Meadow Poetry Quotes

I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you. Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through. Tell me what the word home means to you and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mother’s name just by the way you describe your bedroom when you were eight. See, I want to know the first time you felt the weight of hate, and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain or bounce in the bellies of snow? And if you were to build a snowman, would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms or would leave your snowman armless for the sake of being harmless to the tree? And if you would, would you notice how that tree weeps for you because your snowman has no arms to hug you every time you kiss him on the cheek? Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad even if it makes your lover mad? Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain? See, I wanna know what you think of your first name, and if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joy when she spoke it for the very first time. I want you to tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind. Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel. Tell me, knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years old beating up little boys at school. If you were walking by a chemical plant where smokestacks were filling the sky with dark black clouds would you holler “Poison! Poison! Poison!” really loud or would you whisper “That cloud looks like a fish, and that cloud looks like a fairy!” Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin? Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea? And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me — how would you explain the miracle of my life to me? See, I wanna know if you believe in any god or if you believe in many gods or better yet what gods believe in you. And for all the times that you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself, have the prayers you asked come true? And if they didn’t, did you feel denied? And if you felt denied, denied by who? I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling good. I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling bad. I wanna know the first person who taught you your beauty could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass. If you ever reach enlightenment will you remember how to laugh? Have you ever been a song? Would you think less of me if I told you I’ve lived my entire life a little off-key? And I’m not nearly as smart as my poetry I just plagiarize the thoughts of the people around me who have learned the wisdom of silence. Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence? And if you do — I want you to tell me of a meadow where my skateboard will soar. See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living. I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving, and if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes. I wanna know if you bleed sometimes from other people’s wounds, and if you dream sometimes that this life is just a balloon — that if you wanted to, you could pop, but you never would ‘cause you’d never want it to stop. If a tree fell in the forest and you were the only one there to hear — if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist, or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness? And lastly, let me ask you this: If you and I went for a walk and the entire walk, we didn’t talk — do you think eventually, we’d… kiss? No, wait. That’s asking too much — after all, this is only our first date.

It is growing cold. Winter is putting footsteps in the meadow. What whiteness boasts that sun that comes into this wood! One would say milk-colored maidens are dancing on the petals of orchids. How coldly burns our sun! One would say its rays of light are shards of snow, one imagines the sun lives upon a snow crested peak on this day. One would say she is a woman who wears a gown of winter frost that blinds the eyes. Helplessness has weakened me. Wandering has wearied my legs.

Easter is… Joining in a birdsong, Eying an early sunrise, Smelling yellow daffodils, Unbolting windows and doors, Skipping through meadows, Cuddling newborns, Hoping, believing, Reviving spent life, Inhaling fresh air, Sprinkling seeds along furrows, Tracking in the mud. Easter is the soul’s first taste of spring.

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing. What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don’t force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T. S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don’t understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day.

Harshness vanished. A sudden softness has replaced the meadows' wintry grey. Little rivulets of water changed their singing accents. Tendernesses, hesitantly, reach toward the earth from space, and country lanes are showing these unexpected subtle risings that find expression in the empty trees.

The South-wind brings Life, sunshine and desire, And on every mount and meadow Breathes aromatic fire; But over the dead he has no power, The lost, the lost, he cannot restore; And, looking over the hills, I mourn The darling who shall not return.

I see what I want of Love... I see horses making the meadow dance, fifty guitars sighing, and a swarm of bees suckling the wild berries, and I close my eyes until I see our shadow behind this dispossessed place... I see what I want of people: their desire to long for anything, their lateness in getting to work and their hurry to return to their folk... and their need to say: Good Morning...

