Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Gift(s)

 

“A friend is a gift you give yourself”— Robert Louis Steveenson

SOURCE

“Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.”— Albert Camus

        Midweek Motif ~ Gift(s)

A gift is sometimes so special that it’s treasured for lifetime.

Gifts are exchanged on special days or on no occasion at all. Just given away and received with love.

Remember O. Henry’s story The Gift of the Magi? Very special gifts were there.

Write about a gift you gave or received or wanted to give to someone or a gift you gave yourself.

You might also write about your likes or dislikes about giving or receiving a gift.

And what about gift of words or a gifted person? Yes, give them space too if you wish J

Here are a few Gift Poems for you:

The Gift Outright

by Robert Frost

The land was ours before we were the land’s.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England’s, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely realizing westward,

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

Such as she was, such as she would become.

The Gift

by Rabindranath Tagore

O my love, what gift of mine
Shall I give you this dawn?
A morning song?
But morning does not last long—
The heat of the sun
Wilts like a flower
And songs that tire
Are done.

O friend, when you come to my gate.
At dusk
What is it you ask?
What shall I bring you?
A light?

A lamp from a secret corner of my silent house?
But will you want to take it with you
Down the crowded street?
Alas,
The wind will blow it out.

Whatever gifts are in my power to give you,
Be they flowers,
Be they gems for your neck
How can they please you
If in time they must surely wither,
Crack,
Lose lustre?
All that my hands can place in yours
Will slip through your fingers
And fall forgotten to the dust
To turn into dust.

Rather,
When you have leisure,
Wander idly through my garden in spring
And let an unknown, hidden flower’s scent startle you
Into sudden wondering—
Let that displaced moment
Be my gift.
Or if, as you peer your way down a shady avenue,
Suddenly, spilled
From the thick gathered tresses of evening
A single shivering fleck of sunset-light stops you,
Turns your daydreams to gold,
Let that light be an innocent
Gift.

Truest treasure is fleeting;
It sparkles for a moment, then goes.
It does not tell its name; its tune
Stops us in our tracks, its dance disappears
At the toss of an anklet
I know no way to it—
No hand, nor word can reach it.
Friend, whatever you take of it,
On your own,
Without asking, without knowing, let that
Be yours.
Anything I can give you is trifling—
Be it a flower, or a song.

A Gift

By Amy Lowell

See! I give myself to you, Beloved!
My words are little jars
For you to take and put upon a shelf.
Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,
And they have many pleasant colours and lusters
To recommend them.
Also the scent from them fills the room
With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.

When I shall have given you the last one,
You will have the whole of me,
But I shall be dead.

 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 ~ Picnic{s})

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Reading Fiction

"Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt even just a teensy bit guilty for carving precious time out of your busy, full life to dive into a book and relish a made-up story."  — Holly Parker, Ph.D, in Psychology Today

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Illustrationen: John Tenniel

“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”

 — James Baldwin

"Fiction that adds up, that suggests a ‘logical consistency,’ or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.” 

— Joyce Carol Oates

“The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.” 
— Gustave Flaubert

Captivated by Adolphe Alexandre Lesrel 

Midweek Motif ~ Reading Fiction

What happens when you read fiction?  Does it seem more a physical, intellectual, emotional or spiritual engagement?

Or don't you read it? 

Some say it distracts us from a true path, but others believe with Ralph Waldo Emerson that "Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures." 

Your challenge:  Write a new poem with "reading fiction" as topic and/or motif.

The Novel Reader by Vincent van Gogh (1888)

The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm 

BY WALLACE STEVENS

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself

Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

How Reading Fiction Books Can Change You

The Land of Story-books

by Robert Louis Stevenson

At evening when the lamp is lit,

Around the fire my parents sit;

They sit at home and talk and sing,

And do not play at anything.

Now, with my little gun, I crawl

Away behind the sofa back.

All in the dark along the wall,

And follow round the forest track

And play at books that I have read

There, in the night, where none can spy,

All in my hunter’s camp I lie,

The roaring lions come to drink.

Till it is time to go to bed. 

These are the hills, these are the woods,

These are my starry solitudes;

I see the others far away

And there the river by whose brink 

Home I return across the sea,

As if in firelit camp they lay,

And I, like to an Indian scout,

Around their party prowled about.

So, when my nurse comes in for me,

At my dear land of Story-books.

And go to bed with backward looks

There is no frigate like a book (1263)

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 a Human soul.

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 ~ Ode to Age.)

The Living Dead

Night and Day

By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

When the golden day is done, 

Through the closing portal,
Child and garden, Flower and sun,
Vanish all things mortal.

As the blinding shadows fall
As the rays diminish,
Under evening's cloak they all
Roll away and vanish.

Garden darkened, daisy shut,
Child in bed, they slumber--
Glow-worm in the hallway rut,
Mice among the lumber.

In the darkness houses shine,
Parents move the candles;
Till on all the night divine
Turns the bedroom handles.

Till at last the day begins
In the east a-breaking,
In the hedges and the whins
Sleeping birds a-waking.

