Tag Archives: poem
Smart Buck
hunter out searching
buck enjoys hunter’s back yard
and hides in plain sight.
Maple Blaze
summer warmth departs
maple retreats in a blaze
time to hunker down
Porcupine’s Dilemma
friendship is fleeting
prickly personality
makes love difficult
When You Are Old
I‘ve always liked this poem by William Butler Yeats, but until today, I knew very little about the author. Having now read a summary of his life, it changed the meaning of the poem for me (not my positive feelings about it), and I’ve decided not to offer my opinion here until I hear what you, my readers, think about this poem.
When You Are Old
by William Butler Yeats
When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Fake Hummer
I found a perfect place for me,
A safe and sheltered perch,
As long as no one tips my tree,
Dislodged, oh, how I’d lurch.
I know the truth is hard to see,
But I’m not really there,
The framework of the lamp is me,
Shaped by the sun so fair.
Irony at its Best
I had a dream about my friend Percy who told me about a guy he met who had just come back from a trip to Egypt. This traveller went on a desert tour with a group and saw some cool remnants of large monuments. Rulers of the ancient lands liked to leave their mark with colossal statues of themselves to remind the people who is the boss, and to intimidate any would-be conquerors of his land.
One monument, in particular, left a big impression on him. It must have been spectacular in its day, but you can imagine how a couple of thousand years of weather and blowing sand would erode even the imposing 57 -foot statue of Ramses II who ruled Egypt from 1279 – 1213 BCE.
The tour guide pointed out how, even though only the legs were left standing, you could tell from the broken pieces of the king’s face that the sculptor had a real talent for showing emotion on the statue’s face. It showed the lips wrinkled up, sneering and dominating, as he frowned at any potential intruders.
Even though the whole, humongous monument was broken up (except for the legs left standing), there still remained an inscription on the pedestal that was laughable in view of the condition of the statue of this mighty king.
The whole scene told an ironic story, so Percy thought it would make a good poem.
Here is the poem Percy wrote:
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
*** Did you know that Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in a sailing mishap in 1822 just before his 30th birthday? Apparently, the boat was not seaworthy and the three people aboard were inexperienced when it was caught in bad weather off the west coast of Italy.
Run, Miss Muffet!
Seasonal changes are happening in full force now that summer has said goodbye, and autumn is settling in with the morning dew. The colour of the leaves changes, the fruit is ripe and dropping on the ground, the geese are moving from one location to another, trying to settle into new patterns to accommodate the need for shelter and food as the days and nights are cooler.
Have you noticed the fruit flies and yellow jackets? Who better to take advantage of this new availability of food than the spiders? It’s the time when the tiny spiders try to come into the house and hang unnoticed in a ceiling corner.
The giant house spider also senses that it’s time to find more warmth and tries to come inside. While these black monsters are horrifying to me, it’s the fat beige ones that make me shudder most. They hang in the fruit trees and coat my hands with their sticky webs as I try to pick fruit. They build webs, across the corners of the door to my deck and between the hanging baskets and the wall – right in my face as I walk by.
But this one! This one gets the prize. The Captain was about to get into his old beater truck to move it. He opened the driver’s side door to get in, and stopped just in time before he might have ended up wearing this spider on his nose. The spider had caught something, but it was so wrapped up that it was hard to tell what poor insect was the victim. Yes, it’s spider time!
Intricate and complicated,
That’s how spider webs are rated,
Works of wowing wonder.
Delicate yet super strong,
Well-placed webs do not belong
Where the bee is busy.
Here she comes, the busy bee,
Much too late, she doesn’t see,
That this trap is fatal.
Spider leaps as insect weeps,
This is no game, this is for keeps,
Life so short, now shorter.
Sucked quite dry, the bee can’t fly,
And one more victim had to die,
Spider just gets fatter.
October – Goldengrove Unleaving
Spring and Fall – by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 -1889)
to a young child
This poem is very famous and is taught in all the English classes in high school. Unfortunately, when we were in high school, we were too ignorant to really appreciate it.
Okay, not all of us were ignorant in high school, but I think it’s safe to say that many of us found this old poetry hard to understand with its twisted and jumbled sentence structure.
Here’s an example from Hopkins’ poem:
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Why couldn’t the poets of that time, especially the English, just “speak English”? In those high school days, I remember thinking, what’s the good of a poem if I need someone to translate it to me (from English to English)? I still feel that way a little bit, but now, decades later, I can appreciate the language of poetry better.
BUT, having suffered through trying to understand this poem as a young adult, I now think of it every year at this time. As soon as our maple tree starts to lose its leaves, I find myself thinking (and my name is not Margaret),
“Margaret, are you grieving,
Over Goldengrove unleaving?”
And I always end up thinking, how incredibly sad it is to see those first leaves fluttering down, and I realize,
“It is Margaret that you mourn for.”
Here is Hopkins’ poem:
Spring and Fall
To a Young Child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
*****
I have learned to appreciate good poetry, but I tend to like the kind that is more fun and less serious. Limericks, funny ditties, rhyming fun.
Still, I have my favourite serious poems too, which I hope to share with you sometime soon.
How do you feel about poetry?
More Nuts Than Ever
I’m tired of washing, pitting, and freezing plums. The pears and apples are finished except for one winter apple tree that will be ready in about three weeks. So now it’s time to have a look at the walnut tree.
A closer look will show a few walnuts still hanging on. Some look dark and some quite green, but that is only the outer husk you are looking at. As the nut grows and the husk dries out, the nut and what’s left of its husk fall to the ground.
This one shouldn’t be too hard to pop out of its husk, but beware, the inside of that green coating stains like crazy. It would make a perfect “walnut” furniture stain. My hands always seem to end up looking like part of a walnut end table.
Once the husk is off the walnut, you can see the walnut that we are more familiar with, but it still needs some drying time. A burlap bag hung on the wall beside the woodstove is the perfect place to dry the walnuts.
Every couple of days I sneak some and take them to the woodshed as an offering to my squirrels.
“Thank you, Anneli,” Crispin chatters.
I love to have a change of food,
A different kind of nut,
The walnuts put me in a mood,
That makes me pat my gut.
The hazelnuts are such a treat,
I’ve packed a lot away,
But walnuts have delicious meat,
They’re best of all, I’d say.
I bite a hazelnut and run,
To hide it in a cache,
But walnuts are too big, no fun,
To lug them to my stash.
And this is why it’s oh, so fine,
To have them brought to me,
I know that all of them are mine,
To be devoured with glee.
wordsfromanneli 