Poetry Page

[BarbStAubrey]

J.W. Waterhouse Famous Poets and Poems about Spring Link to: Spring Poems Discussion Leaders: Barb & fairanna

Join Us! For a Season of Spring Poetry A Prayer in Spring ~ Robert Frost        Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year. Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white, Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night; And make us happy in the happy bees, The swarm dilating round the perfect trees. And make us happy in the darting bird That suddenly above the bees is heard, The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill, And off a blossom in mid air stands still. For this is love and nothing else is love, The which it is reserved for God above To sanctify to what far ends He will, But which it only needs that we fulfil.

[BarbStAubrey]

Australia
            ~ Brad Evans (1971- )
   
 
In 1825
all Kadaicha
met
 
to discuss
the white threat
 
and calmly came to realise
they will be
 
overcome.
but I am reminded
whenever
 
i go back
 
their legacy
their final act
 
to curse
forever
 
this white threat.
the number
 
of accidents
 
incidents
 
strange deaths
 
long droughts
followed by floods
 
that
 
the curse
of 1825
 
goes
 
on...

[Gumtree]

Barbara:  interesting poem - is the poet Brad Evans or do you mean Brett Evans?

I'm no expert on aboriginal customs and lore but the Kadaicha are the 'stones of death' - Kadaicha Man is something like a 'witch doctor' - they're the ones who can point the bone or sing a man to death  - usually for a crime committed - once this is done the transgressor will surely die even though he be in perfect strength and health. Amazing power of the mind.

[BarbStAubrey]

Thanks for the explanation Gum and yes, his name is Brad Evans...found a couple more of his poems on-line.

[BarbStAubrey]

The Winter's Spring
          ~ by John Clare

The winter comes; I walk alone,
I want no bird to sing;
To those who keep their hearts their own
The winter is the spring.
No flowers to please—no bees to hum—
The coming spring's already come.

I never want the Christmas rose
To come before its time;
The seasons, each as God bestows,
Are simple and sublime.
I love to see the snowstorm hing;
'Tis but the winter garb of spring.

I never want the grass to bloom:
The snowstorm's best in white.
I love to see the tempest come
And love its piercing light.
The dazzled eyes that love to cling
O'er snow-white meadows sees the spring.

I love the snow, the crumpling snow
That hangs on everything,
It covers everything below
Like white dove's brooding wing,
A landscape to the aching sight,
A vast expanse of dazzling light.

It is the foliage of the woods
That winters bring—the dress,
White Easter of the year in bud,
That makes the winter Spring.
The frost and snow his posies bring,
Nature's white spurts of the spring

[BarbStAubrey]

Spring Thaw
          ~ by Virginia Lee Gregory

Spring warmth embraces the mountain crown;
Melts trickles of sweat from the snow.
Rivulets join together, tumbling down
Free and wild--leaving scars of mud-brown.
Spring rejoices with Winter in tow.
In joyous descent, streams grow rash--
Bounce unrestrained over cliff and crag;
Snag roots and leaves; seize timbers and brush.
Impertinent, Spring Thaw makes its dash;
Racing, swirling downward--playing tag.
The deluge pours through breach and plain,
Jubilant in its run to the sea.
Barriers try to hold ground in vain.
Spring Thaw becomes the cowpunchers bane.
Red River crossings rise to the knee.
Constantly upward--waist high now.
Beeve and drovers fear torrents this deep.
Quicksand and silt, difficult to plough,
Snatches at feet of trailhand and cow.
Death Spectre rides near, a soul to reap.
A morass of flesh, hooves, and hide
Struggle across the span of the Red.
Bodies of beeves form a diverse tide
As they swim over the river wide
To travel miles, yet, before they bed.
Oblivious, Spring Thaw cavorts on--
Chasing Winter from mountains and vale;
Opening gates for Summer’s sweet song.
A sigh of relief escapes the throng
Of survivors left to tell the tale.

[BarbStAubrey]

River God
          ~ Linda Sue Grimes
 
Every spring along the Whitewater
I saw that some mysterious hand
Had rearranged the rocks and sand.
The path I followed the summer before
 
Was slipping off into the water.
 
