled by the belief that there is always something better to be had if only one presses on." ~ P. D. James

Midweek Motif ~ Picnic(s)

"It's no picnic!" is an English idiom meaning "It's difficult."  I've had some difficult picnics, too, what with bugs, wild things, and forgotten bottle openers ~ but the basic idea is to get away from normalcy with very good food, drink and company. Sometimes for me, the company has been a very good book.

What are your fondest picnic experiences? the funniest? the most unexpected?

Your Challenge:  Using sense images, bring a picnic to life in a new poem. 

Hungarian: Majális (1873) Picnic in May

Knoxville Tennessee

by Nikki Giovanni

 I always like summer
Best
you can eat fresh corn
From daddy's garden
And okra
And greens
And cabbage
And lots of
Barbeque
And buttermilk
And homemade ice-cream
At the church picnic
And listen to
Gospel music
Outside
At the church
Homecoming
And go to the mountains with
Your grandmother
And go barefooted
And be warm
All the time
Not only when you go to bed
And sleep

The Shadow Voice

by Margaret Atwood

 My shadow said to me: 
what is the matter

Isn't the moon warm
enough for you
why do you need
the blanket of another body

Whose kiss is moss

Around the picnic tables
The bright pink hands held sandwiches
crumbled by distance.
 Flies crawl
over the sweet instant

You know what is in these blankets

The trees outside are bending with
children shooting guns.
 Leave
them alone.
 They are playing
games of their own.

I give water, I give clean crusts

Aren't there enough words
flowing in your veins
to keep you going.

Grape sherbet

by Rita Dove 

The day? Memorial.
After the grill
Dad appears with his masterpiece–
swirled snow, gelled light.
We cheer. The recipe's
a secret and he fights
a smile, his cap turned up
so the bib resembles a duck.

That morning we galloped
through the grassed-over mounds
and named each stone
for a lost milk tooth. Each dollop
of sherbet, later,
is a miracle,
like salt on a melon that makes it sweeter.

Everyone agrees– it's wonderful!
It's just how we imagined lavender
would taste. The diabetic grandmother
stares from the porch,
a torch
of pure refusal.

We thought no one was lying
there under our feet,
we thought it
was a joke. I've been trying
to remember the taste,
but it doesn't exist.
Now I see why
you bothered,
father.

*****

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 ~ Light )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Flowers

Flower of Life II, 1925, 1918 by Georgia O'Keeffe

"I decided that if I could paint
that flower in a huge scale, you
could not ignore its beauty. ”- Georgia O'Keeffe

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"The earth laughs in flowers.” 

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch 
a hundred flowers and not pick one.” 
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

“I sometimes think that never blows so red

The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears

Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.” 

― Omar Khayyám

The daisy chain by Maude Goodmann (1844-1936)

Midweek Motif ~ Flowers

Flowers hold memories 
and memories hold flowers.

Your Challenge: In a new poem, memorialize a significant encounter with a flower or flowers.

Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, Paul Gauguin (1888)

In a Burying Ground
by Sara Teasdale

This is the spot where I will lie
When life has had enough of me,
These are the grasses that will blow
Above me like a living sea.

These gay old lilies will not shrink
To draw their life from death of mine,
And I will give my body's fire
To make blue flowers on this vine.

"O Soul," I said, "have you no tears?
Was not the body dear to you?"
I heard my soul say carelessly,
"The myrtle flowers will grow more blue."

The Easter Flower 

by Claude McKay

Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around;

Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year at Eastertime;

And many thought it was a sacred sign,
And some called it the resurrection flower;
And I, a pagan, worshiped at its shrine,
Yielding my heart unto its perfumed power.

Peonies

by Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open–
pools of lace,
white and pink–
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities–
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again–
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

    (Please forgive me for posting all of "Peony" without permission.  I love it.)  

Every Flower - Noel Paul Stookey with John Payne on saxophone

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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 ~  Smoking Tobacco ~
as 5/31 is World No Tobacco Day.)

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Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Books

“A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, A Loaf of Bread—and Thou” — Omar Khayyam

Source

“ Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested;” — Francis Bacon

“Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon.” — Bertolt Brecht

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” — Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life

Midweek Motif ~ Books

These days we read both P(Print)-Book and E(Electronic)-Book. We may be traditional (being raised on ink and paper) only interested in a physical book or be prone to more complex technology. We are the happy denizens of the world of Books.

