In singing not to sing

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S h i n e   O n

Mount Moriah

Powell, Tennessee

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There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

= Robert Frost =

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Happy Friday

Seeming anxious of eternity

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C l e a n   B r e a k s

Old Dutch Church Burying Ground

Sleepy Hollow, New York

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Is there another world for this frail dust
To warm with life and be itself again?
Something about me daily speaks there must,
And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?
'Tis nature's prophesy that such will be,
And everything seems struggling to explain
The close sealed volume of its mystery.
Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace
As seeming anxious of eternity,
To meet that calm and find a resting place.
E'en the small violet feels a future power
And waits each year renewing blooms to bring,
And surely man is no inferior flower
To die unworthy of a second spring?

= John Clare =

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Happy Thursday

Gladly out of the willows

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E q u i n e   B l a n c   N o i r

Wescott Acres

Columbia, South Carolina

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Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

= James Wright =

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Happy Wednesday

Yet they shall not break

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P o i n t   a n d   S h o o t

Magnolia Cemetery

Charleston, South Carolina

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And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

= Dylan Thomas =

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Happy Tuesday

The liquid of languages

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W a r e h o u s e   A

Camden Yards

Baltimore, Maryland

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THE BEES HAVE BEEN CANCELLED

Never again the humming, saddled flowers.

Never the blind oath by a velveteen prisoner.

Never the yellow, hula hooped in black,

little engine left running late into the darkness.

Oh, how they were charming, clever monographs.

Sunlight couldn’t save them from the angel of extinction.

Virgil said they swell with nectar’s tilted knowledge.

I don’t know what to believe.

Maybe they tired of being addicts.

Clover honey, garbage honey, accidental ice cream honey.

Ransomed stamen, sweetsinful will-do-anything-for honey.

Maybe they caught fevers at midnight with

no one there to hold their stingers,

no fat queen to press a cold compress.

How will we currency honey from wildflowers,

that liquid of languages?

How pollinate in the bees’ electrostatic absence?

How will the bellbirds take it, the Canterbury birds?

Who will cast the last skeleton in amber?

I’ll miss the noise, the palimpsestic clamor,

soft shock of discovering a hive under your roof.

The lull as each integer walked its body over a blossom,

then flew away with its instructions.

= Maya Catherine Popa =

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Happy Monday