William Wordsworth: The Strength of Love

There is a comfort in the strength of love;
'Twill make a thing endurable, which else
Would break the heart.

     --William Wordsworth, from "Michael"

If I Could Have Any Wish

There would be no blazing colors,

     no deafening fireworks,

no boisterous milling crowds

     of pleasure-seekers.

Only you and me

     in a darkened room.

Only the electric touch

     of your body and mine.

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Congrats to Abhra Pal on the occassion of his first dVerse hosting! Abhra, using the joyous Hindu festival of Holi as inspiration, invites us to consider the combination of color and love. Contrarian that I am, I went colorless. Kind of. 

Merle Haggard: That's the Way Love Goes

Ezra Pound: Alba

(Photo: Franz Larese from here)

So, Ezra Pound's birthday today. He would have been . . . never mind, I don't feel like doing the math. He was a little crazy, no doubt about it. Probably even a lot crazy. But still.

Alba
As cool as the pale wet leaves
                                       of lily-of-the-valley
She lay beside me in the dawn.

                                --Ezra Pound

Thomas Wolfe: Flower of Love

Thomas Wolfe--the one from North Carolina, author of great novels such as Look Homeward, Angel and You Can't Go Home Again, not to be confused with the Tom Wolfe who wrote The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test--was born on this day, October 3, 1900. I've posted excerpts from Wolfe's work before. I consider him not only one of the great American writers of all time, but also one of the greatest poets who never published poetry. Luckily, many others have noticed how lyrical and, well, poetic, Wolfe's prose is, and I am the happy owner of a slim volume of Wolfe's words lined out as poems. Here is a taste.

O flower of love
Whose strong lips drink us downward into death,
In all things far and fleeting,
Enchantress of our twenty thousand days,
The brain will madden
And the heart be twisted, broken by her kiss,
But glory, glory, glory, she remains:
Immortal love,
Alone and aching in the wilderness,
We cried to you:
You were not absent from our loneliness.

--Thomas Wolfe, selected and arranged in verse
    by John S. Barnes in A Stone, A Leaf, A Door

Alterity

For dVerse OpenLinkNight. Short and sweet. Share your poem, long or short, polished or still in progress.

Alterity

That vast space between

I                            

                                 you.

Under

a gibbous moon,

philosophy failed,

and there I laid you

down, I laid you down.

The Holding Hand

Too many nights spent at work. Submitting this to dVerse Open Link Night, in the sincere hope that I'll have the leisure to read and comment this week. Come join us!

The Holding Hand

The holding hand

knows its happiness—

a woody bourbon;

a well-made tool;

or the warm secrets

of your body,

late at night.

December Morning

December Morning

December morning, well before the start

            of memory or planning for the day,

            just half-awake I hear the birds at play

            and give no thought to how things fall apart.

I lie so still I know the secret heart

            of all that breathes and all that drifts away;

            and as the room dissolves from black to gray

            I think of X-rays and the doctors’ charts. . . .

. . . a year ago? The day they broke the news

            I still recall the tremor in your face

            and walking to the car on stumbling feet

and fearing every little pain or bruise.

            Last night I reached to find you in your place,

            forgetting, and touched only icy sheets.

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Today was my first full day off from work in about three weeks. I have done a little writing, but very disjointed and fragmentary. Lucky for me, Sam Peralta over at tonight's dVerse Form For All has us writing Miltonic sonnets--and one of my fragments lent itself easily to the form. I was able to keep the meter and the rhymes very close, with the ABBAABBACDECDE form. I also tried to stay true to Milton's ordinary use of indented lines. Happy writing, all! Hopefully I will not be called in to work tomorrow, and I can do what I enjoy--reading and commenting on y'all's wonderful poetry!

[Edited: I need to pay better attention before posting. I removed an extra "?" in l. 9 that remained after moving some phrases around. I kept playing with that line, and still do not care for it as it is. Maybe later.]

First Love

For Three Word Wednesday, prompt words clench, faint, prod. Also submitted to dVerse OpenLinkNight.

First Love

That Florida summer, the year

you moved in next door, we’d crawl

under the barbed wire fence

to meet each morning

in the hayfield,

prodded by some power

neither of us understood.

With clenched hands we’d

clumsily kiss, and in the faint

daylight return our

separate ways. Summer passed,

and now I can’t even remember

your name.

Fr. Sophrony: Two Stages to Victory Over Hell

There are two stages to victory over hell. The first is the mastery of the blackness within us ourselves; the second, compassionate love, natural to Divinity, for all creation.
--Fr. Sophrony of Essex

Near

For Three Word Wednesday, prompt words jitter, grace, thin.

Near  
~for Becky


Edging skyward, breathless 
in thin air, the unknown pulsing 
with expectation. We stood 
overlooking the dark expanse 
seeing, not seeing, a view 
worth the climb. The moon 
blushing in the glow of your skin.
You lean close and whisper, 
mouth to ear, nearer. Near. 
What grace did we wish in this
shared solitude, 
beyond all, jittery 
night creatures avoiding 
the town’s lights? I remember, 
and am glad we were there.

For you-know-who

On Our Twenty-first

They ask “How’d you do it?”
as if we had worked magic
or turned water into wine.
Something more wonderful—
two became one, without

reservation, a complete giving
of self. All the rest,
the common work and common love,
radiates from that first
encompassing fullness.

How or why it works, I don’t
know. I only know that tomorrow,
and tomorrow’s tomorrow,
I will continue to lose myself
in your welcoming love.

No card this year, but . . .

Our Long Walk

The late-fallen snow,
hard-packed by the feet
of those omnipresent
classmates whose company
we forgot,
posed no danger, yet with
instinctive eagerness
you held my arm
and I held yours.

We did not know,
as we lingered
in the scattered shadows
beside Schroon Lake, that
after twenty-two years
we would still walk
arm in arm,
pressed close, sharing
breath, love, life.


(Our first date was Feb. 14, 22 years ago; we'll be married 21 years March 10. It's been a great walk.)