In the darkness shapes of things,
Houses, trees and hedges,
Clearer grow; and sparrow's wings
Beat on window ledges.

These shall wake the yawning maid;
She the door shall open--
Finding dew on garden glade
And the morning broken.

There my garden grows again
Green and rosy painted,
As at eve behind the pane
From my eyes it fainted.

Just as it was shut away,
Toy-like, in the even,
Here I see it glow with day
Under glowing heaven.

Every path and every plot,
Every blush of roses,
Every blue forget-me-not
Where the dew reposes,

"Up!" they cry, "the day is come
On the smiling valleys:
We have beat the morning drum;
Playmate, join your allies!" 

I was reminded of Robert Louis Stevenson recently, seeing him quoted online, and went exploring to re-acquaint myself with him. I had A Child's Garden of Verses when I was very young. Although I was a child who loved poetry, I didn't love that. I felt patronised (even though I was too young to know that word). Did he make the mistake of writing down to children, or was it simply that he was from a different era? I think his children's poetry is charming when I read it now, as an adult. I'm pleasantly surprised to discover he also wrote poetry for adults, as well as some, like this one, which could be for either, or both. 

Of course, he also wrote wonderful stories – some, such as Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, definitely not for children, others such as Kim and Treasure Island, for any age. I certainly enjoyed those two when I was still a child – though I realise now that some things in Kim went over my head. Kidnapped was another favourite.

Today, feeling like some escape from a world in which we are constantly bombarded with news of terrible events and the worst of human character, I was glad to find this poem. It seems to conjure up a time and place of innocence and joy, a life of safety and reassurance, and delight in the natural world. I hope it gives you those feelings too.

Stevenson was such a celebrity in his day, and is still so well-known, I probably don't need to discuss him in detail. You very likely know already that he was born in Scotland; that he was also a travel writer and essayist, and a composer of music; that he was very happily married, but had poor health, generally ascribed to tuberculosis, and died at only 44. How thankful we can be that he wrote so much while he still lived! His last years were spent on the island of Samoa, where he is buried.

If you would like to find out more, you can try Wikipedia, or many other sources via Google. And his poems are available online in this complete collection (arranged alphabetically) and at PoemHunter. 

Also, I have just been alerted to a free, illustrated Archive ebook of A Child's Garden of Verses – here. (Click on a page to turn it.)

The most interesting article I found about him, 'The Double Life of Robert Louis Stevenson,' is part of the current attempts to restore his literary reputation, after years of his being dismissed as a minor writer. The author quotes Stevenson's own theory of fiction as a possible reason why he was so dismissed:

Man's one method, whether he reasons or creates, is to half-shut his eyes against the dazzle and confusion of reality .... Life is monstrous, infinite, illogical, abrupt and poignant; a work of art, in comparison, is neat, finite, selfcontained, rational, flowing, and emasculate .... The novel, which is a work of art, exists, not by its resemblances to life, which are forced and material . . . but by its immeasurable difference from life, which is designed and significant.

Well, that seems to apply to this poem, too, which took me away a little while from the 'monstrous, infinite, illogical, abrupt and poignant'!

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

**********************

PS I said recently that I'd be posting (in random order of topics) on the first and third Fridays of the month, and the fifth when there is one. Let me correct myself. It occurs to me that it would be simpler just to post fortnightly, so from now on that's what I'll do.

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Food

"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one"---Mother Teresa

"So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being."---Franz Kafka

"Animals are my friends.....and I don't eat my friends"---George Bernard Shaw

"Wine is bottled poetry"---Robert Louis Stevenson

source

Midweek Motif ~ Food

Today I want you to write about "Food" you like or even dislike.

You may deal with pure food items or recipes in your own way or spice it up with figures of speech, various poetic devices.

Have fun!

Here is some food for thought:

The Health-Food Diner

by Maya Angelou

The Health-Food Diner

No sprouted wheat and soya shoots

And Brussels in a cake,

Carrot straw and spinach raw,

(Today, I need a steak).

Not thick brown rice and rice pilaw

Or mushrooms creamed on toast,

Turnips mashed and parsnips hashed,

(I'm dreaming of a roast).

Health-food folks around the world

Are thinned by anxious zeal,

They look for help in sea food kelp

(I count on breaded veal).

No smoking signs, raw mustard greens,

Zucchini by the ton,

Uncooked kale and bodies frail

Are sure to make me run

to

Loins of pork and chicken thighs

And standing rib, so prime,

Pork chops brown and fresh groundround

(I crave them all the time).

Irish stews and boiled corned beef

and hot dogs by the scores,

or any place that saves a space

For making carnivores.

Fame Is A Fickle Food

by Emily Dickinson

Fame is a fickle food

Upon a shifting plate

Whose table once a 

Guest but not

The second time is set

Whose crumbs the crows inspect

And with ironic caw

Flap past it to the Farmer's corn--

Men eat of it and die.

