There's ...

I

An angel on my right, my girl
A maple’s airy symphony
The scram’bling of a nervous squirrel
And breezes blushing quietly

II

A solitary Aspen tree
Whose leaves suspect that fall is near
A cloudless sky (a lifted sea)
And semi-silence everywhere

III

The coming end of summer fair
The distant call of lonely crows
The rocking of this metal chair
As stanzas three come to a close

-jwm



Of the Poem:

I wrote this while with my daughter on the afternoon of September 19th, 2010. It was a beautiful, quiet afternoon ...

... I had to capture some of the detail in a poem.

Stanza: quatrain (3 total)
Meter: tetrameter
Rhyme Scheme: abab bcbc cdcd (note how the stanzas are interlocked, 'b/b' 'c/c')

A Few Single Stanza/Poems

Speaking of single stanza poems, here’s a few that I think are pretty good (poet’s names included):



Infinity

To the ever-rising sun
There is no time, no age-
Tomorrow yesterday are one;
That which was as is to be
Doth with now as one become.
From whence we glean infinity.

Edwin A. Ackerman





Memory

Memory is a fragile thing;
A bee’s honey, and its sting.

Violet Wiggins Newton




Night is so Long

A strip of void fastened to my window frame,
And one assertive star;
Chasing me, purging me in its white flame,
Where all tomorrows are.

Mary Caluori





Friends

Some are true;
Others are not.
They’ll either love you,
Or what you’ve got.

Bea Myers



Stoic True*

Although you’ve read Chrysippus through-
And studied Epictetus too-
This doesn’t make you Stoic true,
Until you do what Stoics do.

John W. May





Hilltop Chapel

Those barless prison walls of Delta camp
Were not as frightening as one would deem.
Indeed, there I received the Spirit’s stamp,
And on hilltop chapel seen angels gleam.

Johm W. May




Bunky

With a crumpled ear and a crooked tail
And a stripped coat, like they wear in jail,
I may not amount to so very much
But still I’d like to make it clear:
I’ve earned my bed and board for life;
I caught a mouse . . . last year!

Billie Marie Crabb

****

It delights me through- this thing that bothered me a little in the past- to know that the idea of a single subject (a subject that could easily fill volumes) can be so beautifully conveyed in so short a poem. Not that I hadn’t known this before, but to see it reinforces the knowledge that it’s so.



* For the pronunciation of Chrysippus and Epictetus

Lethe (A Broken Sonnet)

HE EDGED carefully by foot Lethe’s deep
Where those who drank were oblivion fraught;
Unaware of the wake and far from sleep,
There inly arose this, his tempted thought:

What blissful state attends her solemn brook
Where with one single sip woes wash away-
And pain too, hidden pain, flushed from its nook-
If only by tasting I taste this day?
What harm could hither come to me by dream,
Or ill fate posit this slumbering night?

So he palmed lethal liquid from her stream
When just before the fatal sip, a sight!
There, etched into a whitened cypress tree,
Pale words: Before you drink, remember me.

-jwm


Of the Poem (A Note on Lethe):

Lethe (lee-thee) is the name of one of the Greek mythological rivers of the underworld. It is said that, after having passed on to that world, her waters were offered to those who wished to rid themselves of the memories of their former lives.

The obliteration of the memory of all past ills seems to have been the tempting factor of her waters; unfortunately, this obliteration included all good and joyful memories as well. Some seemed to have overlooked this crucial element.