Poems 2016: Poem-Lack, Truth, Tree-Speak, Friendship, Darkness & Hope

December 29th, 2016

I am so fortunate to be in a book group that shares the breadth and depth of books, words and our souls’ truths.  Our last gathering of the year is a sharing of one poem each.  This year’s sharing speaks of poem-lack, truth, tree-speak, friendship, darkness & hope.

Kelly gifted us all a folded art page turned into book pages to keep our poems in.

Listen deeply. Let these words fill you with their beauty, strength, power and depth.

It is difficult
to get the news
from poems
yet men die miserably
every day
for lack
of what is found there.

William Carlos Williams

Truth Serum

We made it from the ground-up corn in the old back pasture.
Pinched a scent of night jasmine billowing off the fence,
popped it right in.
That frog song wanting nothing but echo?
We used that.
Stirred it widely. Noticed the clouds while stirring.
Called upon our ancient great aunts and their long slow eyes
of summer. Dropped in their names.
Added a mint leaf now and then
to hearten the broth. Added a note of cheer and worry.
Orange butterfly between the claps of thunder?
Perfect. And once we had it,
had smelled and tasted the fragrant syrup,
placing the pan on a back burner for keeping,
the sorrow lifted in small ways.
We boiled down the lies in another pan till they disappeared.
We washed that pan.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Do the trees speak back to the wind
when the wind offers some invitational comment?
As some of us do, do they also talk to the sun?
I believe so,
and if such belief need rest on evidence,
let me just say,
Sometimes it’s an earful.

But there’s more.

If you can hear the trees in their easy hours
of course you can also hear them later,
crying out at the sawmill.

Mary Oliver

A Poem Of Friendship

We are not lovers
because of the love
we make
but the love
we have
We are not friends
because of the laughs
we spend
but the tears
we save

I don’t want to be near you
for the thoughts we share
but the words we never have
to speak
I will never miss you
because of what we do
but what we are
together

Nikki Giovanni

In the winter I am writing about, there was much darkness. Darkness of nature, darkness of event, darkness of the spirit. The sprawling darkness of not knowing. We speak of the light of reason. I would speak here of the darkness of the world, and the light of ________. But I don’t know what to call it. Maybe hope. Maybe faith, but not a shaped faith –only, say, a gesture, or a continuum of gestures. But probably it is closer to hope, that is more active, and far messier than faith must be. Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile, and cool, and has not need of words. Hope, I know, is a fighter and a screamer.

Mary Oliver

Let these words sing and cry out to our world and our hearts.
Let them guide us.

Enjoy & Create