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Post by Gracie on Oct 2, 2006 21:09:57 GMT -5
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
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Post by carolion on Oct 2, 2006 21:27:42 GMT -5
Gracie - you got in! This thread wouldn't open for the longest time - Good job. Let 'er rip.
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Post by Gracie on Oct 3, 2006 21:01:27 GMT -5
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
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Post by Jane on Oct 4, 2006 6:57:17 GMT -5
Wonderful last stanza! Who are your favorite poets? (Might Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry be a couple of your favorites?)
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Post by Gracie on Oct 4, 2006 8:48:56 GMT -5
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.
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Post by mike on Oct 5, 2006 4:18:43 GMT -5
Ahhhh Gracie, you've got the gift -- great poetry.
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Post by Jane on Oct 5, 2006 7:09:47 GMT -5
No, not an imitation, just the same sense of awe at the wonder of the natural world.
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Post by Gracie on Oct 5, 2006 10:17:48 GMT -5
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
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Post by slb2 on Oct 5, 2006 10:29:15 GMT -5
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.
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Post by slb2 on Oct 5, 2006 10:30:19 GMT -5
Maybe you want to go over to my epigraphs thread and take a stab at that poetry challenge?
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Post by Gracie on Oct 5, 2006 10:43:42 GMT -5
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....
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Post by slb2 on Oct 5, 2006 10:53:34 GMT -5
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. :,(
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Post by Gracie on Oct 5, 2006 11:10:28 GMT -5
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.
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Post by carolion on Oct 5, 2006 19:14:44 GMT -5
Hallelujah, Gracie. How perfectly beautiful.
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Post by Gracie on Oct 8, 2006 20:16:19 GMT -5
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
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Post by joew on Oct 8, 2006 20:49:26 GMT -5
Maple and apple — Recipe Gracie has shared: Flavors of autumn.
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Post by brutus on Oct 8, 2006 21:09:06 GMT -5
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.....
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Post by carolion on Oct 9, 2006 21:31:20 GMT -5
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.
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Post by mike on Oct 12, 2006 4:04:28 GMT -5
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
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Post by brutus on Oct 12, 2006 6:03:15 GMT -5
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~
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Post by Gracie on Oct 12, 2006 19:43:31 GMT -5
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
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Post by carolion on Oct 12, 2006 21:58:18 GMT -5
Yesterday: chopped wood Carried logs inside to dry. Tonight: wood stove. Mmmmmm!
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Post by mike on Oct 13, 2006 6:24:13 GMT -5
Yesterday: chopped wood Carried logs inside to dry. Tonight: wood stove. Mmmmmm! Yesterday: chopped liver Carried frogs inside to dry. Tonight: Karl Rove. Mmmmmm!
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Post by liriodendron on Oct 13, 2006 7:57:01 GMT -5
Is this another of those "Copy The Master" threads?
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Post by sisterbeer on Oct 13, 2006 10:53:25 GMT -5
The circus one totally got me. Astonishing, Gracie! Thanks.
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Post by slb2 on Oct 13, 2006 12:46:26 GMT -5
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
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Post by Jane on Oct 13, 2006 13:37:50 GMT -5
Yesterday: Chipped beef Carried dogs inside to fry. Tonight: who drove?
TGIF!
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Post by slb2 on Oct 13, 2006 13:39:46 GMT -5
very funny, jane. the second line is a stitch.
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Post by mike on Oct 14, 2006 7:00:48 GMT -5
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
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Post by joew on Oct 14, 2006 10:15:04 GMT -5
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
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