I could not figure whose force could drive
That water among the reeds & shift its bed   
& every spring draw me to its side.
 
Whose muscles uprooted those trees?
Whose fingers patterned those stones
 
Along the edge?  I guessed
Only the spring thaw
Conjured up changes
In those sleeping river images

[BarbStAubrey]

This first fallen snow
is barely enough to bend
the jonquil leaves



On the polished surface
Of the divine glass,
Chaste with flowers of snow.

[Babi]

 This is a long one, but it does fit this in-between time of year..

  Two Tramps in Mud Time   Robert Frost (1934)

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily “Hit them hard!”
I knew pretty well why he dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of beech it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good
That day, giving a loose to my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And fronts the wind to unruffle a plume
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake: and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn’t blue,
But he wouldn’t advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheel rut’s now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
These two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You’d think I never had felt before
The weight of an axhead poised aloft,
The grip on earth of outspread feet.
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the woods two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps.)
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax,
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my headAs that I had no right to play
With what was another man’s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right — agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future’s sakes.:

[BarbStAubrey]

What a great find Babi - I was not familiar with this poem - and yes, perfect for this time of year - all weekend we were experiencing late Spring and yesterday winter rolled back in.

[Babi]

 Well, we're used to that, aren't we.  An early Spring, and then a fresh
cold snap just to remind us not to take anything for granted.  It's Texas,
after all.

[BarbStAubrey]

How about where you are -  we look so much sadder this Spring because the two cold spells were colder than  usual and froze out too much - t here is a huge 50  year growth of Jasmine on the side fence that normally would this time of  year would be deep green and covered in yellow blossoms -  it really needs to be cut back to the ground - in the back there are some green branches but it is as brown as the lawn - I think if we  had a good soaking rain  it would help but all we get are misty days - what has really saddened me is I had a beautiful agave and a yucca in front that do catch the north wind and I had covered both with wool blankets over wire cages but oh they too are obviously frozen with most of the fronds or stalks or whatever they are called having turned brown.  Again, I am hoping a good rain may bring some of this back. -  need to find a poem about early Spring rain.

[BarbStAubrey]

Water is the driver of Nature.
-   Leonardo da Vinci

 
Before the Rain
We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed
The white of their leaves, the amber grain
Shrunk in the wind,--and the lightning now
Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain.
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich,

 

Millions long for immortality who do not
know what to do with themselves
on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-  Susan Ertz



Truths are first clouds; then rain, then harvest and food.
-  Henry Ward Beecher

[BarbStAubrey]

Not as good a soaking as I hoped for but it did rain this morning and although dreary it was nice to see wet...

In Praise of the Earth
          ~ John O'Donohue, (1956 - 2008)

Let us bless
The imagination of the Earth,
That knew early the patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm,
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of land.

And how light knew to nurse
The growth until the face of the Earth
Brightened beneath a vision of color.

When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.

Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And holds our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies.

Let us salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.

The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed's self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.

The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.

The kindness of the Earth,
Opening to receive
Our worn forms
Into the final stillness.

Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
For all our sins against her:
For our violence and poisonings
Of her beauty.

Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.

That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth
Who chose us to emerge
And incarnate its hidden night
In mind, spirit, and light.

[Babi]

 Oh, yes, BARB. I didn't think about my bougainvillea when the
freezes occurred. I always think of it as such a hardy bush, and
it's right up against the shelter of a stone wall. But it it now
all brown. I need to prune it back, and see if new growth will come
in.

  I love the lines from Aldrich.  I've seen that ironic line from
Susan Ertz before; it made me grin then, too. She is so right. If
I'm going to live forever in Heaven, I do hope God has plans to keep
us busy!
 
  You know, I read the poem by John O'Donahue and found myself
wondering it that was a Monsignor John Donahue. I had to look him up
and found that he had indeed been a Catholic priest, but left the
priesthood in 1990. The article said he was know for promoting
Celtic spirituality. Surely his poem reflects that; it's beautiful.

