Even the exotic, black and yellow grasshopper came out for a drink of hose water this morning as I watered the drooping, brown flora and fauna, and I captured a photo of him! Wishing you cooling summer showers, peace, blessings, health and happiness. ~Marion~
ARS POETICA
By Archibald MacLeish
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
*
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,
Leaving, as the moon releases,
twig by twig the night-entangled trees,
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
memory by memory the mind -
A poem should be motionless in time
as the moon climbs.
*
A poem should be equal to:
not true.
For all the history of grief
an empty doorway and a maple leaf
For love
the leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -
A poem should not mean
but be.
Modern Sorcery
By Charles Simic
You could have been just another maggot
squirming over history's roadkill.
Instead a witch took pity on you, lucky fellow,
made you say abracadabra, and much else
you didn't understand
while you held on to the hem of her skirt.
You know neither the place nor the hour
of your transfiguration.
A kitten lapping a drop of milk
fallen from the Blessed Virgin's breast
in a church at dawn. That's how it felt:
the two of you kneeling there.
Outside, there was a flash of lightning
like a tongue passed over a bloody knife,
but you were safe.
Hexed once and for all in her open arms,
giddy and tickled pink with her sorcery.
From: "Staying Alive, Real Poems for Unreal Times" edited by Neil Astley
Song of the Builders
By Mary Oliver
On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God -
a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside
this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope
it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.
from: "Why I Wake Early" (2004)
