Poetry Friday: Gratitude

Our challenge this busy season was to write a poem on the theme of gratitude.  I am grateful, every December, for moments of stillness, so I wrote my poem about that.

December

is bustle
and jingle
and jolly.
Decking. 
Beckoning.
Noise pricking
like holly. 

But I am 
Oh, little town!
How still, 
how still.
I crave dark. 
Dreamless.
Wordless 
good will. 

So when
I steal,
in the black 
morning,
barefoot,
to the mute
dawning

Of each
newly-dressed
day, this—
this light
before light,
this breadth

of time 
before time 
must peal 
forth, again—
this moment 
I kneel

to the nothing
we are called
from---
From this 
is all 
the world
to come. 

----Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)


Links to my fellow poets (as I have them at the moment) are here:

Laura
Tricia

more to come!


Poetry Friday is hosted by our own Tanita Davis.  

Poetry Friday: A Villanelle to Winter's Chill

Tanita threw out this challenge:  A villanelle on a wintry topic, including a pair of words (or homonyms thereof) from the following: bleak, draft, gutter, chill, chime, glitter, gust, harsh, rime, nip, thaw.

Brrrrrr!  A chilling task...and yet...faced with this, I ended up with....

...a love poem. How'd that happen?


How close

How close are we to ice and avalanches?
Far! Far! These are but gusty jabs and powder stings;
for kiss of starling’s tail knocks snow from branches.

Landing there, in tree still quick with green, he stanches
this dusting of winter’s rime, and clears himself a seat.
How close are we to ice and avalanches

if tree, armed in white, shrugs? forgoes stern glances?
offers us, again, shelter for embraces sweet
while kiss of starling’s tail knocks snow from branches?

We laugh, walk on, our linked arms a pair of flanches
circling our summer hearts, which shudder and beat.
How close we are! To ice and avalanches,

we seal our eyes; instead, swear love. If then winter blanches
pale our days, rosy still our shielded heat.
How close we are to ice and avalanches!
Yet kisses knock snow from branches.

---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)


My Poetry Sisters' glittering poems can be found here:

Tanita
Tricia
Laura
Liz


Poetry Friday is hosted today by Tabatha Yeats' The Opposite of Indifference.

Poetry Friday: Pastoral

A pastoral is a poem that idealizes rural life. You know: bucolic meadows, docile cows, sun-drenched fields of hay. 

I suppose it does sound nice... but even we city folk know better, don't we? (If you don't, well, then, Ken Burns' excellent film, Country Music, is waiting. Hard times and rural life go together.)

Perhaps that's why when I tried to write a simple pastoral about the wildlife in my backyard---I had recently seen foxes and falcons, after all---my poem refused to shine with dew.  

Falcon in my yard

Still

Falcons rake the sky at first drumroll of light;
Foxes trot brashly into chill brag of night.

Squirrels scale windows, screen to screen;
Wasps daub bordellos fit for their queen.

Cranes patrol water’s fish-quickened edge;
Crows bully rooftop’s can’t-touch-me ledge.

It is only I who stumbles, by love undone
From rising to the setting of the merciless sun.

Only I who serves no time or place
But when you breathed and where you faced.

Nature knows not how to stop and pray;
It flames to a greatness, day after day.

Thus, your grave is tumbled to its knees
By brambled flowers and roots of trees.

Thus moss fills the slanted letters
Of your name, a raucous bird unfetters

Worms from soil to carry high to nest.
What fallacy to say: Here is Thy Rest

For nothing alive pauses to give guard;
It is only I who finds this stillness hard.

----Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)




Note:   This sub-genre of the pastoral is known as the pastoral elegy.  It's supposed to be written in the "voice of a shepherd, mourning a friend." I don't know what a shepherd's voice sounds like, so this will have to do. 

Thanks, Rebecca, for the challenge!

My poetry sisters have turned out lovely pastorals, which you may find here:

Liz
Tricia
Andi
Tanita
Rebecca
Laura

Poetry Friday is hosted today at Library Matters.