[BarbStAubrey]

It fits Babi - the site that I found his poem was a web site of 20th century Irish poets - I bet it is the same person - an earlier poet who was also a priest and whose poems are so lyrical is Gerard Manley Hopkins. I am always enchanted reading any literature or poetry from an Irish writer - they have a way with words like no other in my opinion.  

[BarbStAubrey]

Oh for heavens sake - I immediately Googled  him after your post and lo and behold I do know of him - there was a PBS special that I think may even be the video on this web site http://being.publicradio.org/programs/john_odonahue/

[BarbStAubrey]

Spring
          ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). 
 
NOTHING is so beautiful as spring—   
  When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;   
  Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush   
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring   
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;          
  The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush   
  The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush   
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.   
 
What is all this juice and all this joy?   
  A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning          
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,   
  Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,   
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,   
  Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

[Babi]

 There is nothing like natural beauty to touch the soul and sooth with a
sense of innocence and grace. Mr. Hopekins says it beautifully.
  Remember this old Wordsworth poem?
 
   The World is Too Much With Us

    The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. -Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

[BarbStAubrey]

Babi I have no idea what happened to my post from yesterday - bottom line I emailed the poem you found to several of my friends - what a wonderful find - it filled me with deep satisfaction.

Onward for today - I have recently purchased a book about Dorothy Wordsworth that includes her poetry and then another that is her diary - fascinating woman - have not finished either book yet - anxious to  understand how a sister can devote her whole life to a brother even after he marries and still continued to have an important place in the household. .

One of her poems

Floating Island
          ~ by Dorothy Wordsworth

Harmonious Powers with Nature work
On sky, earth, river, lake, and sea:
Sunshine and storm, whirlwind and breeze
All in one duteous task agree.

Once did I see a slip of earth,
By throbbing waves long undermined,
Loosed from its hold; — how no one knew
But all might see it float, obedient to the wind.

Might see it, from the mossy shore
Dissevered float upon the Lake,
Float, with its crest of trees adorned
On which the warbling birds their pastime take.

Food, shelter, safety there they find
There berries ripen, flowerets bloom;
There insects live their lives — and die:
A peopled world it is; in size a tiny room.

And thus through many seasons’ space
This little Island may survive
But Nature, though we mark her not,
Will take away — may cease to give.

Perchance when you are wandering forth
Upon some vacant sunny day
Without an object, hope, or fear,
Thither your eyes may turn — the Isle is passed away.

Buried beneath the glittering Lake!
Its place no longer to be found,
Yet the lost fragments shall remain,
To fertilize some other ground.

[Octavia]

i had an immediate frisson of memory when I saw The World Is Too Much With Us. I realised I knew the first 4 lines as well as my own name, but typically, not where I remember them from.
Something else to add to the growing and frustrating list of things, I'm trying to claw back from my memory files. Perhaps it was a quote on the front of a book or something similar.
I'm enjoying your choices, Barbara, they seem to harmonise with the series on Britain's coastlines, I'm watching on TV.

[BarbStAubrey]

Octavia - glad you stopped by - please feel free to share a poem with us - either the poetry you find or remember or one of your own - reading poetry for some of us brings our spirit closer to understanding ourselves than all the techniques of meditation espoused today... look forward to  your posts Octavia.

[Babi]

  I have heard/read the term "outworn creed" many times, and on
reading the Wordsworth poem I thought his "creed outworn" must be
the source.  But no, on checking I find that Tacitus used 'outworn creed'
centuries before.  Who knows, even he might not be the first to note
that a creed can lose it's authority.

[BarbStAubrey]

I guess creeds can change often - in that all a creed is - is a statement of a belief or the system towards an agreed upon ethic - ethic being the community of valued individual morality.

And so as individual morality is altered because of education, new revelation, or life experiences that the old morality no longer works then with enough  individuals changing there has to be a change in ethics and so that change means their creed would be adjusted

With the rate we experience unexpected events in our lives that require we value a new or, changed morality and then seeing the change in the community, either a nation or a business or a school or simply a family - with enough families making a change I can see how creeds can be outdated over time regardless in an ancient civilization or a modern civilization.

Interesting Babi, almost like following a Geometry proof.