Maria, lonely prostitute on a street of pain, You, at least, hail me and speak to me While a thousand others ignore my face. You offer me an hour of love, And your fees are not as costly as most. You are the madonna of the lonely, The first-born daughter in a world of pain. You do not turn fat men aside, Or trample on the stuttering, shy ones, You are the meadow where desperate men Can find a moment's comfort. Men have paid more to their wives To know a bit of peace And could not walk away without the guilt That masquerades as love. You do not bind them, lovely Maria, you comfort them And bid them return. Your body is more Christian than the Bishop's Whose gloved hand cannot feel the dropping of my blood. Your passion is as genuine as most, Your caring as real! But you, Maria, sacred whore on the endless pavement of pain, You, whose virginity each man may make his own Without paying ought but your fee, You who know nothing of virgin births and immaculate conceptions, You who touch man's flesh and caress a stranger, Who warm his bed to bring his aching skin alive, You make more sense than stock markets and football games Where sad men beg for virility. You offer yourself for a fee--and who offers himself for less? At times you are cruel and demanding--harsh and insensitive, At times you are shrewd and deceptive--grasping and hollow. The wonder is that at times you are gentle and concerned, Warm and loving. You deserve more respect than nuns who hide their sex for eternal love; Your fees are not so high, nor your prejudice so virtuous. You deserve more laurels than the self-pitying mother of many children, And your fee is not as costly as most. Man comes to you when his bed is filled with brass and emptiness, When liquor has dulled his sense enough To know his need of you. He will come in fantasy and despair, Maria, And leave without apologies. He will come in loneliness--and perhaps Leave in loneliness as well. But you give him more than soldiers who win medals and pensions, More than priests who offer absolution And sweet-smelling ritual, More than friends who anticipate his death Or challenge his life, And your fee is not as costly as most. You admit that your love is for a fee, Few women can be as honest. There are monuments to statesmen who gave nothing to anyone Except their hungry ego, Monuments to mothers who turned their children Into starving, anxious bodies, Monuments to Lady Liberty who makes poor men prisoners. I would erect a monument for you-- who give more than most-- And for a meager fee. Among the lonely, you are perhaps the loneliest of all, You come so close to love But it eludes you While proper women march to church and fantasize In the silence of their rooms, While lonely women take their husbands' arms To hold them on life's surface, While chattering women fill their closets with clothes and Their lips with lies, You offer love for a fee--which is not as costly as most-- And remain a lonely prostitute on a street of pain. You are not immoral, little Maria, only tired and afraid, But you are not as hollow as the police who pursue you, The politicians who jail you, the pharisees who scorn you. You give what you promise--take your paltry fee--and Wander on the endless, aching pavements of pain. You know more of universal love than the nations who thrive on war, More than the churches whose dogmas are private vendettas made sacred, More than the tall buildings and sprawling factories Where men wear chains. You are a lonely prostitute who speaks to me as I pass, And I smile at you because I am a lonely man.

... ancient days of sorrow ancient days of pain - heartaches of the past slowly began to wane ... (from gleaning granules)

Meadow's Waltz ...the meadow had become her sanctuary of spirit offering an escape from a pain no child should ever endure foreboding clouds began...

Quietude Nothing visits me; my heart is quiet. It was Sunday’s roofed school paths, - everyone gone to the meadow. The floorboards have a cold shine, small birds are singing in the garden. The half-shut tap’s droplet blinks! The earth is rose-coloured, larks in the sky; the sky is a beautiful April. Nothing visits me; my heart is quiet.

Only--but this is rare-- When a beloved hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafen'd ear Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd-- A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. A man becomes aware of his life's flow, And hears its winding murmur; and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

Oh, the wondrous places through which I wander: woodlands, meadows, and green hillsides yonder. I hike over mossy, meandering paths. Dead branches serve nicely as walking staffs. The sunset paints scenery crimson and gold. Oh, wondrous nature dyed in colors bold.

Endymion The rising moon has hid the stars; Her level rays, like golden bars, Lie on the landscape green, With shadows brown between. And silver white the river gleams, As if Diana, in her dreams, Had dropt her silver bow Upon the meadows low. On such a tranquil night as this, She woke Endymion with a kiss, When, sleeping in the grove, He dreamed not of her love. Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought, Love gives itself, but is not bought; Nor voice, nor sound betrays Its deep, impassioned gaze. It comes,--the beautiful, the free, The crown of all humanity,-- In silence and alone To seek the elected one. It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep Are Life's oblivion, the soul's sleep, And kisses the closed eyes Of him, who slumbering lies. O weary hearts! O slumbering eyes! O drooping souls, whose destinies Are fraught with fear and pain, Ye shall be loved again! No one is so accursed by fate, No one so utterly desolate, But some heart, though unknown, Responds unto his own. Responds,--as if with unseen wings, An angel touched its quivering strings; And whispers, in its song, "Where hast thou stayed so long?

