Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Gardens

“A visitor to a garden sees the successes, usually. The gardener remembers mistakes and losses, some for a long time, and imagines the garden in a year, and in an unimaginable future.”

― W.S. Merwin

Peonies by Matilda Browne (1907)

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”
― Abraham Lincoln 

 

“We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our lives.”
― Parker J. Palmer

  

In the Garden by Olga Wisinger-Florian (1910)

Midweek Motif ~ Gardens

 "How does your garden grow?"  ~  is a line from a nursery rhyme, and it is today's challenge.  Your garden can be vegetables or flowers or herbs or mythic or futuristic or a memory.  It can be quite famous or one only you know.  Let us experience it in your new poem.

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The Garden of Love

By William Blake

 

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

And Thou shalt not. writ over the door;

So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,

That so many sweet flowers bore. 

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tomb-stones where flowers should be:

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

The Garden by Moonlight

By Amy Lowell

A black cat among roses,

Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,

The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.

The garden is very still,   

It is dazed with moonlight,

Contented with perfume,

Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.

Firefly lights open and vanish   

High as the tip buds of the golden glow

Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.

Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,

Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush.   

Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring,

Only the cat, padding between the roses,

Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern

As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.

Then you come,

And you are quiet like the garden,

And white like the alyssum flowers,   

And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies.

Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies?

They knew my mother,

But who belonging to me will they know

When I am gone.

Sheltered Garden

By H. D.

I have had enough.

I gasp for breath.

Every way ends, every road,

every foot-path leads at last

to the hill-crest—

then you retrace your steps,

or find the same slope on the other side,

precipitate.

I have had enough—

border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies,

herbs, sweet-cress.

O for some sharp swish of a branch—

there is no scent of resin

in this place,

no taste of bark, of coarse weeds,

aromatic, astringent—

only border on border of scented pinks.

Have you seen fruit under cover

that wanted light—

pears wadded in cloth,

protected from the frost,

melons, almost ripe,

smothered in straw?

Why not let the pears cling

to the empty branch?

All your coaxing will only make

a bitter fruit—

let them cling, ripen of themselves,

test their own worth,

nipped, shriveled by the frost,

to fall at last but fair

with a russet coat.

Or the melon—

let it bleach yellow

in the winter light,

even tart to the taste—

it is better to taste of frost—

the exquisite frost—

than of wadding and of dead grass.

For this beauty,

beauty without strength,

chokes out life.

I want wind to break,

scatter these pink-stalks,

snap off their spiced heads,

fling them about with dead leaves—

spread the paths with twigs,

limbs broken off,

trail great pine branches,

hurled from some far wood

right across the melon-patch,

break pear and quince—

leave half-trees, torn, twisted

but showing the fight was valiant.

O to blot out this garden

to forget, to find a new beauty

in some terrible

wind-tortured place.

The Garden of Eden by Thomas Cole 1828

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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 ~ Walk.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Human

"Listen and tell, thrums the grave heart of humans.

Listen well love, for it’s pitch dark down here."

― Hailey Leithauser (See full poem below)

“I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.” 

― Pearl S. Buck

source

 Midweek Motif ~ Human

I am human. I am only human.  
 I am sadly human.  Happily, I am human.
Hmm.

When you describe something as "human," 

what do you mean?  

(Click "What is a Human Being?" for a slideshow.)

Your Challenge: Write a new poem giving what is human its place in the natural world, the solar system, galaxy, and/or universe.

A Divine Image

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Cruelty has a Human Heart 

And Jealousy a Human Face 

Terror the Human Form Divine 

And Secrecy, the Human Dress 

The Human Dress, is forged Iron 

The Human Form, a fiery Forge. 

The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd 

The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

👫                          

The Guest House

by  Rumi 

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

👫

Arrhythmia

BY HAILEY LEITHAUSER

The heart of a bear is a cloud-shuttered

mountain. The heart of a mountain’s a kiln.

The white heart of a moth has nineteen white

chambers. The heart of a swan is a swan.

The heart of a wasp is a prick of plush.

The heart of a skunk is a mink. The heart

of an owl is part blood and part chalice.

The fey mouse heart rides a dawdy dust-cart.

The heart of a kestrel hides a house wren

at nest. The heart of lark is a czar.

The heart of a scorpion is swidden

and spark. The heart of a shark is a gear.

Listen and tell, thrums the grave heart of humans.

Listen well love, for it’s pitch dark down here.

(Used with the poet's permission. First published in Poetry, October 2015)

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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 Motif will be ~ "When I think about myself.")