Have a poem for tomorrow that to me is so lovely it needs a post all of its own. And so to follow...

[BarbStAubrey]

Blow, Wild March Wind
          ~ William Wilsey Martin: 1885
                            From 'By Solent and Danube'. A rondeau.

    Blow, wild March wind! In hollows of the lea,
    In copses low, thy bride awaiteth thee—
    The timid, saint-like, white anemone.
    She will not show her face, though woo'd by kings,
    Till o'er her beat the pulsings of thy wings.

    Blow, wild March wind! that we her face may see,
    Through pine-clad gorges by our northward sea,
    Through English woodlands where the blackcap sings.
        Blow, wild March wind!

    She lifts her face. The answering passion stings
    Her veined leaves, at the rough kiss he brings.

    Sing round her bridal couch thy melody,
    Thy breath is life to her. Apart from thee
    She droops and dies, the frailest of frail things—
                 Then blow, March wind!

[BarbStAubrey]

WIND SONG
Author Unknown

Here comes the wind, with a noise and a whir,
Out on the streets he is making a stir.
Now he sends flying a fine, stiff hat,
Tosses and leaves it all muddy and flat;
Turns an umbrella quite inside out,
Tears up stray papers and scatters about,
Makes big balloons out of ladies' long capes,
Skirts into sails, then--the queerest of shapes.
The wind is an enemy, often we say:
"We never quite like it--a windy day!"

The winds blows the seeds from their close little pods
And scatters them far away--rods upon rods;
He plants them where never an eye could see
Place for their growing and blooming to be.
He blows away rain, and scatters the dew,
He sweeps the earth clean and makes it all new.
He blows away sickness and brings good health
He comes overladen with beauty and wealth.
Oh, the wind is a friend! Let us always say:
"We love it, we love it, a windy day!"

[BarbStAubrey]

End of Winter
~ by Eve Merriam

Bare-handed reach
to catch
April's
incoming curve.
Leap higher than you thought you could and
Hold:
Spring,
Solid,
Here.

[Babi]

 Two wonderful poems on wind, and both so different.  A gust of wind
caught me slightly off-balance Sunday and very nearly knocked me
over.  We are definitely coming into the windy season.  Too bad it's not
likely to bring up any anemones around here.

[roshanarose]

Barb and Babi - The poem that most struck a chord with me about wind was Blow, Wild March Wind ~ William Wilsey Martin.  There was something familiar about it, something I had read many years ago.  It is this : anemos is the Greek word for Wind.

Canada Anemone
by Fleda Brown

I count nineteen white blossoms   
            which would not be   
                     visible except for   
their wiry stems that catapult them   
            above the grass like   
                     the last white pop   
of fireworks, a toothed blast   
            of leaf below. It’s   
                     the Fourth of July   
on the bank of Hinkson Creek   
            fifty years ago, the powder-   
                     bitterness, the red   
combustion, my life, since   
       anemos means wind, means   
                     change, no matter   
that I’ve been held all along in this   
            thin twenty miles of atmosphere.   
                     The wind’s disturbed   
the leaves, rolled the waves,   
            convincing enough. Each   
                     star of a bloom   
is driven upward almost against   
            its small nature. All it can do   
                     is hang on and die.   
Still, it did want to go   
            as high as possible,   
                     for some reason,   
to sway up there like an art object.   

[BarbStAubrey]

Wow Babi that must have been some wind - scary - I was pleased the wind blew all the Oak leaves that have been dropping off my patio - they pile up and are so dense that if it rains I have one sodden cover that takes a shovel and not a rake - even the blower does not move them - then the paper sacks we have to use to recycle yard clippings gets all wet and will often break before I can get them out for the trash. And so I was elated to see the wind take care of one round of leaves.

roshanarose - I am not sure if an "art object" is a good thing, a bad thing, a show off thing, being too big for its breeches thing - I had heard that the mind set in Australia is something like do not be taller than the sunflowers all around  you and that the tall ones have their flower head topped - this being an Australian poet I wondered if that was the thinking so basic that we could mis-understand the punch line to this poem. Help us out here - please?

