| THIRTY-SEVEN
CENTS Vol. 2, No. 3 An Online Chapter of Missouri State Poetry Society 1 March 2003 |
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From early man's pictographs in caves, nature
has been a subject for man's drawing, his art, for today we still mine our
experiences in the natural world for subjects to write about. The month
of March, we are told, comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, or
the opposite, March comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion. It
seems we are never fortunate to have a lamb-lamb month, though we may this
year encounter a lion-lion month. As Bill Lower's fine picture of the
flag caught in the wind and snow indicates, we are definitely in a lion month so far.
However it turns out, for our workshop assignment we are challenged
to write a poem about nature, either free or rhymed verse (or blank verse,
of course). Shakespeare used blank verse in the famous lines that have given
us the expressing "whistling down the wind." In Act III of Othello he gave his tragic hero, Othello, an elaborate metaphor from falconry to express
what his course of action will be if Desdemona, his wife, proves unfaithful
to him: "If I do prove her haggard [untamable], / Though her jesses [short
straps tying the leg of the hawk to its leash] were my dear heartstrings,/
I'd whistle her off [start the hawk on its flight] and let her down the wind,
/ To prey at fortune." Hawks were set off against the wind, for if they were
allowed to start with the wind behind them, they never returned, and from
that time shifted for themselves. The falconer no longer had anything
to do with a bird which he "whistled down the wind." See Lesson 5 in the
workshop for a much simpler treatment of the wind in poetry, then write
your own poem about nature and send it to me. You may, of course, send
one you have already. Old poems, either published or unpublished, are
always welcome here.
--Tom Padgett, Editor
Missouri State Poetry Society
National Federation of State Poetry
Societies |
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POEMS BY MEMBERS A PAGE (Jean Even ) A space to fill is a place to begin. In the beginning there was a word. How many words can fill a space In a blank place where things begin? In the space there is the depth As deep as any imagination. To fill the space is a dream; Dreams that are made in depth. Consider the width of a page. Is it an inch, more than eight, or As wide as the Universe in space? Words explode across the page. Space, the final frontier to explore, Is unlimited by time and boundaries. All begin at a place on a page When someone begins to explore. MY SKIN IS GREEDY (Tammie Bush) my skin is greedy wants to soak up each drop of luminescent light while my eyes feast freely on the glory and my fingers scribble quietly on their own the soft silence of sunrise broken only by the gentle scratching of pen on paper WORM PSALM (Gwendolyn Eisenmann) O worm (which end do I bespeak?), thou makest not a sound nor squeak, but I forsooth would sing thy praise and thank thee for thy quiet ways. Thou eatest the earth, O squiggly worm, and spitteth it out in curdly form to fluffeth thy bed 'round flower feet and aireth thy head in tunnely neat. Thou'rt nothing but a strip and squirm, no shape, no drape, unlovely worm, but we without thee surely would die so bless the earth wherein thee lie. Ah crumbly soil! ah humusy deeps wherein my wormy garden keeps a secret scent distilled by thee. O wiggly worm, abide with me. ICE AGE On a hilltop in the Ozarks (Tania Gray) As the ice receded it revealed a tiny white seashell a startling anomaly in the frozen earth an unbroken bowl turned up to receive alms of remembrance and I remembered when our town was all under water part of an ocean rich in intellectual delights we were a great city known as "Atlantis by the Jack’s Fork" a center of learning where scholars were respected the arts flourished and culture ran ahead people actually aspired to be noble those were the good old days then I remembered the great cataclysm when the earth buckled and shuddered land upended and settled back at crazy angles like an overturned tray of party sandwiches and we tried to resume living everyone scrambled to make a living fought for bits and pieces of land brother swore vengeance against brother everyone had to re-invent the wheel forgetting all that went before stifling and inhibiting thought creating a desert among the pines naturally it evolved into an ice age specimens of humanity were frozen in time locked in their hollows and valleys the seashell gleams in the pale morning light the seashell calls for attention LATE WINTER SONG (Tom Padgett) The corrugated fields await spring rains, stobs of stalks from last year's crop protrude, and piles of brush in fence rows clutter them like jack straws tossed on table top for play. The traffic fills the two-lane highway near, people hurrying through their destined lives, busy as corpuscles ferrying oxygen in arteries for blood's emergencies. At the window, the old man wonders who will sing his song next year--until the glare of morning sun on handlebars pulls him outside to stand his grandson's fallen bike. |
FLIGHT TIME |
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