'poetry' Category
the first light in the darkness
Somehow it feels like the days are getting short earlier this year. That is actually true: sunset tonight is six minutes earlier here than it is in Eindhoven, where I was at this time last year. (This surprises me – Eindhoven is six degrees further north, and I’d have thought we were close enough to […]
I’m not sure if this one is done
This year’s iteration of my annual light-in-darkness poem seems to be a tiny one: In the darkest part of the year, we set out, our keel pointed into midnight, trusting the stars and our own hand on the tiller to guide us into sunlit seas. Earlier years’ versions: I seem to have missed 2011, but […]
Sally Kristen Ride (1951 – 2012)
Gravity no longer holds her down and what she’s learning now, she will not reach back to teach us – not as we sit here, anyway. Who knows what learnings lie ahead once we’ve followed her path? But let it not be soon: we have still too much to learn here in lessons already given; […]
answers to poetry contest
The poems are posted at my site | LiveJournal | Dreamwidth; the books they appear in are as follows: ANSWERS: a. Dragonsinger, by Anne McCaffrey b. Someone pointed out that this version is actually The Hobbit; the LOTR version begins, “The road goes ever on and on” c. The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper, […]
poetry contest
Recently I was reading something where the main character was supposed to be a talented poet. Only problem is, the author … is not. (It’s a decent book otherwise and isn’t pretending to undue literary merit, so I won’t link it here.) That got me thinking about the following challenge. All of the bits of […]
The Glory of Repetition
Step by step the longest march can be won, can be won; Many stones may build an arch, singly none, singly none. Dip your blades deep in the shining water, pull, uncurling like a metered spring. Feel the boat beneath you taking wing; The river holds you where your oars have caught her. Do it […]
What I need here is someone to write a tune
It seems to me that we have a lot of protests these days, but not nearly enough protest songs. This one came boiling up very quickly tonight, inspired by a speech of Molly Ivis’ (duh) and a few fiery young women I know. The spirit of Molly is rising, she’s still raising hell, having fun. […]
November makings
My knitting has gotten complicated again. I’ve just started a lace cowl I’m calling Wisp, an airy thing made of blue-gray lace yarn left over from a couple of shawls. It’s too my own pattern; the first lace stitch I tried was too airy and I was afraid it would just crumple and look like […]
a small sermon-poem
I don’t often get to sermonizing, and I don’t want to inflict it on y’all, but I just want to say it if only for myself. Hence the cut tag. I am quoting the New Testament liberally, even though it’s not my scripture, both because there is considerable wisdom there and because the movement I […]
Revere, redux
Listen, my children and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five Apparently few are now alive Who have studied that famous day and year. How lucky we were, in those early days, That our founding fathers (and mothers too) Thought a well-stocked mind was no […]