we can post our own poetry here???

[Gracie]

Welll...(gulp) here goes nothin'....



ESSENTIAL

It truly seems
there was never a time
when books were not
a part of my being. The
bones, sinews, fibers,
irreversibly intertwined with
nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

We learn to speak,
but must be taught to read
and write. Right!
Words...written words...
Whether they be mine, or
the work of another,
they hold such power.
Passion, poignancy, pain;
strength, sorrow, salvation--
love, laughter, life and light;
madness and magic,
healing and hope.

I have buried myself in books;
searching for treasure,
a phrase of particular pleasure.
I have transcribed incised words
into poems,
into letters never sent
or sent
or even wished unsent.

Words locked
in my throat
flow freely through my pen;
my hand glides across
the page, creating
a book of my own.


11-3-03

[carolion]

Gracie - you got in! This thread wouldn't open for the longest time -
Good job. Let 'er rip.

[Gracie]

Okay then, here's another, as I promised in the Daily Specials thread.


TIME LAPSE PHOTOGRAPHY

Summer. How I love it, as I
Walk to the mailbox; a hot
Breeze ripples gauzy flounces,
And dust sneaks under my toes.
Indian summer, they call it.
Everything around me shimmers
In a golden haze, and
The leaves are still green.
Across the road, glossy stalks
Bow beneath their swollen weight
Silken floss now toasted brown
And the corn so filled with rich milk
It seems I can smell its sweetness.

Summer. How I love it.

But the beast roars into the field
Voracious, cacophonous,
Crushing and devouring all of summer
In a matter of greedy moments.
The ground now littered with
Chewed husks and undigested
Stalks, bereft of the harvest they
Had so proudly borne. The bounty
Becoming nothing so much as
Picnic trash, whirling around
My feet. I am stunned.

In that instant, I see
That the golden haze is
Instead a tumble of pumpkins
For sale. And the leaves, so green
But a moment before, are actually
Hemstitched all around with
Amber, bronze, copper, crimson,
Gold, persimmon, pomegranate and quince.

I have seen autumn occur
Before my eyes.


10-6-03

[Jane]

Wonderful last stanza! Who are your favorite poets? (Might Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry be a couple of your favorites?)

[Gracie]

Ya think? I love the last stanza, myself, I wanted every lush warm color I could think of for it.

I love poetry, always have. And my tastes, as in every other aspect of my life, are quite eclectic (probably the reason I really enjoyed GK's "Pretty Good Poetry" books.)

In no particular order, and in addition to the two you mentioned (very observant of you, did I sound imitative? hope not) I like Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay and Robert Frost and Walt Whitman; Rimbaud, Billy Collins, James Kavanagh, Dan Gerber, Rupert Brooke, Yeats and Keats.

And I know I've posted in the old place about being a personal friend of Rod McKuen's.....and kissing him after too much champagne. He likes my writing, too.

[mike]

Ahhhh Gracie, you've got the gift -- great poetry.

[Jane]

No, not an imitation, just the same sense of awe at the wonder of the natural world.

[Gracie]

Well, thank you. I'm blushing....

I've never posted my poetry on ANY board before.


I asked permission of the old love I wrote this for. I wrote it, and read it, at his mother's funeral.


PRICE ABOVE RUBIES

She was the age I am now
the summer we met, and
I was twenty-one.

She was
the most actualized,
realized,
idealized,
even idolized
woman I will ever know.

She was
a beloved wife, someone
I had never been, even though
I had been married. I watched
her husband smile at her, and knew
what marriage could be.

She was
the best mother any child could want, and
her sons knew it. I watched
how they smiled at her,
listened when they talked to her,
and wanted to be just such a woman,
so beloved.

She was
light,
life,
energy, passion, compassion;
She was
witty,
intelligent,
and elegant.

Twenty-one summers have hastened by
and I have not seen her.
Never a week has gone by
when I have not 'seen' her
in my mind, and when I do,
she is always dancing. I hear
her laughing. We laughed
so much then.

