The last of April, green thrown lightly to
the near hills, a scarf catching the last sun
and lit improbably, rims each bobble
and guides the weary homeward once again.
It settles under the long waiting world
which holds forth the early blossoms – to May!
tonight the world will turn to spring’s soft arms
in her sweetest embrace, remembering
what winter’s freeze and snow has pushed aside
Tomorrow in the dawn, the bells a-ring,
the feet shall leap and hearts rise up as well
in song they’ll call and answer with gladness.
Wait in the night, watchers of the springtide
wait and watch, with ready song and garland.
I started a different poem but went with this idea that I’d thought of earlier in the month and then not written down. A little prosie, but I hope it captures the moment.
Long ago, behind Sukie’s bright pink house
we played in woods all oaken, dark and green
Just there, behind a stump, a tiny man
sitting quiet, a greenish hat cocked so.
He knew we’d spotted him, no doubt at all
so we hunkered down behind a log
and waited. We crouched until we could
not match his stillness – not a bit longer.
He’d not twitched a hair nor moved a finger
and us, knowing in our eight year old hearts
that magic was involved, and not speaking
crept away, and resumed our hour of play.
I look for him in the woods yet today
the green cap, the nameless magic, the gnome.
The prompt for today’s NaPoWriMo was to write of remembering which I didn’t know until after I’d gotten to work. I was chewing on the word ‘penultimate’ during the commute – where do these things come from? – so it all worked out in the end. Not bad for a first draft.
Penultimate
Just before I remember what I was
before all of this, before all of this,
I hope to remember you, my own love,
Recalling with the last beats of my heart
how you made it race so many years past
how my breath came up short as you held me
and I’d thought for awhile I was dying
’til one day saw it was clearly your pull
on my whole being. On my whole being.
You who made me remember what love feels
just before i remember what I was
before I was some one who loved at all
I wish to recollect your face, the one
which broke open my being to all things.
the sky today all blue opalescence
the low hills of the Catskills fading to
lavender tucks and pleats above the brown
blend to April: the sky and clouds and earth
These mornings when the spring’s unsettled still,
cold nights and balmy afternoons then gone
I hear the birds begin to sing at dawn
just as the sun hops over the near hills
The front yard lays heavy, each blade a drop
the empty birch twigs dripping water down
last night my little flashlight caught the world
ablaze with diamonds, but now all is gold
The birds are still, as when I stopped last night
afraid my feet would scatter all the gems.
the sky today blue and opalescent
the low hills of the catskills blending to
lavender tucks and pleats above the brown
fading to one: the sky and clouds and earth
These mornings when the spring’s unsettled still,
cold nights and balmy afternoons then gone
I hear the birds begin to sing at dawn
just as the sun hops over the near hills
The front yard lays heavy, each blade a drop
the empty birch twigs dripping water down
last night my little flashlight caught the world
ablaze with diamonds, but now all is gold
The birds still just, as when I stopped last night
afraid my feet would scatter all the gems.
A long line is divided into two half-lines. Half-lines are also known as ‘verses’, ‘hemistichs’, or ‘distichs’; the first is called the ‘a-verse’ (or ‘on-verse’), the second the ‘b-verse’ (or ‘off-verse’).[b] The rhythm of the b-verse is generally more regular than that of the a-verse, helping listeners to perceive where the end of the line falls.[1]
A heavy pause, or ‘cæsura‘, separates the verses.[1]
There was also this, which would have been useful the other day when NaPoWriMo’s prompt was about kennings:
The need to find an appropriate alliterating word gave certain other distinctive features to alliterative verse as well. Alliterative poets drew on a specialized vocabulary of poetic synonyms rarely used in prose texts and used standard images and metaphors called kennings.
Turns out I could have properly showed you the poem with lines broken by || which is handy to know for future iterations, especially when trying to quote to unpredicably text-showing parts of the internet.
A Sunday like this || all ordinary
the age of revolution || upon us
Currently when I’m providing a two-line extract of a poem I try to put a • at the end of the first line, just in case whatever is showing it doesn’t honor the return that really is there. Hey it happens. Anyway, I had some fun melting a whole lot of stuff into a block of words with a river of space through the middle of it. And now I will try to remember and grasp more completely what the form should embrace.
I got lost at lunch looking for a particular (and I’m quite sure not mythical) Shakespearian sonnet. No luck there but it did end up with a ramble of a different kind.
If poems were roads, paved and smooth with travel,
no doubt we’d rush to put them to paper
sparing no ink, putting the words quite so
in proper order with exact meaning.
We’d whisper them in darkest ears, at night,
recalling the journeys planned and taken
beneficial rambles sunny and warm
heady and restorative elixirs.
Words strung one to one like cars commuting,
sidling up and past and rearranging,
always flying through the briefest landscapes
then taking a turn and landing somewhere.
What exit? Where are we now? Not quite sure
But since we’re here, how about some lunch, then?
I might reserve the right to do another later, but this is what I thought about during the morning commute. Some things are inevitable.
The end of April comes rushing up now
wrapped in rains and cool nights and promises
of some warmer days that May is hoarding
and nights that aren’t so very skeptical.
The birds follow their ancestral wisdom
and turn back to the northern homes and nests.
Those who chart migrations follow on their
calendars and maps, yearly rituals.
Some note the first bursting of daffodils
and leafing of trees covering the hills
Others, smelling the warm, moist nights recall
when love first broke the winter’s long silence
Hearts turning towards each other like sunflowers
that cannot resist the spring’s heated pull.
from – River and the Road
Lyrics and music by Archie Fisher (From his CD “Windward Away”)
River, ramble as you will. This road’s a cruel, hard master
And I can’t slow the water’s flow, or travel any faster.
I know there’s a crossroads on this route I’m bound to travel
Straight ahead’s a long, smooth way, the other’s dirt and gravel.
And the hardest thing you’ll ever learn to bear as you grow older
Is to watch a dear friend walk away without a turn of shoulder.
I can be as hurt as you although I seldom show it
I’m so easy-going, that I’m gone before you know it.
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