How wonderful to know that anemos is the Greek word for wind and so the flowers anemones are really wind flowers - I do not think I have ever seen a white anemone - lots of purples and pinks but not white - that must be a sight with all these flowers growing near a river. We have a small flower on a long stem for the size of the flower - the stems are 15 to 18 inches long that come up after a good soaking rain - they are wild and are called rainlily's - they will pop up even on someone's well cared for front lawn - usually they are scattered - a few here and there but last summer there was a host of them that popped up across the street in the school yard - what a sight.

Here is a poem about the wood anemone - I think there is a Japanese and seems to me there is also a sea anemone - not up on my anemones - but here we have a poem a Sonnet to be exact by one of the romantics of the nineteenth century.

Sonnet: Wood Anemone
          ~ John Clare (1793-1864)

The wood anemone through dead oak leaves
And in the thickest woods now blooms anew,
And where the green briar and the bramble weaves
Thick clumps o'green, anemones thicker grew,
And weeping flowers in thousands pearled in dew
People the woods and brakes, hid hollows there,
White, yellow and purple-hued the wide wood through.
What pretty drooping weeping flowers they are:
The clipt-frilled leaves, the slender stalk they bear
On which the drooping flower hangs weeping dew,
How beautiful through April time and May
The woods look, filled with wild anemone;
And every little spinney now looks gay
With flowers mid brushwood and the huge oak tree.

[BarbStAubrey]

My 'new' used book arrived this evening - "Relke on Love and Other Difficulties" translated by John J.L.Mood - I shop Amazon's marketplace  - for $3.69  including 2 day shipping, I have a lovely copy of a book that priced new is $7.95 - when you buy as many books as I do every dollar saved counts.

Reading the first pages I learn that Rilke was far beyond the women's liberation advocates of a Mlle. de Beauvoir in the 60s and also, he wrote from a masculine view point with masculine goals of freedom and equality as its primary focus.  In the intro to Letters on Love the translator says, "he started at the place where most of us at best manage finally to end up" He quotes in response to Rilke's understanding of solitude and the provisional nature of being human.

Rilke says, "Verily, nature speaks not of love; nature bears it in her heart and more knows the heart of nature,. Verily, God bears love in the world, yet the world overwhelms us. Verily, the mother speaks not of love, for it is borne for her within the child, and the child destroys it. Verily, the spirit speaks not of love, for the spirit thrusts it into the future, and the future is remote. Verily, the lover speaks not of love, for to the lover it comes in sorrow, and sorrow sheds tears."

I had to take a minute to digest this - I looked and saw the love spoken by the mother is borne not born - and then it started to clear up because of course the child has to break that bond in order to be a free adult with their own self - not sure about the lover in sorrow nor the love in spirit but I am thinking as I read it will become clear.

Oh my - I am reading and sharing immediately - I love what he says about marriage - let me quote "...It is a question in marriage, to my feeling, not of creating a quick community of spirit by tearing down and destroying all boundaries, but rather a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude, and shows him this confidence, the greatest in his power to bestow. A togetherness between two people is an impossibility, and where it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a reciprocal agreement which robs either one party of both of his fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, of they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!"

We are not to know why
this and that masters us;
real life makes no reply,
only that it enrapturesus

makes us familiar with it
                     May 1924

If  you'd attempt this, however; hand in hand to be mine,
as the wine in the wineglass is wine.
If you'd attempt this.
                                                          November, 1925

Are not the nights fashioned from the sorrowful
space of all the open arms a lover suddenly lost.
Eternal lover, who desires to endure: exhaust
yourself like a spring, enclose yourself like a laurel.
                                                    Summer, 1909

Interesting - the space of self-hood is what he values - I never thought of it, but it is that space where we retain our integrity of self - our dreams and thoughts that are our own and not the shared dreams and thoughts that become a common force in a marriage - the promise to each other to protect that space, so that we continue to be more than the mingling of our essence - the concept opens my mind and yet, it is what we think of today in a healthy marriage. I remember it was not the concept that were the guides to a happy marriage written in magazines or, shown as the example of the good wife in the movies or, in the basis of the women's role in novels back in the 50s and for many of us, right into the early 80s.