And now, freed at last
from the prison
her body had become,
She is
dancing again.
She is
life,
She is
light;
She is
beloved, and
She is
eternal.


10-15-03

[slb2]

gracie, that Price Above Rubies has an honest beauty. Lucky is the person about whom it was written, luckier still the guests at her funeral who heard you read it.

[slb2]

Maybe you want to go over to my epigraphs thread and take a stab at that poetry challenge?

[Gracie]

slb2 said:

gracie, that Price Above Rubies has an honest beauty. Lucky is the person about whom it was written, luckier still the guests at her funeral who heard you read it.

Inge was just amazing. She was a German war bride, and I dated one of her sons but I swear I was as much in love with the entire family as I was with Tony.

You remember "Honeysuckle Rose"? the Willie Nelson movie? She was a lot like Dyan Cannon in that movie....that same vital, passionate beauty.

Parkinsons disease was very cruel to her, and I wanted people to remember who she had been BEFORE....

[slb2]

Like attracts like, gracie. I suspect you are just as amazing as Inge. The love poem you wrote for her and now the praise you are giving her certainly suggests a beautiful glow within you.

btw, did you hear GK's song just after intermission last week? About the 91 year old woman? That song alone is the pearl of the entire show. I haven't been able to listen to it yet without crying. :,(

[Gracie]

Oh, if I am ANYthing like her....there's no greater compliment.

I didn't get to hear GK's show Saturday night, darn it...we almost always listen to it but there was a power outage here on our little island (someone hit a tree and took down the lines) But I can well imagine. I mean, I think some of the Red Hat societies take the silliness a bit too far for my taste but I LOVE the imagery of 'when I am an old woman....'

I have several books on Katharine Hepburn, and I truly thought she was never more beautiful than when she made 'On Golden Pond.' She was absolutely lit from within, and I told Grizzy then that she was just exactly the kind of old woman I want to be...the kind who loves life at every age and every stage, and the one who still glows when she looks at her husband after so many years together.

[carolion]

Hallelujah, Gracie. How perfectly beautiful.

[Gracie]

Okay, by request....see if you like this.


HYDROTHERAPY


Nerves jangling,
knees trembling,
I stepped
into the bath.
Hotter than you liked it,
you stepped in, too.
Rarely wary, but that night
you were.

Surrounded by
elemental warmth
and swirling, silken
motion, we
melted.
I kissed you first...
does it matter?

Out of the bath, now
quivering, shivering
for a wholly, holy
different reason.
Water
dripping, beading,
slickened quicksilver;
Surrounded by
your arms
your lips
your eyes.

The softness of
slow moving, quiet
waves, gently
lapping.
The fierceness of
insistent, demanding
waves; a tide
not to be denied.
Sweat.
Tears.
Limbs loosening,
langorously liquid,
entwined on
this sugar beach.


10-22-03

[joew]

Maple and apple —
Recipe Gracie has shared:
Flavors of autumn.

[brutus]

The old brown house sits on a hill. Empty of people, but full of memories.
It remembers sick children
It remembers laughter
It remembers wails and tears
when death took someone close
It remembers bumper crops of grain
It remembers years of short supply
It remembers watching them leave
with a truck laden with possessions
Nevermore to return
It remembers.....

[carolion]

Maple and apple...
Maple syrup over vanilla ice cream melting atop lovely hot indian pudding....
Apple dumplings swimming in brown sugar syrup,
served to hungry children on a chilly evening....
Maple trees flaming colors against grey skies all up and down the East coast in autumn...
Deer in the little grove of overgrown apple trees in my side yard just yesterday....
Memories of my old friends tapping the big sugar maples out front years ago....
Teaching my daughters to roll out pie dough for apple pies.....
Maple seeds winging down, whirling, whirling, to the delight of children forever and ever....
The great old apple tree in the yard in Portland, holder of so much magic.
A neverending poem, these trees.

