According to the calendar this is the first day of Autumn, so here’s a haiku in honor of the changing seasons.
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Tag Archives: Poetry
Doing Its Best
Distance
by Canadian poet Archibald Lampman
To the distance! Ah, the distance!
Blue and broad and dim!
Peace is not in burgh or meadow,
But beyond the rim.
Aye, beyond it, far beyond it;
Follow still my soul,
Till this earth is lost in heaven,
And thou feel’st the whole.
Apple Tree
In honor of the US National Literacy Awareness Month I’ll publish
this verse from one of America’s best-loved poets.
THE APPLE TREE
by Edgar Guest
When an apple tree is ready for the world to come and eat,
there isn’t any structure in the land that’s got it beat.
There’s nothing man has builded with the beauty or the charm
that can touch the simple grandeur of the monarch of the farm.
There’s never any picture from a human being’s brush
that has ever caught the redness of a single apple’s blush.
When an apple tree’s in blossom it is glorious to see,
but that’s just a hint, at springtime, of the better things to be;
that is just a fairy promise from the Great Magician’s wand
of the wonders and the splendors that are waiting just beyond
the distant edge of summer; just a forecast of the treat
when the apple tree is ready for the world to come and eat.
Architects of splendid vision long have labored on the earth
and have raised their dreams in marble and we’ve marveled at their worth;
long the spires of costly churches have looked upward at the sky;
rich in promise and in beauty, they have cheered the passer-by.
But I’m sure there’s nothing finer for the eye of man to meet
than an apple tree that’s ready for the world to come and eat.
There’s the promise of the apples, red and gleaming in the sun,
like the medals worn by mortals as rewards for labors done,
and the big arms stretched wide open with a welcome warm and true
in a way that sets you thinking it’s intended just for you.
There is nothing with a beauty so entrancing, so complete,
as an apple tree that’s ready for the world to come and eat.
From the book A Heap O’ Livin’
© 1916 by the Reilly & Britton Company
Dubious Descendant?
Moonlight Muse
I recently learned that it’s National Literacy Awareness Month in the US and Charlotte Digregorio, over on her blog, is encouraging haiku poets to promote this form of poetry as part of the event. So here are two of my offerings:
midnight poems
composed when sleep won’t come
only the moon is clear
every night I shed
my daytime persona
moonlight as author
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Literacy Awareness Month seems to be a great time to announce my newly-published anthology of stories and poems. Silver Morning Song celebrates the joys of the natural world as well as amusing and inspirational tales about human nature and interactions, including family relationships.
After four and a half years in the works, I can now share the good news that Silver Morning Song, only in e-book form at present, is live both on Amazon and Kobo now. Do check it out.
Breaking the Land
It’s time for another Friday Fictioneers post and today’s prompt inspired me with a poem of sorts. Many thanks to our patient and inspiring host, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for shepherding our FF group through green pastures teeming with tales, and to Danny Bowman for the challenging prompt. I see the various muses have been productive even given this barren landscape to write about.
Speaking of productive, I’m delighted to tell you all that my book is published and now live on Amazon! (Fireworks and cartwheels 🙂 ) Silver Morning Song is a collection of poems, short stories and fables. I plan to publish it on Kobo as well; I’ll likely spend today doing that, plus setting up an Author Account on Amazon and generally telling the world. And as all authors will say, I’d really appreciate reviews. 🙂
On to today’s prompt:
Right now we seem to be in a world of unprecedented water and storms; eighty years ago it was unprecedented drought. I’ll dedicate this verse to all the poor inexperienced homesteaders who came to these Great Plains and were advised to deep-plough their fields every fall. Took the ‘Dirty Thirties’ to prove agricultural advisers of the day so wrong. Farmers today practice “no till” farming.
- PHOTO © Danny Bowman
BREAKING THE LAND
We said we’d break this land
with hope and bare essentials.
Our ploughs cut deep
furrows across its face —
then we couldn’t catch it.
The wind owns this land,
had we only known!
Tore the dirt from our fields,
dumped it five miles east,
then threw it back at us
in the next west wind.
Our seed grain went with it;
clear to oblivion.
The land froze us in winter,
baked us in summer,
dried us like tumbleweeds in fall
and the wind blew us away.
Through long ragged years
tried to break this land,
‘til the land broke us.