Ah so - I get it now - to be entwined in a love union is, if only temporarily, bridging that space and that is where the sorrow comes in. Sorrow for the space that is lost and hopefully to be found again. So we trade the entanglement of love with the loss of the space that like a buttress holds us as individuals.

[roshanarose]

Barb - Actually, Fleda Brown is American.

"Fleda Brown has a collection of memoir essays, Driving With Dvorak, from the University of Nebraska Press. Her sixth collection of poems, Reunion, won the Felix Pollak Prize and was published in 2008 by University of Wisconsin Press. She is professor emerita of the University of Delaware. She now lives in Traverse City, Michigan, and teaches in the Rainier Writing Program in Tacoma, Washington"

I think maybe what you are referring to is the "tall poppy syndrome".  Certainly, it exists in Australia, but to my mind it originated in Ancient Greece.  They called it "ostracism".  Ask Themistocles.

I think you are right about that tiny white anenome's moment of glory. No longer one of the masses.  An Art Object in its own right.  Similar to a falling star.  When else is a star singled out than when it is falling?

[BarbStAubrey]

owwww I like "I think you are right about that tiny white anenome's moment of glory. No longer one of the masses.  An Art Object in its own right.  Similar to a falling star.  When else is a star singled out than when it is falling?"

Huh! - so Fleda Brown is an American - see how quickly I assumed the understanding of a poem because of the concept we share of the tall poppy syndrome being alive and well in Australia - I guess we are all shaded by the bits and pieces we hear over the years - from Greece - oh my - well we sure are not reading about that Grecian philosophy of the tall poppy over in the Odyssey are we...

Whow to live in Michigan and teach in Tacoma Washington - that is some commute - I bet she is in either place seasonally - I cannot even imagine flying back and forth for a long weekend. Although my younger sister lives on the outer banks of North Carolina and is the Dean of English at Cluny in New York City where she has another house - she stays in NY for a couple of weeks then is able to drive to NC for a long 4 days weekend and then spends the fall and half the summer semester in NC so that she teaches during the Spring semester in addition to her other duties but that drive is only 9 hours - no where like the difference between Michigan and Washington.

Just on the phone with my daughter as we discussed what we think is a better image of marriage that  today is more often practiced but my daughter said how she often feels guilty since supporting each other's space is NOT what the churches and media cherish today. The talk is still about togetherness - the family or couple who do this or that together kind of thing not that protecting space is the buttress to our growth and sense of self. We had a great conversation which is always pleasing isn't it.

[Babi]

 ROSHANA, the lines that especially caught my attention were,
Still, it did want to go   
            as high as possible,   
                     for some reason, 
 Isn't that a deep instinct in most of us?

 I'm finding the quotes from Rilke a bit hard to take. For instance,
it is not the bond of love that a child must break, but the bond of
dependency. A few too many 'verily's in there for my taste, too.
 I liked what he said about a good spouse being a guardian of the
other's solitude, but not the idea that 'togetherness' robs people
of their "fullest freedom and development".  That 'togetherness'
can sometimes be the support that enables one to find that
full development.  Remember the song, "You are the wind beneath
my wings"?  That's what I have in mind.

[BarbStAubrey]

Oh perfect Babi - I think that is what Rilke talks about  - the wind is not the wings and the wings, the moving and spiritual nature of a person is not the wind, the breathe of the universe - just as the wine in the glass is its own wine so that two wines are not co-mingled, they are each separate in a glass -  without the glass you cannot drink the special taste of a wine - just as the cup or glass, the container holds the spirit of each individual, a mother, a child, a wife, a husband. Without the container we blend and mesh beyond recognition. The act of being the wind beneath someone's wings sounds to me like honoring and pushing a person's specialness - what a gift to accept when someone is willing to love by being the wind beneath someone's wings for years -  without the wind no one flies - as without the glass the special taste of one wine cannot be admired and enjoyed.

