a gorgeous poem and a request
Jan. 9th, 2012 05:29 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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greatpoetrymy request is for poems with dragonflies and/or moths in them. whether they're entirely about these winged creatures, or just mention them in passing, i'd like to read what you'd like to share, please.
and for you i've brought a wonderful poem by the mighty dorianne laux:
"Morning Song"
This morning begins almost purely, coffee
enveloped in cream, those clouds that bloom up
like madness in a cup, and I take the first swallow
before the color changes, taste the bitterness
and the faint sweet behind it, steam
rubbing my nose, an animal nuzzle,
and the sharp, nearly painful heat
at the back of my tongue, the liquid
unraveling down the raw tunnel of my throat.
And I feel my body fully, vessel of desire,
my stomach a pond of want and warmth,
utterly human, divine and awake. And I can hear
each bird's separate song, the chirt and scree,
the sip, sip, sip, the dwindle and uplift yearning,
the soup's on, soup's on, let up, let it go
of each individual voice, and I know I am here,
in this widening light, as we all are, with them,
even the most damaged among us or lonely
or nearly dead, and that for each of us there is
some small sound like an unseen bird or
a red bike grinding along the gravel path
that could wake us, and take us home.
This morning I think I'm prepared for
the final diminishment, with something
like a waking, ready awe. My complaints
folded and put away in a drawer
like needlework, unfinished, intricate
woven roads that go nowhere or disappear
in the distance, rough wanderings
that have brought me here, to this
sleep-repaired morning, these singing trees
and into my own listening body.
and for you i've brought a wonderful poem by the mighty dorianne laux:
"Morning Song"
This morning begins almost purely, coffee
enveloped in cream, those clouds that bloom up
like madness in a cup, and I take the first swallow
before the color changes, taste the bitterness
and the faint sweet behind it, steam
rubbing my nose, an animal nuzzle,
and the sharp, nearly painful heat
at the back of my tongue, the liquid
unraveling down the raw tunnel of my throat.
And I feel my body fully, vessel of desire,
my stomach a pond of want and warmth,
utterly human, divine and awake. And I can hear
each bird's separate song, the chirt and scree,
the sip, sip, sip, the dwindle and uplift yearning,
the soup's on, soup's on, let up, let it go
of each individual voice, and I know I am here,
in this widening light, as we all are, with them,
even the most damaged among us or lonely
or nearly dead, and that for each of us there is
some small sound like an unseen bird or
a red bike grinding along the gravel path
that could wake us, and take us home.
This morning I think I'm prepared for
the final diminishment, with something
like a waking, ready awe. My complaints
folded and put away in a drawer
like needlework, unfinished, intricate
woven roads that go nowhere or disappear
in the distance, rough wanderings
that have brought me here, to this
sleep-repaired morning, these singing trees
and into my own listening body.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-01-09 11:23 pm (UTC)Here's one: "the lesson of the moth (http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2003/07/29)" by Don Marquis
no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 06:09 am (UTC)ah, "the lesson of the moth" is another old favorite of mine. thank you for the impetus to re-visit it :D.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 03:30 am (UTC)PULL OFF ITS SHINY
WINGS AND LOOK...
BRIGHT RED PEPPER-POD
--KIKAKU
REPLY:
BRIGHT RED PEPPER-POD ...
IT NEEDS BUT SHINY
WINGS AND LOOK...
DARTING DRAGON-FLY!
--BASHO
Trans. Peter Beilenson. I also copied his formatting, which breaks up the long middle line of the haiku.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 06:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 06:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 08:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 03:53 am (UTC)To a Moth Seen in Winter
There's first a gloveless hand warm from my pocket,
A perch and resting place 'twixt wood and wood,
Bright-black-eyed silvery creature, brushed with brown,
The wings not folded in repose, but spread.
(Who would you be, I wonder, by those marks
If I had moths to friend as I have flowers?)
