Reality
• 03/03/24 at 05:53AM •My fear has been realized.
My fear has been realized.
Your warm breath,
moist and scented
with peppermint
and last nights wine,
slips past my ear.
My cheek, pressed
tightly to your breast
feels the muted beat
of your inner life.
I dare not sleep
for if I do
when I awake
I'll not find you,
beside me.
You will be gone
from out my sight
and simply vanished
in darkest night,
while I slept.
Here we are,
same place,
same time,
Life's embrace.
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Public domain
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright. Millay was a renowned social figure and noted feminist in New York City during the Roaring Twenties and beyond. She wrote much of her prose and hackwork verse under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd. Millay won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her poem "Ballad of the Harp-Weaver"; she was the first woman and second person to win the award. In 1943, Millay was awarded the Frost Medal for her lifetime contribution to American poetry.
A Winter Feeling
Winter's mantle,
frozen crystal,
icy twigs,
encrusted grass.
Leaves, lying
beneath skeletal
trees, flaunting
their nakedness.
Starry diamonds
reflecting light
from a frozen pond.
Written for my beloved, 01/2018
If you were not of this world,
I would worship you.
You are the star that guides me
through lonely day and night.
You are the light that turns
the dark into bright.
You are inspiration in my quest above.
You are my everything,
you are my love.
A re-issue
Take my hand and lead me
to the place that angels dwell,
among the pines and fern groves,
where wild flowers tell,
of their existence and their presence.
Walk with me, beside the water,
hear the sound of a bubbling brook,
let the scents and sounds surround you
and be sure to take a look.
Can you see the color? Can you hear
the sound?
Can you see the love that shines,
when you are around?
Do you know my name, or does it
really matter?
Will I remember or forget,
engaged in idle chatter
or will you leave me alone?
Just plain drinking, 6 years ago
Let me sip the nectar
From a hundred silver cups.
Let me taste, the honey,
Produced by all the Bees.
Let me live today, like
Tomorrow will never come.
After I have lived and loved,
With no remorse or sorrow,
Perhaps the love I've shared
Will bring a new tomorrow,
With many a bright beginning,
For in loving, you will find,
Another day for more giving.
Written for My Beloved, 6 years ago.
Softly, so very softly,
I say your name
to faceless people
and no one listens.
Alone, in a darkened room,
sits a unhappy man,
surrounded by his frustrations,
lying at his feet.
Rising above this state of mind,
seeing beauty, as it's meant to be,
talking, loving, touching people
with his life.
He becomes a better person, through loving
and by saying,
"Softly, so very softly,
I say your name,
to faceless people
and no one listens,"
except for me.
Over the course,
of a life, so lost.
What happens now,
was it worth the cost?
An old friend of mine,
is back on the scene.
The darkness, my old friend,
Is back to see me once again.
That is good, a promise kept,
As it's been awhile since I slept.
Tired I am, there is no doubt,
That depression will cry and shout,
To gain a hold in this life of mine.
Fear not for my thoughts entwine,
With love, for all I know
That keeps this aged soul aglow.
A stranger in a stranger land,
Too calm to weep, too sad to smile,
I take my harp of broken strings,
A weary moment to beguile;
And tho no hope its promise brings,
And present joy is not for me,
Still o’er that harp I love to bend,
And feel its broken melody
With all my shattered feelings blend.
I love to hear its funeral voice
Proclaim how sad my lot, how lone;
And when, my spirit wilder grows,
To list its deeper, darker tone.
And when my soul more madly glows
Above the wrecks that round it lie,
It fills me with a strange delight,
Past mortal bearing, proud and high,
To feel its music swell to might.
When beats my heart in doubt and awe,
And Reason pales upon her throne,
Ah, then, when no kind voice can cheer
The lot too desolate, too lone,
Its tones come sweet upon my ear,
As twilight o’er some landscape fair:
As light upon the wings of night
(The meteor flashes in the air,
The rising stars) its tones are bright.
And now by Sacramento’s stream,
What mem’ries sweet its music brings—
The vows of love, its smiles and tears,
Hang o’er this harp of broken strings.
It speaks, and midst her blushing fears
The beauteous one before me stands!
Pure spirit in her downcast eyes,
And like twin doves her folded hands!
It breathes again—and at my side
She kneels, with grace divinely rare—
Then showering kisses on my lips,
She hides our busses with her hair;
Then trembling with delight, she flings
Her beauteous self into my arms,
As if o’erpowered, she sought for wings
To hide her from her conscious charms!
It breathes once more, and bowed in grief,
The bloom has left her cheek forever,
While, like my broken harp-strings now,
Behold her form with feeling quiver!
She turns her face o’errun with tears,
To him that silent bends above her,
And, by the sweets of other years,
Entreats him still, oh, still to love her!
He loves her still—but darkness falls
Upon his ruined fortunes now,
And ’t is his exile doom to flee.
The dews, like death, are on his brow,
And cold the pang about his heart
Oh, cease—to die is agony:
’T is more than death when loved ones part!
Well may this harp of broken strings
Seem sweet to me by this lonely shore.
When like a spirit it breaks forth,
And speaks of beauty evermore!
When like a spirit it evokes
The buried joys of early youth,
And clothes the shrines of early love,
With all the radiant light of truth!
This poem is in the public domain
John Rollin Ridge (Cherokee name: Cheesquatalawny, or Yellow Bird,(1827 – 1867), a member of the Cherokee Nation, is considered the first Native American novelist. His father John Ridge had been assassinated in1839 in Indian Territory at the hands of supporters of Cherokee leader John Ross who condemned his having signed a treaty to cede communal land to the United States. Ridge. He later attended school in Massachusetts. After returning to Arkansas, he read the law, set up a practice and married. He went West in the California Gold Rush, where his wife and daughter later joined him. There he started writing – both poetry and essays. After the American Civil War, he was among the Cherokee delegation that negotiated a new treaty for peace with the United States. More
No one told me it would be like this—
how growing older is another passage of discovery
and that aging is one grand transformation,
and if some things become torn apart
or even lost along the way,
many other means show up
to bring me closer
to the center of my heart.
No one ever told me
if whatever wonder waits ahead
is in another realm and outside of time.
But the amazement, I found,
is that the disconcerting things
within the here and now
that I stumble and trip my way through,
also lead me gracefully home.
And no one told me that I would ever see
an earth so strong and fragile,
or a world so sad and beautiful.
And I surely didn't know
I'd have all this life yet in me
or such fire inside my bones.
From Susan Frybort, (author of Open Passages) poetry collection "Look to the Clearing"