Last night talking with my daughter she explained how this winter Gary decided to get in shape and joined a gym where he drives, before the crack of dawn in the dark to get there by 6: The gym is down in Greenville SC, 30 minutes from the house near his store - Computer Outlet - at the gym he grunts and groans on the machines with a bunch of guys that ‘out-sweat’ each other. Also this winter my daughter received a  memo at school that the 7th Day Adventist were giving Teachers a half price rate to use their facilities located north of where they live by, you guessed it - 30 minutes - the facility includes a large lap pool. Katha loves to swim - she joined - and the two of them joke and scheme at dinner over their progress - But when my daughter shared this at Church and with some friends in the neighborhood they were shocked that they were in two separate facilities and then she started to feel guilty and then justified her guilt thinking maybe she was wasting money.

When we talked, using the Rilke quotes she felt a sigh of relief - yes, they were both enjoying and accomplishing, each in the environment that best suited their personality and it gave them something to talk about. Gary especially was urging on my daughter, who ended up last week sharing with her cousin and now the two of them are emailing each other back and forth with a shared excitement to get healthy.

The space to do and be their best is honored and further, as we talked she saw the time Gary spends coaching soccer was never a problem and so why should Katha feel guilty over time she could take with her art work rather than feeling she must be attending those games - Yes, her cheering the team is nice but if she was not there Gary would still coach - their boys are no longer that age so it is not like she would be bailing out as a mom - it feels strange but she knows her time is so limited and to give up her art when the boys were playing was one thing but to give it up simply to be there for Gary, who is fine with the parents of the boys doing the cheering.  A new freedom to be more of who she was when they fell in love that feels strange but she is going to try it and pull out her materials again and set it up downstairs.

They both introduced each other to what was them and the boys are perfect examples - here Ty is at the Savannah School of Art with a 4 year scholarship and grant paying 3/4ths of the tuition – tuition is 40k a year - and Cade has already been offered a scholarship at Duke for his skill as a soccer player and he is only a Junior in High School -

Now we are fans of not feeling guilty pursuing individual interests and talents that may be different and yet, because of the space to grow there is more excitement and joy shared with each other. But then not everyone will feel this way and that is fine - whatever works for them.

I haven't read a poet in a long time that sparked such an in-depth look at life – Rilke for me is special -  a shift in acknowledging what we are about so that guilt is set aside - I love it - obviously - my many posts being dazzled with the concept. I look at the majority of marriages today - both are working in separate jobs often in separate fields -  to honor success and be the wind under each other's wings has a new meaning than in our generation where it was unusual for a mom to work outside the house.

A look back and seldom was there an attitude of wind under the wings of a mom - it was expected she should and could manage. Also, she did it alone with maybe the support of her mom and a few friends - but guys, husbands or not, did not expect to get into the domain of the house and so in that way we were separate but the guys were not expected to act as wind under the wings of a housewife. However, housewives dropped everything to support not only our kids but also the success of our husbands.

Rilke lived and worked during the early part of the twentieth century therefore, he would be more familiar with women as housewives and so I think it is amazing that he could see space between intimate relationships needing to be loved and honored to foster personal growth in a marriage when all around him folks were giving up something of themselves in the name of love and togetherness.

[JudeS]

Since you were onto "WIND' before you descended (or went up) to Rilke I was busy remembering this childhood favorite by Robert L. Stevenson:
The Wind

I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky:
And all around I heard you pass,
Like Ladies skirts across the grass.--
O wind, a blowing all day lomg,
O wind,that sings so loud a song!

I saw the differnt things you did
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all--
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!

O you that are so strong and cold,
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you beast of field and tree,
Or just a stronger child than me?
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind thaat sings so loud a song!

[BarbStAubrey]

Thanks Jude for the reminder - that poem paints a picture like no other - you can feel and hear the wind when reading Stevenson's  poem - wonderful... to continue with the wind here is another...

Spring Wind in London
          ~ by Katherine Mansfield

I Blow across the stagnant world,
I blow across the sea,
For me, the sailor's flag unfurled,
For me, the uprooted tree.
My challenge to the world is hurled;
The world must bow to me.