And now pray tell what lured you with false hope
To make the venture of eternity
And seek the love of kind in winter time?
But stay and hear me out. I surely think
You make a labor of flight for one so airy,
Spending yourself too much in self-support.
Nor will you find love either nor love you.
And what I pity in you is something human,
The old incurable untimeliness,
Only begetter of all ills that are.
But go. You are right. My pity cannot help.
Go till you wet your pinions and are quenched.
You must be made more simply wise than I
To know the hand I stretch impulsively
Across the gulf of well nigh everything
May reach to you, but cannot touch your fate.
I cannot touch your life, much less can save,
Who am tasked to save my own a little while.
by Robert Frost
no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 06:07 am (UTC)well, since you ask :)
Date: 2012-01-10 05:47 am (UTC)Now that I Am Never Alone
In the bath I look up and see the brown moth
pressed like a pair of unpredictable lips
against the white wall. I heat up
the water, running as much hot in as I can stand.
These handfuls over my shoulder--how once
he pulled my head against his thigh and dipped
a rivulet down my neck of coldest water from the spring
we were drinking from. Beautiful mischief
that stills a moment so I can never look
back. Only now, brightest now, and the water
never hot enough to drive that shiver out.
But I remember solitude--no other
presence and each thing what it was. Not this raw
fluttering I make of you as you have made of me
your watch-fire, your killing light.
Tess Gallagher
Re: well, since you ask :)
Date: 2012-01-10 06:06 am (UTC)that poem was absolutely lovely; i agree--a wonderful metaphor.
Re: well, since you ask :)
Date: 2012-01-11 09:36 am (UTC)Re: well, since you ask :)
Date: 2012-01-10 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 07:37 pm (UTC)The moth in the following is utterly in passing, but it's one of my favourite poems so here:
We Become New by Marge Piercy
How it feels to be touching
you: an Io moth, orange
and yellow as pollen,
wings through the night
miles to mate,
could crumble in the hand.
Yet our meaning together
is hardy as an onion
and layered.
Goes into the blood like garlic.
Sour as rose hips,
gritty as whole grain,
fragrant as thyme honey.
When I am turning slowly
in the woven hammocks of our talk,
when I am chocolate melting into you,
I taste everything new
in your mouth.
You are not my old friend.
How did I used to sit
and look at you? Now
though I seem to be standing still
I am flying flying flying
in the trees of your eyes.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 08:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 08:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 09:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 08:10 pm (UTC)No eye that sees could fail to remark you:
like any leaf the rain leaves fixed to and
flat against the barn’s gray shingle. But
what leaf, this time of year, is so pale,
the pale of leaves when they’ve lost just
enough green to become the green that means
loss and more loss, approaching? Give up
the flesh enough times, and whatever is lost
gets forgotten: that was the thought that I
woke to, those words in my head. I rose,
I did not dress, I left no particular body
sleeping and, stepping into the hour, I saw
you, strange sign, at once transparent and
impossible to entirely see through. and how
still: the still of being unmoved, and then
the still of no longer being able to be
moved. If I think of a heart, his, as I’ve
found it.... If I think of, increasingly, my
own.... If I look at you now, as from above,
and see the diva when she is caught in mid-
triumph, arms half-raised, the body as if
set at last free of the green sheath that has—
how many nights?—held her, it is not
without remembering another I once saw:
like you, except that something, a bird, some
wild and necessary hunger, had gotten to it;
and like the diva, but now broken, splayed
and torn, the green torn piecemeal from her.
I remember the hands, and—how small they
seemed, bringing the small ripped thing to me.
~By Carl Phillips
no subject
Date: 2012-01-10 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 09:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 04:28 am (UTC)And also for the moth poems collected. Nice timing.
some dragonflies
Date: 2012-03-07 04:28 pm (UTC)This is an incredible longer poem by Robert Hass, about dragonflies, they seem to be neglected here.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/178718
The text of the poem is set into the essay— the poem is called "Dragonflies Mating."