Category Archives: Poems

2023, Kids, Nature, Poems, Words

Shadows

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My kitchen windows look out over my neighbors’ driveway, so I often get a front row view of the comings and goings.  Yesterday I saw the youngest (she’s almost 5) dancing with her shadow while waiting for the car to get loaded for the day.  She was completely entranced, lifting first one arm and then the other, then pointing one toe to the side followed by the opposite toe.  She shimmied and wiggled and eventually began to sing.  It was charming.

It reminded me of a favorite childhood poem, My Shadow, by Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets to little that there’s none of hi at all.

He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nurse as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleep-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

I still have this poem in The Illustrated Treasure of Children’s Literature.  There are several poems in this collection that I remember and treasure.  I didn’t have a huge number of books when I was little but this was one of them and I had my mother read to me from it quite a bit.

Do you have any favorite childhood poems?

animals, Mysteries, Nature, Poems

Translation is Everything

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Last week I was looking for something online and happened upon Basho’s famous frog haiku.  I’ve seen it before but didn’t realize that this is considered on of the most famous haiku.  This is the most common translation (thanks to Harry Behn):

An old silent pond…

A frog jumps into the pond,

Splash!  Silence again.

I couldn’t’ quite think this was the best haiku ever so I dub a little deeper.  Here is actual Japanese:

Furu ike ya

kawazu tobikomu

mizu no oto

This translates literally to this:

Old pond…

a frog jumps in

water’s sound

The translation doesn’t match the 5-7-5 syllable convention, which probably explains why there are so many versions in English.  But I still couldn’t figure out why it was so popular; then I found it narrated in Japanese:

Much prettier sounding – makes more sense why it is one of his best-remembered haikus.  Too bad it isn’t as pretty sounding in English as it is in Japanese.

Do you have form over function anywhere in your life?

2023, Art, Poems, Words

Spring Haiku

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I was browsing through my poetry binder last weekend and, of course, came across my favorite haiku:

Fan Piece for Her Imperial Lord

O fan of white silk,
Clear as front on the grass-blade,
You are also laid aside
Ezra Pound

It made me wonder if I could find some fun haiku for spring.  There are actually quite a few but I like these two:

Rise from winter’s nap
Stretch to feel the sun’s warm rays
Spring is among us
Shannon Schofield

The temple bell stops.
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.
Basho

Any spring poetry that you like?  Written any haiku lately?

 

2022, Family, gardening, Music, Poems, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

They Call The Wind. . . .Annoying

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We just can’t get a break with the weather. Our home garden got planted late due to freezing temperatures in May, and then we had a hail storm in June that took out the tomatoes and peppers and shredded the beans and peas.

Our church vegetable garden is planted in six, waist-high raised beds. We planted bush squash, peas, beans, and savoy cabbages there. We planted the squash and cabbages in raised mounds just to give them ample depth for roots. That garden didn’t get the hail we did at our house several blocks away. Last Sunday the bush squash and cabbages at church were looking spectacular. Then, on Tuesday, the wind hit.

I never realized how shallow squash roots are. The wind gusted up to 50 mph, and almost entirely uprooted the squash. Husband frantically placed cedar shakes around the squash and cabbage mounds to block the wind, and piled more dirt over the exposed roots. Many of the squash stems were bent and the leaves broken off and wilted. By yesterday they looked a little better, but, again, this sets back possible harvest.

Our home garden wasn’t affected by the wind since the plants are at ground level, not in waist-high raised beds. I think we will have ample cabbages and squash to take to the food pantry if the church garden doesn’t produce.

Let’s have some weather inspired songs and poems today.

2022, Gatherings, Poems, Uncategorized

Cowboy Poetry

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We were in Medora, ND last weekend to hike in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It was a busy weekend in Medora, as the 36th Annual Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering was being held in the community center. We didn’t attend this year, but we did several years ago. Cowboy poets, singers, and musicians perform, and lots of poetry is read aloud.

