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

⚘ ⚘ ⚘

"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

⚘ ⚘ ⚘

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.)

⚘ ⚘ ⚘

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Conquest

 “Greater in battle than the man who would conquer a thousand-thousand men, is he who would conquer just one — himself."

― Gautama Buddha

“ 'When you have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand 
the good that we have done you by coming to your land 
by order of his Majesty the King of Spain.' ” 
― Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel

“There's no such thing as a limited victory. Every victory leaves another resentment, another defeated and humiliated people. 
Another place to guard and defend and fear.” 
― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

Augustus of Prima Porta, 1st century

Midweek Motif ~ Conquest

As we leave August behind, we leave a month named in honor of the Roman Emperor Augustus because it was the time of year in which he conquered Egypt, et al. 

Conquest.

According to Wikipedia:

The right of conquest is the right of a conqueror to territory taken by force of arms. It was traditionally a principle of international law that has gradually given way in modern times until its proscription after World War II when the crime of war of aggression was first codified in the Nuremberg Principles and then finally, in 1974, as a United Nations resolution 3314.

Brief Cloud Biography

Your Challenge: Write a new narrative poem on a glorious, inglorious, or mixed conquest.

microwave

Related Poem Content Details

BY ANGÉLICA FREITAS

TRANSLATED BY TIFFANY HIGGINS

how to explain brazil to an extraterrestrial:

your face on a flag. they’d recognize

you as leader

and knock you off. dirty 

part of the conquest.

but it already happened, in another shape: aerial

view of the amazon,

a hundred-odd

hydroelectric plants

to fry your eggs in the microwave.

and they’d finish you off: just 

part of the conquest.

and what if they came

to tour the waterfalls?

or to be taught by the elite

how to make a democracy?

the spaceships cover the sky

completely.

. . . . 

Read the rest HERE.)

Toussaint L’Ouverture

Related Poem Content Details

BY HENRIETTA CORDELIA RAY

To those fair isles where crimson sunsets burn, 

We send a backward glance to gaze on thee, 

Brave Toussaint! thou was surely born to be 

A hero; thy proud spirit could but spurn 

Each outrage on the race. Couldst thou unlearn 

The lessons taught by instinct? Nay! and we 

Who share the zeal that would make all men free, 

Must e’en with pride unto thy life-work turn. 

Soul-dignity was thine and purest aim; 

And ah! how sad that thou wast left to mourn 

In chains ’neath alien skies. On him, shame! shame! 

That mighty conqueror who dared to claim 

The right to bind thee. Him we heap with scorn, 

And noble patriot! guard with love thy name.

Concord Hymn

Related Poem Content Details

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 

   Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, 

Here once the embattled farmers stood 

   And fired the shot heard round the world. 

The foe long since in silence slept; 

   Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 

And Time the ruined bridge has swept 

   Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 

On this green bank, by this soft stream, 

   We set today a votive stone; 

That memory may their deed redeem, 

   When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 

Spirit, that made those heroes dare 

   To die, and leave their children free, 

Bid Time and Nature gently spare 

   The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Advertisement for video game.

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 ~ Blooms (noun) )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ The Key

This kid may be the key not just to all human potential, but to all spiritual unexplained paranormal phenomena.  

The key to everything in The X-Files.

~ Chris Carter, in The X-Files episode "The End" [5.20] (17 May 1998) Mulder to Scully

We receive His peace when we ask Him for it.

We keep His peace by extending it to others.

Those are the keys and there are no others.

~Marianne Williamson

Key signature A major /F♯ minor

Midweek Motif ~ The Key

Keys in movies that find their locks, 

Keys in cryptography that are the codes, 

Keys to life and 

Keys to heaven:

Keys are real or magical or symbolic.

Your challenge is to write a poem in which your narrator either gives or asks for a key.

What does the Key open?

Three Poetic Inspirations: 

Lament

BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

Listen, children:

Your father is dead.

From his old coats

I'll make you little jackets;

I'll make you little trousers

From his old pants.

There'll be in his pockets

Things he used to put there,

Keys and pennies

Covered with tobacco;

Dan shall have the pennies

To save in his bank;

Anne shall have the keys

To make a pretty noise with.

Life must go on,

And the dead be forgotten;

Life must go on,

Though good men die;

Anne, eat your breakfast;

Dan, take your medicine;

Life must go on;

I forget just why.

Music

BY JUHAN LIIV

TRANSLATED FROM THE ESTONIAN BY H.L. HIX & JÜRI TALVET

Read the translator's notes

It must be somewhere, the original harmony,

somewhere in great nature, hidden.

Is it in the furious infinite,

in distant stars’ orbits,

is it in the sun’s scorn,

in a tiny flower, in treegossip,

in heartmusic’s mothersong

or in tears?

It must be somewhere, immortality,

somewhere the original harmony must be found:

how else could it infuse

the human soul,

that music?

Source: Poetry (June 2011).

The Past

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

The debt is paid,

The verdict said,

The Furies laid,

The plague is stayed,

All fortunes made;

Turn the key and bolt the door,

Sweet is death forevermore.

Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin,

Nor murdering hate, can enter in.

All is now secure and fast;

Not the gods can shake the Past;

Flies-to the adamantine door

Bolted down forevermore.

None can re-enter there,—

No thief so politic,

No Satan with a royal trick

Steal in by window, chink, or hole,

To bind or unbind, add what lacked,

Insert a leaf, or forge a name,

New-face or finish what is packed,

Alter or mend eternal Fact.

~

 Please:  

1.      Post your Key Motif poem on your site, and then link it here.

2.      Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 

3.      Leave a comment here.

4.      Honor our community by visiting and commenting on others' poems.

(Next Week's Midweek Motif will be Snakes)

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Auto-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
If this widget does not appear, click here to display it.