I drive the clouds across the sky,
I huddle them like sheep;
Merciless shepherd-dog am I
And shepherd-watch I keep.
If in the quiet vales they lie
I blow them up the steep.

Lo! In the tree-tops do I hide,
In every living thing;
On the moon's yellow wings I glide,
On the wild rose I swing;
On the sea-horse's back I ride,
And what then do I bring?

And when a little child is ill
I pause, and with my hand
I wave the window curtain's frill
That he may understand
Outside the wind is blowing still;
...It is a pleasant land.

O stranger in a foreign place,
See what I bring to you.
This rain--is tears upon your face;
I tell you--tell you true
I came from that forgotten place
Where once the wattle grew,--

All the wild sweetness of the flower
Tangled against the wall.
It was that magic, silent hour....
The branches grew so tall
They twined themselves into a bower.
The sun shown... and the fall

Of yellow blossom on the grass!
You feel that golden rain?
Both of you could not hold, alas,
(both of you tried, in vain)
A memory, stranger. So I pass....
It will not come again

[BarbStAubrey]

MARCH WIND
          ~ author unknown

Never mind March, we know
When you blow
You're really not mad
Or angry or bad,
You're only blowing the winter away,
To get the world ready
For April and May.

  don't  you love it?

[BarbStAubrey]

When the early soft spring wind comes blowing
          ~ Sappho,  630 BC -  570 BC (Greek poetess who lived on the island of Lesbos and whose work has survived in fragments.)

When the early soft spring wind comes blowing
Over Rhodes and Samos and Miletus,
From the seven mouths of Nile to Lesbos,
Freighted with sea-odours and gold sunshine,

What news spreads among the island people
In the market-place of Mitylene,
Lending that unwonted stir of gladness
To the busy streets and thronging doorways?

Is it word from Ninus or Arbela,
Babylon the great, or Northern Imbros?
Have the laden galleons been sighted
Stoutly labouring up the sea from Tyre?

Nay, 'tis older news that foreign sailor
With the cheek of sea-tan stops to prattle
To the young fig-seller with her basket
And the breasts that bud beneath her tunic,

And I hear it in the rustling tree-tops.
All this passionate bright tender body
Quivers like a leaf the wind has shaken,
Now love wanders through the aisles of springtime.

[BarbStAubrey]

Oh and we cannot forget -

The Wind and the Moon
          ~ by George MacDonald

Said the Wind to the Moon, "I will blow you out.
You stare in the air
Like a ghost in a chair,
Always looking what I am about.
I hate to be watched; I will blow you out."

The Wind blew hard, and out went the Moon.
So, deep on a heap
Of clouds, to sleep
Down lay the Wind, and slumbered soon--
Muttering low. "I've done for that Moon."

He turned in his bed; she was there again.
On high in the sky,
With her one ghost eye,
The Moon shone white and alive and plain.
Said the Wind, "I will blow you out again."

The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew dim.
"With my sledge and my wedge
I have knocked off her edge.
If only I blow right fierce and grim,
The creature will soon be dimmer than dim."

He blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread.
"One puff more's enough
To blow her to snuff!
One good puff more where the last was bred,
And glimmer, glimmer glum will go the thread."

He blew a great blast, and the thread was gone;
In the air nowhere
Was a moonbeam bare;
Far off and harmless the shy stars shone;
Sure and certain the Moon was gone!

The Wind he took to his revels once more:
On down, in town,
Like a merry-mad clown,
He leaped and hallooed with whistle and roar--
"What's that?" The glimmering thread once more.

He flew in a rage--he danced and blew;
But in vain was the pain
Of his bursting brain;
For still the broader the moon-scrap grew,
The broader he swelled his big cheeks and blew.

Slowly she grew--till she filled the night,
And shone on her throne
In the sky alone,
A matchless, wonderful, silvery light,
Radiant and lovely, the queen of the night.

Said the Wind: "What a marvel of power am I
With my breath, good faith,
I blew her to death--
First blew her away right out of the sky--
Then blew her in; what a strength am I!"

But the Moon she knew nothing about the affair,
For, high in the sky,
With her one white eye,
Motionless, miles above the air,
She had never heard the great Wind blare.