The Great Valuable Gift On Christmas Day
“Wow! It’s Christmas, happiness coming
Now for the gift welcoming loving
Then to the church to bow before God
And to the market to buy me a gift
I have the fifty cents all for myself”
Fanny jumped happily, she ran out to shop.
Dancing and skipping she went on her way
Across holy Churches,
Across lit up houses
The Jay
I was pegging out your lime-green dress;
you were hoping the last of the sun
might sip the last few beads of drip-dry water
from its lime-green hem.
I had a blister-stigmata the size of an eye
in the palm of my hand
from twisting the point of a screw
into the meat of the house. Those days. Those times.
Amphion
MY father left a park to me,
But it is wild and barren,
A garden too with scarce a tree,
And waster than a warren:
Yet say the neighbours when they call,
It is not bad but good land,
And in it is the germ of all
That grows within the woodland.
O had I lived when song was great
Paradise Lost: Book 04
O, for that warning voice, which he, who saw
The Apocalypse, heard cry in Heaven aloud,
Then when the Dragon, put to second rout,
Came furious down to be revenged on men,
Woe to the inhabitants on earth! that now,
While time was, our first parents had been warned
The coming of their secret foe, and 'scaped,
Haply so 'scaped his mortal snare: For now
Satan, now first inflamed with rage, came down,
The tempter ere the accuser of mankind,
Paradise Lost: Book 09
No more of talk where God or Angel guest
With Man, as with his friend, familiar us'd,
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast; permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblam'd. I now must change
Those notes to tragick; foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt,
And disobedience: on the part of Heaven
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgement given,
! ! This Is A Shouting Poem
This is a SHOUTING poem.
Not a gentle wildflower poem
not a whispering-of-love poem
A SHOUTING POEM.
This is a POSTER poem.
Not a subtly persuading poem.
not a think-about-it poem
A POSTER POEM
*leaving Rose Hips
The last of summer gardening ends.
Hoe and trowel, knee pad and sunbonnet
Hang in the shed with the shears.
The final petals of the rose have fallen,
Leaving rose hips,
Like tiny crabapples
With a crown of rumpled hair
And calyx now dry and stiff
As a starched collar
Trying to hide the crimson berry
Something Nasty In The Bookshop
Between the Gardening and the Cookery
Comes the brief Poetry shelf;
By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology
Offers itself.
Critical, and with nothing else to do,
I scan the Contents page,
Relieved to find the names are mostly new;
No one my age.
In The Days Of Crinoline
A plain tilt-bonnet on her head
She took the path across the leaze.
- Her spouse the vicar, gardening, said,
'Too dowdy that, for coquetries,
So I can hoe at ease.'
But when she had passed into the heath,
And gained the wood beyond the flat,
She raised her skirts, and from beneath
The Troubles Of Matthew Mahoney
In a little town in Devonshire, in the mellow September moonlight,
A gentleman passing along a street saw a pitiful sight,
A man bending over the form of a woman on the pavement.
He was uttering plaintive words and seemingly discontent.
"What's the matter with the woman?" asked the gentleman,
As the poor, fallen woman he did narrowly scan.
"There's something the matter, as yer honour can see,
But it's not right to prate about my wife, blame me."
Domino~
I should be more cordial
You know- take the nice lane
Not mention your darkness
Or your endless spreading of pain
Never mind the bully that you are
This- the conclusion of my friends
Who have read and viewed your photo's
With all of the foreboding you send
Vincent Van Gogh 9 - Ursula's Refusal
All along, Vincent was under the impression
That Ursula liked him as much as he liked her.
They spent so much of time together
Talking, laughing, gardening, with gestures
And glances that indicated a strong attraction
Between the two. Vincent even assumed
That she would accept him as her husband,
When he proposed to her. He imagined sitting
Opposite to Ursula every morning, eating his breakfast
Looking at her pretty face with much relish and joy.
Geometry
My window looks upon a wood
That stands as tangled as it stood
When God was centuries too young
To care how right he worked, or wrong,
His patterns in obedient trees,
Unprofited by the centuries
He still plants on as crazily
As in his drivelling infancy.
Thinking Of My Mother On The Anniversary Of Her Death
I search her face across a hemisphere,
embark on one more journey:
Will you come?
She’s ready with the thermos,
wearing her brown gardening-shoes,
her glasses slipping forward on her nose.
Says she’s been planting dahlias
The Vision
An average man was Private Flynn,
Good stuff for soldiering, no doubt;
Troublesome when the drink was in,
A quiet lad when it was out.
Too fond of gaming and the girls,
And given to 'language' that would fright
His mother dreaming of his curls
And his soft boyish ways at night.
If I Am Really In Your Heart Then.......
You can take my hands in your hand
No matter how far Away
I'm from your land
You can hear my voice word by word
No matter how far
My language is from yours
You can give me smiles morning, moon and night
No matter how far
Gardeners Grouch
There's a looper caterpillar in my lupins,
There are weevils weaving strands about my stocks,
There are throngs of thieving thrips
On my seedlings and my slips,
And the hoppers hop around my hollyhocks.
While the aphis eats my early antirrhinums,
All oblivious to the dreadful damage done,
And the jassids, jazzing gaily
Round dead jonquils, jar me daily ....
Yet I'd thought to take up gardening 'just for fun.'
Images D’art
How often you visit museums to view the masterpieces of all those artists of long ago, sit on a tour bus and do not see that lady sitting there, framed with painted face and eyelids shaded cum sfumato, her hair curled with such as those of Leonardo. Ecco her eyes when she smiles.
How often you sit at a restaurant table and blink on pass the flowers dazzling their colors and shouting Van Gogh’s hello with the tableware so neatly arranged side by side and flowered napkin. You did not make to notice.
The Shadow On The Stone
I went by the Druid stone
That broods in the garden white and lone,
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows
That at some moments fall thereon
From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,
And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders
Threw there when she was gardening.
I thought her behind my back,
What I Didn'T Do This Summer!
I didn't write that novel
I've dreamed of for many years
Nor did I climb Mt. Everest
(I'm really scared of heights)
I didn't swim the English Channel
(It was a bit too far)
I didn't win a Pulitzer
Nor was Woman of the Year
I didn't have a face lift
Nor lose those extra pounds