A poem by Charles Wright

 AFTER READING TU FU, I GO OUTSIDE TO THE DWARF GARDEN

                    by Charles Wright

East of me, west of me, full summer.
How deeper than elsewhere, the dusk is in your own yard.
Birds fly back and forth across the lawn
                                                                looking for home
As night drifts up like a little boat.
Day after day, I become of less use to myself.
Like this mockingbird,
                                    I flit from on thing to the next.
What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?
Tomorrow is dark.
                                Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.
The sky dogs are whimpering.
Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening
                                                                    up from the damp grass.
Into the world's tumult, into the chaos of every day,
Go quietly, quietly.

from Chickamauga  

@1995 by Charles Wright

SUMMER AND LOVE

 

SONNET 18 by Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate;

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed:

And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owes;

Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade

When in eternal lines to time thou growest.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

JUNE IS WEDDING MONTH

Here's a poem from my new book, Sunshine Has Its Limits, explaining marriage.

THE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE EXPLAINS THE FACTS

Think of marriage as a lavish

package you are given

on your wedding day.

It arrives, all radiant

gift-wrap and breath-taking

ribbons and bows,

and is so extravagantly

gorgeous you may wish

it would stay that way.

It takes some time to unwrap.

You’re meticulous in trying

to not pull it to pieces.

When you finally finish

with externals, you notice

some assembly is required.

The directions are in disarray

with too much left unsaid

or jumbled, with loose parts.

It’ll take a long while, maybe

a lifetime, to piece together

using the specific ingredients

you were given and very well

might not resemble what

you intended in the first place.

But remember it is a present,

bestowed with the best

intentions, as love always is.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

                                               Available from Kelsey Books and Amazon

MAY-FLOWERS

MAY-FLOWERS

by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

Pink, small and punctual,

Aromatic, low, 

Covert in April,

Candid in May,

Dear to the moss,

Known by the knoll,

Next to the robin

In every soul.

Bold little beauty,

Bedecked with thee,

Nature forswears

Antiquity.

Tunisian poet

I visited TUNISIA in late-March and April. While in the city of Tozeur, I met a fellow poet. Her name is SOUAD KHCHIM.

I'm pleased to share one of her poems, translated into English by Dr. Abdellatif Ben Halima:

LOVE

 

When you loved me,

trees had more leaves

and the morning dew appeared

with the light of the sun

and the light of the moon.

When you loved me,

every bird found for itself a nest

and every butterfly a flower.

Palaces found their

kings and life its meaning.

When you loved me,

my heart started to beat

and my lips had a fire in them

and my bosom yielded nothing

but tenderness.

It is your tenderness that gives more

life to my life

and that resurrects me into

an antelope that springs in the desert,

an ever-blossoming flower that knows

no other season but Spring!

 

Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway

William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 and died in 1616 on the same day in April as his birth.

He married Anne Hathaway in November of 1582. He was 18 and she was 26 and pregnant with their first child (Suzanna).  The average age of marriage for a woman was 26. William, being 18, was considered a minor and had to have Anne's father's consent to marry. Suzanna was born six months after the wedding. Three years later Anne gave birth to twins, Hamnet and Judith. Anne and William remained married  until his death.

His will of March 25, 1616, a month before he died, states that he left her the second-best bed (with its bedding and curtains).  This was not a slight. The second-best bed was the marriage bed, the best bed being reserved for guests. 

Here is Carol Anne Duffy's poem,"Anne Hathaway."

ANNE HATHAWAY

'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed...'

        (from Shakespeare's will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning word

of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas

where he would dive for pearls. My lover's words

were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses

on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme

to his, now echo, assonance; his touch

a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.

Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed

a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance

and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.

In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,

dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -

I hold him in the casket of my widow's head

as he held me upon that next best bed.

        by Carol Anne Duffy

        from The World's Wife (1999)

Carol Anne Duffy is former Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.

MY NEW BOOK

My new book, Sunshine Has Its Limits is here! 

This collection of poems tells the story of a couple's journey, from the exhilaration of first attraction, through marriage and its daily rituals, to the final disenchantment. In the end, one partner accepts the other's estrangement and begins to triumph in self-awareness in this new world. 

Here are two of the poems from my book:

UNRULY ACCRUALS

The same month as the canister

vacuum cleaner dies, she claims

the refrigerator needs replacing.

His comeback is a mischievous grin

with "Does this marriage merit

a second generation of appliances?"

Her relaxed laugh and smile make plain

her disbelief that the usefulness of their

devices is what holds the two together.

Throughout those unruly accruals,

she can count on what persists,

their uncontrived delight in each other,

like some self-evident truth

that becomes its own affirmation.

        Lenny Lianne

        from Sunshine Has Its Limits (Kelsey Books, 2023)

NEITHER PERFECT NOR CONSTANT

Outside her window, a winter wind

batters bushes and leafless branches

of the silver oaks. In the sky,

the Little Dipper, that looked level

in autumn, appears on its side

as though knocked over, its contents gone.

                Who cares what's been lost,

                what's never our to keep?

she asks of no one

but the wordless universe

which, itself, is neither perfect

nor constant.                Like snow,

which overnight conceals

the hardened ground. Her world

it seems is changing clothes

and character. Each incidental

flake drops in the down-

draft, full of flight and fall,

while a chilly quietness grips the air,

like a familiar after shave. 

        Lenny Lianne

        from Sunshine Has Its Limits (Kelsay Books, 2023)

My book is available at

Kelsaybooks.com

    and

on Amazon.