December, 2013
Christmas Morning
POSTED IN classic poetry December 20, 2013
Christmas Morning
I.
Come all you weary wanderers,
Beneath the wintry sky;
This day forget your worldly cares,
And lay your sorrows by;
Awake, and sing
The church bells ring;
For this is Christmas morning!
II.
With grateful hearts salute the morn,
And swell the streams of song,
That laden with great joy are borne,
The willing air along;
The tidings thrill
With right good will;
For this is Christmas morning!
III.
We’ll twine the fresh green holly wreath,
And make the yule-log low;
And gather gaily underneath
The winking mistletoe;
All blithe and bright
By the glad fire-light;
For this is Christmas morning!
IV.
Come, sing the carols old and true,
That mind us of good cheer,
And, like a heavenly fall of dew,
Revive the drooping year;
And fill us up
A wassail-cup ;
For this is Christmas morning!
V.
To all poor souls we I strew the feast,
With kindly heart, and free;
One Father owns us, and, at least,
To-day we’ll brothers be;
Away with pride,
This holy tide ;
For it is Christmas morning!
VI.
So now, God bless us one and all
With hearts and hearthstones warm
And may He prosper great and small,
And keep us out of harm;
And teach us still,
His sweet good-will,
This merry Christmas morning!
Edwin Waugh
I Ask You
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 19, 2013
I Ask You
What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?
It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside–
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.
But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.
No, it’s all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles–
each a different height–
are singing in perfect harmony.
So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt–
frog at the edge of a pond–
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.
Billy Collins
Piano
POSTED IN classic poetry December 14, 2013
Piano
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
D.H.Lawrence
Woman ( 5 cinquain sequence) (titles make a sixth)
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 14, 2013
Woman ( 5 cinquain sequence) (titles make a sixth)
Ice Queen
Woman
introverted,
lives in ice-olation
fears love and closeness, if warmth comes –
she melts.
Potential Love
Woman
love does not come
on plates for the needy
seek inner riches and blossom –
reap love.
Existence would miss You
Woman
home is no place –
but inner acceptance.
Love falls on you from everything
on earth.
Create a Change in Gravity.
Woman,
where is your joy?
Forget tides and build sand
castles, playfully greet the day
weightless.
In Time.
Woman
the seeds you plant
reveal time’s mystery
to make a grain of sand a pearl –
patience.
from PoetryZoo Abigael
Gael Bage
Lost
POSTED IN classic poetry December 13, 2013
Lost
I lost a world the other day.
Has anybody found?
You’ll know it by the row of stars
Around its forehead bound.
A rich man might not notice it;
Yet to my frugal eye
Of more esteem than ducats.
Oh, find it, sir, for me!
Emily Dickinson
Taking Off Emily Dickinson’ s Clothes
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 13, 2013
Taking Off Emily Dickinson’ s ClothesFirst, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer’s dividing water,
and slip inside.You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.The complexity of women’s undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything –
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corsetand I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.
from ” Taking Off Emily Dickinson’ s Clothes (2000)”
Billy Collins
Aimless love
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 13, 2013
Aimless love
This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.
This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.
The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.
No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.
No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then
for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.
But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.
After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,
so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.
from the volume “Aimless love”
Billy Collins
Mistletoe
POSTED IN classic poetry December 13, 2013
Mistletoe
Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.
Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen—and kissed me there.
Walter de la Mare
Cascade
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 13, 2013
Cascade
Waiting for a bus by The Western Infirmary
One Dreary Overcast October day.
Scanning the dirty, tenement lined streets for a 43.
Windy-empty wrappers whipping around my feet
Students and hospital visitors huddled in the shelter
In scarves and anoraks. Wrapped up against the chill.
Suddenly, something changed. Quietly. Unnoticed.
A change of wind direction perhaps or
A drop in temperature as dusk descended,
but nature chose that moment to interrupt, to inspire.
For 3 whole minutes, the trees rained down their leaves
in a multi coloured cascade of splendour
Pedestrians stopped, looked up and marvelled at the show.
They talked to each other, smiled,
enjoyed 3 minutes that rivalled the Borealis,
starling clouds or bluebell woods,
and left each other as friends, with a warm feeling
on a cold Autumn day in Glasgow.
I thought of my friend in ward 8
Bright and sharp. Beautiful in her Autumn,
And strode towards Queen Street
With a renewed Spring in my step.
from “Newbury Makar”
Thatcham Festival Poetry Competition
winner of the adult category
John Black
The Secrets of Life
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 8, 2013
The Secrets of Life
The riptide pulled and weighed us down,
swimming in our shoals.
It bent us in our will to win,
oh weary, sorry souls.
Oh tiresome, terrifying days
when scholars moved to preach
that all of Christendom was ours,
but always out of reach.
Oh weary, sorry souls, I cried
for all of us, who’re driven,
wherein unconscious mind, so tuned,
lays bare the ego given.
Always, it seems, beyond our reach,
genetics never fail
to teach us how we must survive,
not how to trim the sail.
Ego’s given winds may blow,
but odysseys must end.
For quests beyond our human bounds,
Inferno may portend.
Just when this sea of troubles weighed
too much on mortal coil,
the magic of encircling arms
became the perfect foil.
So I reset the sails for home,
embracing Vesta’s heart;
discovered Marais’ secret strength:
in concert, ne’er apart.
from My Poetry Library
© 2013 John Anstie