Sonnet 75

by William Shakespeare

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,

Or as sweet seasoned showers to the ground;

And for the peace of you I hold such strife

As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found:

Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon

Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;

Now counting best to be with you alone,

Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure;

Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,

And by and by clean starved for a look,

Possessing or pursuing no delight

Save what is had, or must from you be took.

      Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,

      Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

Oysters

by Seamus Heaney

Our shells clacked on the plate.

My tongue was a filling estuary.

My palate hung with starlight:

As I tasted the salty Pleiades

Orion dipped his foot into the water.

Alive and violated,

They lay on their bed of ice:

Bivalves: the split bulb

And philandering sigh of ocean

Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered.

We had driven to that coast

Through flowers and limestone

And there we were, toasting friendship,

Laying down a perfect memory

In the cool of thatch and crockery.

Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,

The Romans hauled their oysters south to Roam:

I saw damp panniers disgorge

The frond-lipped, brine-stung

Glut of privilege

And was angry that my trust could not repose

In the clear light, like poetry or freedom

Leaning in from sea. I ate the day

Deliberately, that its tang

Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.

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 Mountain)

                                                   

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Entering Summer or Winter

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.” 
― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

“I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, 

and I see summer – its dust and lowering skies.” 
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

source

 Midweek Motif ~ 

Entering Summer or Winter

 "The sun stands still" before reversing direction ~ that is the meaning of the word solstice.  We experience more or fewer hours of sunlight per day. Archetypal symbols of lightness and darkness, summer and winter, maturing and aging and highs and lows flood the mind along with new and remembered sights and sounds.  

Your Challenge:  Write a poem to share your insights on the events and changes you're  experiencing this time of  year.

On Winter's Margin by Mary Oliver

On winter’s margin, see the small birds now
With half-forged memories come flocking home
To gardens famous for their charity.
The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins
Hang at the entrance to the silent wood.

With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs;
By snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing
Like children for their sire to walk abroad!
But what I love, is the gray stubborn hawk
Who floats alone beyond the frozen vines;
And what I dream of are the patient deer
Who stand on legs like reeds and drink that wind; -

They are what saves the world: who choose to grow
Thin to a starting point beyond this squalor.

Summer in the South by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Oriole sings in the greening grove
As if he were half-way waiting,
The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green,
Timid, and hesitating.
The rain comes down in a torrent sweep
And the nights smell warm and pinety,
The garden thrives, but the tender shoots
Are yellow-green and tiny.
Then a flash of sun on a waiting hill,
Streams laugh that erst were quiet,
The sky smiles down with a dazzling blue
And the woods run mad with riot.

Bed in Summer by Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night

And dress by yellow candle-light.

In summer quite the other way,

I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see

The birds still hopping on the tree,

Or hear the grown-up people's feet

Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,

When all the sky is clear and blue,

And I should like so much to play,

To have to go to bed by day?

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 Freedom.)

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Poets United Midweek Motif ~ The Sun

“The sun just touched the morning;
The morning, happy thing,
Supposed that he had come to dwell,
And life would be all spring.” 
― Emily Dickinson

“Even 
After 
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,
"You owe me."
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.” 
―Hāfez-e Šīrāzī,  حافظ

Midweek Motif ~ The Sun

There is an event, called Sun-Earth Day: 

"Sun-Earth Day is a joint educational program established in 2000 by NASA and ESA. The goal of the program is to popularize the knowledge about the Sun, and the way it influences life on Earth . . . The day itself is mainly celebrated in the USA near the time of the spring equinox. However, the Sun-Earth Day event actually runs throughout the year . . ."  (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The structure of the Sun

And we are coming up on the March Equinox, spring in the Northern Hemisphere and fall in the Southern Hemisphere:  

The March equinox (or Northward equinox) is the equinox on the earth when the Sun appears to cross the celestial equator, heading northward. The March equinox is the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and the autumnal equinox in the Southern Hemisphere.

Chichen Itza pyramid during the spring equinox – Kukulkan, the famous descent of the snake

But as Poets we are free to use the sun as myth, symbol, mood, etc:

Ra in his solar barge

Your Challenge:  Make the sun the center or the central image of this week's poem.

Summer Sun 

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Great is the sun, and wide he goes

Through empty heaven with repose;

And in the blue and glowing days

More thick than rain he showers his rays.

Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at Poem Hunter.com)

There is another sun

by Emily Dickinson

There is another sky,

Ever serene and fair,

And there is another sunshine,

Though it be darkness there;

Never mind faded forests, Austin,

Never mind silent fields –

Here is a little forest,

Whose leaf is ever green;

Here is a brighter garden,

Where not a frost has been;

In its unfading flowers

I hear the bright bee hum:

Prithee, my brother,

Into my garden come!

For those who are new to Poets United:  

• Post your Sun-centered poem on your site, and then link it here.
• Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 
• If you use a picture include its link.  
• Please leave a comment here. 
• Please visit and comment on our poems.

(Our next Midweek Motif is "captivity" : 
thinking of terrorism, slavery and other violence.)

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