AutumnWe sit around for almost a half hour talking about poetry once the formal hour is over. We like each other's company. I tell my notion about poetry. I say, "Poetry is Being written" -- as if that says anything at all. Betty says poetry is discovery -- she remembers its first bite.
They brought me a quilled, yellow dahlia,
Opulent, flaunting.
Round gold
Flung out of a pale green stalk.
Round, ripe gold
Of maturity,
Meticulously frilled and flaming,
A fire-ball of proclamation:
Fecundity decked in staring yellow
For all the world to see.
They brought a quilled, yellow dahlia,
To me who am barren
Shall I send it to you,
You who have taken with you
All I once possessed?
(Poem by Amy Lowell)
We each steal, to take away with us, two or more cookies with sweet swirling topping from cellophane covered platter brought from kitchen for the gathering, like the children we are -- these eighty and ninety-somethings conspiring to reward ourselves later with bites of forbidden fruit -- like stealthy phrases from unwitting poem by Amy Lowell no one is sure has been written.
We send it to you, Ms. Lowell, for we are fecund and happy to be together of a Friday afternoon.
Earlier Sheilah brought Longfellow. We were pleased to have him start us in the right direction, his gift reminding us.
The Sound of the SeaA simple afternoon, being created, our time together!
THE sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.
(Poem By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
