Category: Poetry

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

16th May 2023
Poetry
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  1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Lake with water lilies

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—  
And Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—

Since then—’tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads 
Were toward Eternity—

Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886) was one of the most original American poets. She is considered one of the most important American poets of the 19th century, along with Walt Whitman.

To read more poems, click here.

There Is a Solitude of Space

9th May 2023
Poetry
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  1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death

There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself—
Finite infinity.

Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886) was one of the most original American poets. She is considered one of the most important American poets of the 19th century, along with Walt Whitman.

To read more poems, click here.

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

2nd May 2023
Poetry
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  1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Night sky photo with aurora borealis
Photo by Spenser Sembrat on Unsplash

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), Irish poet considered one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.

To read more poems, click here.

The Kraken

25th April 2023
Poetry
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  1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Kraken, abstract photo

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) is often considered the leading poet of the Victorian era in England.

To read more poems, click here.

A Postcard From the Volcano

18th April 2023
Poetry
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  1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Children picking up our bones

Will never know that these were once

As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes

Made sharp air sharper by their smell

These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones

We left much more, left what still is

The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow

Above the shuttered mansion house,

Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.

We knew for long the mansion’s look

And what we said of it became

A part of what it is … Children,

Still weaving budded aureoles,

Will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems

As if he that lived there left behind

A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,

A tatter of shadows peaked to white,

Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955) was an American modernist poet and an extraordinary stylist.

To read more poems, click here.

Youth and Age

11th April 2023
Poetry
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  1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
The statue of St. Francis of Assisi by Frances Rich at Millesgården, Lidingö, Sweden.
St. Francis of Assisi by Frances Rich at Millesgården, Lidingö, Sweden.

In my youth the heart of dawn was in my heart, and the songs of April were in my ears. 

But my soul was sad unto death, and I knew not why. Even unto this day I know not why I was sad. 

But now, though I am with eventide, my heart is still veiling dawn, 

And though I am with autumn, my ears still echo the songs of spring. 

But my sadness has turned into awe, and I stand in the presence of life and life’s daily miracles. 

The difference between my youth which was my spring, and these forty years, and they are my autumn, is the very difference that exists between flower and fruit. 

A flower is forever swayed with the wind and knows not why and wherefore. 

But the fruit overladen with them honey of summer, knows that it is one of life’s home-comings, as a poet when his song is sung knows sweet content, 

Though life has been bitter upon his lips. 

In my youth I longed for the unknown, and for the unknown I am still longing. 

But in the days of my youth longing embraced necessity that knows naught of patience. 

Today I long not less, but my longing is friendly with patience, and even waiting. 

And I know that all this desire that moves within me is one of those laws that turns universes around one another in quiet ecstasy, in swift passion which your eyes deem stillness, and your mind a mystery. 

And in my youth I loved beauty and abhorred ugliness, for beauty was to me a world separated from all other worlds. 

But now that the gracious years have lifted the veil of picking-and-choosing from over my eyes, I know that all I have deemed ugly in what I see and hear, is but a blinder upon my eyes, and wool in my ears; 

And that our senses, like our neighbors, hate what they do not understand.  

And in my youth I loved the fragrance of flowers and their color.  

Now I know that their thorns are their innocent protection, and if it were not for that innocence they would disappear forevermore. 

And in my youth, of all seasons I hated winter, for I said in my aloneness, “Winter is a thief who robs the earth of her sun-woven garment, and suffers her to stand naked in the wind.”  

But now I know that in winter there is re-birth and renewal, and that the wind tears the old raiment to cloak her with a new raiment woven by the spring.  

And in my youth I would gaze upon the sun of the day and the stars of the night, saying in my secret, “How small am I, and how small a circle my dream makes.” 

But today when I stand before the sun or the stars I cry, “The sun is close to me, and the stars are upon me;” for all the distances of my youth have turned into the nearness of age;  

And the great aloneness which knows not what is far and what is near, nor what is small nor great, has turned into a vision that weighs not nor does it measure.  

In my youth I was but the slave of the high tide and the ebb tide of the sea, and the prisoner of half moons and full moons.  

Today I stand at this shore and I rise not nor do I go down.  

Even my roots once every twenty-eight days would seek the heart of the earth. 

And on the twenty-ninth day they would rise toward the throne of the sky.  

And on that very day the rivers in my veins would stop for a moment, and then would run again to the sea.  

Yes, in my youth I was a thing, sad and yielding, and all the seasons played with me and laughed in their hearts. 

And life took a fancy to me and kissed my young lips, and slapped my cheeks.  

Today I play with the seasons. And I steal a kiss from life’s lips ere she kisses my lips.  

And I even hold her hands playfully that she may not strike my cheek.  

In my youth I was sad indeed, and all things seemed dark and distant.  

Today, all is radiant and near, and for this I would live my youth and the pain of my youth, again and yet again.

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) was a Lebanese-American artist, philosophical essayist, poet, and novelist.

To read more poems, click here.

Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …

4th April 2023
Poetry
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  1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Statue by Carl Milles

Hast thou 2 loaves of bread
Sell one + with the dole
Buy straightaway some hyacinths
To feed thy soul.

Ezra Pound (1885 –1972) was one of the most influential but also most difficult poets of the 20th century.

If you think this doesn’t look like like your typical Ezra Pound poem, you’re right. It’s not. Or not really. It seems that Pound reworked an old poem by James Terry White, called “Not By Bread Alone” (1907).

If thou of fortune be bereft,
And in thy store there be but left
Two loaves—sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

James Terry White

You can read the whole story here. Which version do you like best? I’m partial to Pound’s version myself.

To read more poems, click here.

Flowers on World Poetry Day

21st March 2023
Poetry
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Yellow crocuses in the rain

What better way to celebrate World Poetry Day today than by writing or reading a poem? The rain doesn’t seem to let up here, but this doesn’t mean you can’t use it in a poem as I did 😉. Happy World Poetry Day!

Spring rain

Caressing 

The whispering flowers

To read more poetry, click here.

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A Full Moon on the World Poetry Day

21st March 2022
Poetry
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Full moon

What better way to celebrate World Poetry Day today than by writing or reading a poem? I wrote this poem a few days ago, on the night of the full moon.

full moon
watching its twin
In the pond

To read more poetry, click here.

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Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand

1st June 2021
Poetry
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  1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Close up of apple tree flowers. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
Spring is like a perhaps hand 
(which comes carefully out of Nowhere) arranging 
 a window, into which people look (while 
people stare 
arranging and changing placing 
carefully there a strange 
thing and a known thing here) and 
 
changing everything carefully 
 
spring is like a perhaps 
Hand in a window 
(carefully to 
and fro moving New and 
Old things, while 
people stare carefully 
moving a perhaps fraction of flower here placing 
an inch of air there) and 
without breaking anything.

By e. e. cummings (1894 – 1962), American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright.

To read more poems, click here.