[mike]

He said "let them eat poetry
It's cheaper than cake
No one will miss them
They're on permanent break"

We were to interesting
Comparatively speaking
Now we're no bother
No whining, no freaking

Got our new digs
We're all settled in
The whole dopey lot of us
So, let the party begin

Yes, the Emperor's got,
Some real snazzy duds
To bad for him,
We're no longer buds

[brutus]

O' Thou Poetrest Mike, I have exalted thee. Thou art mine hero, rhymically speaking!!!
Howzit goin' over there?? A few snow flurries yesterday. Warning shots across the proverbial bow, I guess.
~B~

[Gracie]

We have got some serious talent here!

This is one I wrote for my daughter, when she was four.


SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Telling her I am
taking her to
the circus tonight
is meaningless, for
she has never seen one.

I speak to her
of clowns, their
sly sleight-of-hand
masked behind mime's makeup.
I do not tell her
that, to them,
she is but a
faceless face in the shadows.

I tell her, "there are animals!"
She will see them
walking, stalking,
leaping, creeping,
flying, trying
to do thing they would never do
in their 'natural' lives.
I simply watch HER face,
the only face (for me) in the shadows.

I tell her about performers;
she knows about
silk and spangles
(the Barbie doll, after all....)
She will watch them, agape,
never realizing the effort it takes
to look so effortless. I will watch
HER, knowing
she believes she can do that, too,
next time she urges me to
"Swing higher!"

But enough telling: time for showing.
Time to suspend my own
disbelief, and view it
only as she does.
We are not looking for
trapdoors and hidden wires;
we do not see tearaway seams,
we do not see
dropped batons and missed cues.

We see
balloons, bigger than her body
in impossibly glossy candy colors;
we see blue ices and
the airy insouciance of
spun pink sugar.
Tonight,
we have never heard of cavities!
Tonight,
we are not
mother and child
but two little girls
dazzled
'appearing one night only!'


10-13-03

[carolion]

Yesterday: chopped wood
Carried logs inside to dry.
Tonight: wood stove. Mmmmmm!

[mike]

carolion said:

Yesterday: chopped wood
Carried logs inside to dry.
Tonight: wood stove. Mmmmmm!

Yesterday: chopped liver
Carried frogs inside to dry.
Tonight: Karl Rove. Mmmmmm!

[liriodendron]

Is this another of those "Copy The Master" threads?

[sisterbeer]

The circus one totally got me. Astonishing, Gracie! Thanks.

[slb2]

mike said:

carolion said:

Yesterday: chopped wood
Carried logs inside to dry.
Tonight: wood stove. Mmmmmm!

Yesterday: chopped liver
Carried frogs inside to dry.
Tonight: Karl Rove. Mmmmmm!

Yesterday: mopped river
Married hogs inside the sky
Tonight: good grove. Nnnnnnnnn

[Jane]

Yesterday: Chipped beef
Carried dogs inside to fry.
Tonight: who drove?

TGIF!

[slb2]

very funny, jane. the second line is a stitch.

[mike]

There's an old man,
lookin' out the window
He's watching me,
while I watch him
Then we both grin

I'm what he was
He's what I'll be
These things are obvious
To him and me
We both can see

I laughed to the heavens
He coughed and wheezed
He beckoned me in
His wet eyes pled
But I just fled

There's an old man,
lookin' out the window
He's watching me leave
What must he believe
I'm ashamed to know

[joew]

Mike, #22 — 1 syllable too many in the first line.
slb2, #25 — 1 syllable too many in the first line. Maybe make it, "Yesterday: mopped brook"
jane, #26 — 1 syllable too few in the last line. Maybe make it, "Tonight: who drove? Hmmmmm"

Sorry, Mike, can't come up with a suggestion for you on the spur of the moment. Wait a minute: how about "Yesterday: chopped guts"?
or tripe, or brains