There are many cowboy poetry events all across the western US from, ND to CO to TX. All the poets we saw in Medora were or had been working cowboys, and their poetry reflected their experiences working cattle and being out on the range. The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV seems to be the most famous, and was started in 1985 after Willie Nelson got funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Themes for cowboy poetry include ranch work, cowboy values and practices, western landscape, references to the past, and issues with modern , urban life. Most cowboy poetry rhymes. There is very little free verse. Here is a classic example by an anonymous poet:

Oh, music springs under the galloping hoofs,
Out on the plains;
Where mile after mile drops behind with a smile,
And to-morrow seems always to tempt and beguile,—
Out on the plains.

Oh, where are the traces of yesterday’s ride?
There to the north;
Where alfalfa and sage sigh themselves into sleep,
Where the buttes loom up suddenly, startling and steep,—
There to the north.

Oh, rest not my pony, there’s youth in my heart,
Out on the plains;
And the wind sings a wild song to rob me of care,
And there’s room here to live and to love and to dare,—
Out on the plains.

Another example by an anonymous poet.

The bawl of a steer
To a cowboy’s ear
Is music of sweetest strain;
And the yelping notes
Of the gray coyotes
To him are a glad refrain.

And his jolly songs
Speed him along
As he thinks of the little gal
With golden hair
Who is waiting there
At the bars of the home corral.

For a kingly crown
In the noisy town
His saddle he wouldn’t change;
No life so free
As the life we see
‘Way out on the Yaso range.

His eyes are bright
And his heart as light
As the smoke of his cigarette;
There’s never a care
For his soul to bear,
No trouble to make him fret.

The rapid beat
Of his bronco’s feet,
On the sod as he speeds along,
Keeps living time
To the ringing rhyme
Of his rollicking cowboy’s song.

Hike it, cowboys,
For the range away
On the back of a bronc of steel,
With a careless flirt
Of the raw-hide quirt
And the dig of a roweled heel.

The winds may blow
And the thunder growl
Or the breeze may safely moan;
A cowboy’s life
Is a royal life,
His saddle his kingly throne.

Saddle up, boys,
For the work is play
When love’s in the cowboy’s eyes,
When his heart is light
As the clouds of white
That swim in the summer skies.

What are some of your favorite poems? Do you like rhyme or free verse? What topics would you write about if you wrote poetry about your job or profession?

2021, animals, Fantasy, Mysteries, Nature, Poems, Uncategorized, Weather

Little Cat Feet

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Now that the dark is hanging around a bit more in the morning, I don’t really notice the outside work until I step onto the back porch.  Last week, I left the house early, about 6:15 a.m. and as I pulled out of the driveway realized that there are a lot of fog.  Living in the city as I do, this is an unusual occurrence and combined with the dark and traffic-less streets, was quite eerie.

As I was driving along (pretty slowly), it made me think about how often I’ve seen fog described in poetry.  Of course, the most famous is probably Carl Sandberg:

Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

And I also remember a couple of different fog poems by Sara Teasdale that I like:

Gray Fog
A FOG drifts in, the heavy laden
Cold white ghost of the sea—
One by one the hills go out,
The road and the pepper-tree.
I watch the fog float in at the window

With the whole world gone blind,
Everything, even my longing, drowses,
Even the thoughts in my mind.
I put my head on my hands before me,

There is nothing left to be done or said,
There is nothing to hope for, I am tired,
And heavy as the dead.

White Fog
Heaven-invading hills are drowned
In wide moving waves of mist,
Phlox before my door are wound
In dripping wreaths of amethyst.

Ten feet away the solid earth
Changes into melting cloud,
There is a hush of pain and mirth,
No bird has heart to speak aloud.
Here in a world without a sky,
Without the ground, without the sea,
The one unchanging thing is I,
Myself remains to comfort me.

A quick search on the internet turns up tons of fog poems.  I haven’t done any research whatsoever but I wonder if there are more fog poems than thunderstorm poems or sunshine poems?

Then as I kept driving, I realized that I don’t know one darn SONG about fog.

Anybody?

