poets

The Importance of Names ~ The Trees

~ shoreacres ~ 52 Comments

 

Neither my father nor my mother knew
the names of the trees
where I was born
what is that
I asked and my
father and mother did not
hear they did not look where I pointed
surfaces of furniture held
the attention of their fingers
and across the room they could watch
walls they had forgotten
where there were no questions
no voices and no shade
Were there trees where they were children
where I had not been
I asked
were there trees in those places
where my father and my mother were born
and in that time did
my father and my mother see them
and when they said yes it meant
they did not remember
What were they I asked what were they
but both my father and my mother
said they never knew
                                      “Native Trees” ~ W.S. Merwin

Comments always are welcome.
For more information on poet W.S. Merwin, please click here.

Ponderings on a Pier

~ shoreacres ~ 56 Comments

 

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.
When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky
Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.
                                                                                                    “The End” ~ Mark Strand

 

Comments always are welcome.
For more information on poet Mark Strand, U.S. Poet Laureate in 1990, please click here.

Summer Storm

~ shoreacres ~ 35 Comments

 

All day the storm’s
been squeezing out the light,
a huge mist grows
and the wind comes up —
nothing to take the boards off
the house, but enough
to set us all on edge,
although these winds,
unlike the easterly winds
of the Mediterranean
carry nothing but air.
Only a few gulls
climb the wind and swing
over the house —
the diving birds gone,
the herons that feed
at water’s edge gone,
and the ducks are sheltering
somewhere out of the storm.
I have the fire started,
a little broth on the stove,
and the house is closed
to the storm — only its light
can reach us.
It picks up the white boats.
                                      “Summer Storm” ~ Daniel Halpern

 

 
Comments always are welcome.
For more information on poet Daniel Halpern, click here.