How are you connected to a book? How is your book world? How was your first meet? You might want to honor a book special to you.

The material quality of a book that is the smell and feel of a p-book of the olden world or the pleasure of tapping the glass surface of an e-book might find its place in your lines today.

You might include anything that’s also connected to books: any place, person or time.

Share your experiences of this magic world:

The Reading Mother

by Strickland Gillilan

I had a mother who read to me

Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea,

Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth,

"Blackbirds" stowed in the hold beneath.

I had a Mother who read me lays

Of ancient and gallant and golden days;

Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,

Which every boy has a right to know.

I had a Mother who read me tales

Of Gelert the hound of the hills of Wales,

True to his trust till his tragic death,

Faithfulness blent with his final breath.

I had a Mother who read me the things

That wholesome life to the boy heart brings--

Stories that stir with an upward touch,

Oh, that each mother of boys were such!

You may have tangible wealth untold;

Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.

Richer than I you can never be--

I had a Mother who read to me.

My Days Among the Dead Are Past

by Robert Southey

My days among the Dead are past;

    Around me I behold,

Where'er these casual eyes are cast,

    The mighty minds of old;

My never-failing friends are they,

With whom I converse day by day.

With them I take delight in weal,

    And seek relief in woe;

And while I understand and feel

    How much to them I owe,

My cheeks have often been bedew'd

With tears of thoughtful gratitude.

My thoughts are with the Dead, with them

    I live in long-past years,

Their virtues love, their faults condemn,

    Partake their hopes and fears,

And from their lessons seek and find

Instruction with an humble mind.

My hopes are with the Dead, anon

    My place with them will be,

And I with them shall travel on

    Through all Futurity;

Yet leaving here a name, I trust,

That will not perish in the dust.

There is no Frigate like a Book

by Emily Dickinson

There is no Frigate like a Book 

To take us Lands away 

Nor any Coursers like a Page 

Of prancing Poetry – 

This Traverse may the poorest take 

Without oppress of Toll – 

How frugal is the Chariot 

That bears the Human Soul –

   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 ~ Holiness /Holy Day)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Picnic

Breakfast in the Open by Carl Larsson 1919

“I’ll affect you slowly as if you were having a picnic in a dream. 
There will be no ants.  It won’t rain.” 
― Richard Brautigan, 

Loading Mercury With a Pitchfork

"Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic." 

― W. H. Auden

. "Society is the picnic certain individuals leave early, the party they fail to enjoy, the musical comedy they find not worth the price of admission."
― Joyce Carol Oates

Pierrot's Repast: Deburau as Pierrot Gormand by Auguste Bouquet:  c. 1830.

Midweek Motif ~ Picnic

When I was young, picnics involved food and parks with lakes to swim in and trails to walk in along cliffs with great views.  I loved them.  But lately, I only hear the word "picnic" in metaphor— something is or is not "a picnic"— meaning "easy."  I don't remember picnics being easy to prepare, but I remember feeling holiday in the air. Now, picnics for me are either solitary outdoor eating during walks or mass potluck church outings. What about you? Do you now or have you ever picnicked?

Your Challenge:  

Take us to a picnic in a new poem.

from Rubaiyat: "A Book of Verses underneath the Bough"

Related Poem Content Details

BY OMAR KHAYAAM

TRANSLATED BY EDWARD FITZGERALD

. . . . 
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, 

A Jug of Wine, A Loaf of Bread—and Thou 

Beside me singing in the Wilderness— 

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! 

. . . . 

(Only quatrain 11; read the entire poem HERE.)

GrapeSherbet

            by Rita Dove

The Day? Memorial.

After the grill

Dad appears with his masterpiece –

swirled snow, gelled light.

We cheer.  The recipe’s

a secret and he fights

a smile, his cap turned up

so the bib resembles a duck.

That morning we galloped

through the grassed-over mounds

and named each stone

for a lost milk tooth.  Each dollop

of sherbet, later,

is a miracle,

....

Read the Rest HERE.

I Ask My Mother to Sing

Related Poem Content Details

BY LI-YOUNG LEE

She begins, and my grandmother joins her. 

Mother and daughter sing like young girls. 

If my father were alive, he would play 

his accordion and sway like a boat.

I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace, 

nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch 

the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers 

running away in the grass.

. . . . 

Read the rest HERE.

* * * * 

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 ~ Parenthood 

(Parents, Guardians, Significant Adults in the Lives of Children)