 

Food, Nature, Poems, Uncategorized, Weather

You Can’t know the wind

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Last Monday was a wild weather day here, with sustained West winds all day of up to 47 mph, and prolonged gusts of up to 67 mph.  There were periods of whiteout from snow squalls intermingled with sunny periods and dust.  There were some things we needed at the store, so I hazarded a trip to Walmart at about 5:00, just when the wind was at its peak. I saw traffic lights that had come loose from their supports, dangling over intersections. I waited at a red light on the interstate bridge and the van took the full broadside brunt of the wind. I felt the van rock, and I was worried I might get tipped over. 

The wind was cold and horrible, full of dust as I ran into the store.  Of course, I left the grocery list in the van.  I wasn’t about to run back out to the van to get it, so I tried as best I could to remember what Husband had written .  I forgot only one thing, a jar of olives seasoned with smoked paprika. I had to stop at another grocery store anyway, so I thought I could probably get the olives there. Well, there were no such olives there, so I journeyed back to Walmart and struggled yet again in the wind, and I found the olives.  Husband was really hoping I could get these olives (more on the olives in another post). He was grateful, and I was really glad to be home. 

There is dirt from our front yard vegetable garden blown all over our front stoep and front door.  I have lived on the Great Plains most of my life and I don’t think I have been in wind like we had on Monday.  There is a lovely children’s book If You’re Not From the Prairie,  written by a Saskatchewan author, David Bouchard. (What we call the Plains Canadians call the Prairie.)  Here he is reading  it. It really captures life out here. 

What are your memories of wild weather?  Know any good poems, songs, or stories about the wind or weather?

100 Words, education, Media, Poems, Technology, Uncategorized, Words

Snollygoster

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Dictionary.com still sends me an email every day.  Some days I already know the word and most days I think “I’ve never seen this word before and I doubt I’ll ever see it again.”  But it’s still fun.  Last week, the word snollygoster hit my Inbox.  It means a clever, unscrupulous person.  This definitely falls into the category of “I’ll probably never run into this again” but it seems like such a fun word that maybe I should play with it for a bit.

If you are clever

But a bit unscrupulous –

A snollygoster!

Can you use it in a sentence?  Extra points if you can do a better haiku than I did!

Gatherings, Media, Music, Poems, Uncategorized

Poetry and Music

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This has been a week of loss for us, with the deaths of Peter Ostroushko and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.  A musician and a poet gone.

I think this is a good weekend to think about and celebrate our favorite folk musicians and poets.  I had never in my life experienced folk music until 1981 when I first attended the Winnipeg Folk Festival. It was an absolutely magical experience,  and I was immediate  hooked. I attended every Winnipeg festival  every year I lived there, and many  after we left. When we moved back to the States in 1986, I finally had radio access to PHC, and not long after that I found the Morning Show. The rest is history.

Poetry appreciation has always been a stretch for me, but I have come to understand and love it with the gentle assistance of the Baboons. Thank you, all.

What are your favorite poems? What are your favorite folk groups,  festivals, and songs? What do you think is important for us to hear and read right now?

 

 

2021, Gatherings, History, Media, Poems, Speeches, Uncategorized

Inauguration Poetry

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I’m not an inauguration kind of person.  I know they happen, but political speeches just don’t do it for me.  Even on a day when I was particularly glad that a certain inauguration was happening, I just didn’t want to watch.  Except for the poetry.  I can’t put the whole poem here (copyright issues) but I like this part quite a bit:

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:

That even as we grieved, we grew

That even as we hurt, we hoped

That even as we tired, we tried

I was surprised to discover that only four presidents have included poetry at their inaugurations: JFK, Clinton, Obama and now Biden (Carter had a poem but it was read at the gala not the swearing-in ceremony).   It will be interesting to see if the other party eventually decides to add poetry to their inauguration traditions.

While I’m happy about events this week, I admit I am still shaken by what the last four years has unearthed and disgorged in our nation.  So here is my haiku for the inauguration:

Breathing easier –

But still worried about us,

Too many crazies.

Any poetry speaking to you this week?  Yours or anybody else’s?