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Beginnings

               

Egg

White Hen And Chickens by Joseph Crawhall III 

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“Since when," he asked, "Are the first line and last line of any poem where the poem begins and ends?”  ― Seamus Heaney

                                                          

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” 

― Lao Tzu                    

#1619 

Not knowing when the Dawn will come,

I open every Door,

Or has it Feathers, like a Bird,

Or Billows, like a Shore—

― Emily Dickinson

Beautiful World - In The Beginning

Midweek Motif ~ Beginnings

The question of "how to begin" has generated books upon books in every game and every field, and the answers are still not exhausted.  Yet things begin, and often before the visible and public (or private) beginning.  Consider how a flower opens.  Would you count its beginning in the bud?  in the seed?  in the idea of  a flower?  

Your Challenge: In your new poem, trace a thing, event, or action back to its true or imagined beginnings.

Casting on

The Tyger BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 

In what distant deeps or skies. 

Burnt the fire of thine eyes? 

On what wings dare he aspire? 

What the hand, dare seize the fire? 

And what shoulder, & what art, 

Could twist the sinews of thy heart? 

And when thy heart began to beat, 

What dread hand? & what dread feet? 

What the hammer? what the chain, 

In what furnace was thy brain? 

What the anvil? what dread grasp, 

Dare its deadly terrors clasp! 

When the stars threw down their spears 

And water'd heaven with their tears: 

Did he smile his work to see? 

Did he who made the Lamb make thee? 

Tyger Tyger burning bright, 

In the forests of the night: 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

excerpt  from Elegy in Joy  By Muriel Rukeyser

We tell beginnings: for the flesh and the answer,
or the look, the lake in the eye that knows,
for the despair that flows down in widest rivers,
cloud of home; and also the green tree of grace,
all in the leaf, in the love that gives us ourselves.

The word of nourishment passes through the women,
soldiers and orchards rooted in constellations,
white towers, eyes of children: 
saying in time of war What shall we feed?
I cannot say the end.

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed.

This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.
Years over wars and an imagining of peace.  Or the expiation journey
toward peace which is many wishes flaming together,
fierce pure life, the many-living home.
Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all
new techniques for the healing of the wound,
and the unknown world.  One life, or the faring stars.

Start Close In

by David Whyte

Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.




. . . . 
(Read the rest HERE.)























source






"Large streams from little fountains flow, 

Tall oaks from little acorns grow."





(D. Everett in The Columbian Orator, 1797)





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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 ~ Vision.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ The Flower: Rose

   “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet” — William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 2.2.

SOURCE

“Can anyone remember love? It’s like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume.”— Arthur Miller

Midweek Motif ~ The Flower Rose

Say it with Roses today.

          

Write whatever it means to you. You might even focus on its thorns if you so wish.

Such a gentle, beautiful and aristocratic flower has deep rooted ties not only with love but also with religion and politics.

In April, 2011, NASA celebrated its 21^st anniversary by releasing an image of spiral galaxies positioned in a rose-like shape.

SOURCE

Now a few Rose poems for you:

Song of the Rose

by Sappho

IF Zeus chose us a King of the flowers in his mirth, 
He would call to the rose, and would royally crown it; 
For the rose, ho, the rose! is the grace of the earth, 
Is the light of the plants that are growing upon it! 
For the rose, ho, the rose! is the eye of the flowers, 
Is the blush of the meadows that feel themselves fair, 
Is the lightning of beauty that strikes through the bowers 
On pale lovers that sit in the glow unaware. 
Ho, the rose breathes of love! ho, the rose lifts the cup 
To the red lips of Cypris invoked for a guest! 
Ho, the rose having curled its sweet leaves for the world 
Takes delight in the motion its petals keep up, 
As they laugh to the wind as it laughs from the west. 

                    

My Pretty Rose Tree

by William Blake

A flower was offered to me,
Such a flower as May never bore; 
But I said 'I've a pretty rose tree,'
And I passed the sweet flower o'er.

Then I went to my pretty rose tree,
To tend her by day and by night; 
But my rose turned away with jealousy,
And her thorns were my only delight. 

                 

Nobody Knows This Little Rose

by Emily Dickinson 

Nobody knows this little Rose—
It might a pilgrim be
Did I not take it from the ways
And lift it up to thee.
Only a Bee will miss it—
Only a Butterfly,
Hastening from far journey—
On its breast to lie—
Only a Bird will wonder—
Only a Breeze will sigh—
Ah Little Rose—how easy
For such as thee to die! 

                  

 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 ~ Bittersweet)