For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.

I saw it from that hidden, silent place Where the old wood half shuts the meadow in. It shone through all the sunset's glories - thin At first, but with a slowly brightening face. Night came, and that lone beacon, amber-hued, Beat on my sight as never it did of old; The evening star - but grown a thousandfold More haunting in this hush and solitude. It traced strange pictures on the quivering air - Half-memories that had always filled my eyes - Vast towers and gardens; curious seas and skies Of some dim life - I never could tell where. But I knew that through the cosmic dome Those rays were calling from my far, lost home.

A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky’s stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off. At the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp. There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed; it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch. The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea. All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light. It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve. I long for the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to such a pure slip of bone. But I’ll not go northing this year. I’ll stalk that floating pole and frigid air by waiting here. I wait on bridges; I wait, struck, on forest paths and meadow’s fringes, hilltops and banksides, day in and day out, and I receive a southing as a gift. The North washes down the mountains like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, and pours across the valley; it comes to me. It sweetens the persimmons and numbs the last of the crickets and hornets; it fans the flames of the forest maples, bows the meadow’s seeded grasses and pokes it chilling fingers under the leaf litter, thrusting the springtails and the earthworms deeper into the earth. The sun heaves to the south by day, and at night wild Orion emerges looming like the Specter over Dead Man Mountain. Something is already here, and more is coming.

Francesca said nothing, wondering about a man to whom the difference between a pasture and a meadow seemed important, who got excited about sky color, who wrote a little poetry but not much fiction. Who played the guitar, who earned his living by images and carried his tools in knapsacks. Who seemed like the wind. And moved like it. Came from it, perhaps.

concept: me, dancing alone in a moonlit meadow. everything looks silver. i'm not worried at all

To a Familiar Genius Flying By Reveal yourself, anonymous enchanter! What heaven hastens you to me? Why draw me to that promised land again That I gave up so long ago? Was it not you who in my youth Enchanted me with such sweet dreams, Did you not whisper, long ago, Dear hopes of a guests ethereal? Was it not you through whom all lived In golden days, in happy lands Of fragrant meadows, waters bright, Where days were merry ?neath clear skies? Was it not you who breathed into my vernal breast Some melancholy mysteries Tormenting it with keen desire Exciting it to anxious joy? Was it not you who bore my soul aloft Upon the inspiration of your sacred verse, Who flamed before me like a holy vision, Initiating me into life's beauty? In hours lost, hours of secret grief, Did you not always murmur to my heart, With happy comfort soothe it And nurture it with quiet hope? Did not my soul forever heed you In all the purest moments of my life When'ere it glimpsed fate's sacred essence With only God to witness it? What news bring you, O, my enchantress? Or will you once more call in dreams Awaken futile thoughts of old, Whisper of joy and then fall silent? O spirit, bide with me awhile; O, faithful friend, haste not away; Stay, please become my earthly life, O, Guardian angel of my soul.

The longer I live here, the better satisfied I am in having pitched my earthly camp-fire, gypsylike, on the edge of a town, keeping it on one side, and the green fields, lanes, and woods on the other. Each, in turn, is to me as a magnet to the needle. At times the needle of my nature points towards the country. On that side everything is poetry. I wander over field and forest, and through me runs a glad current of feeling that is like a clear brook across the meadows of May. At others the needle veers round, and I go to town--to the massed haunts of the highest animal and cannibal.

Those green irises were like gentle pools of brilliant meadows of sage and green-envy coneflowers swaying in a warm breeze. HOLY fuck. What the hell sort of poetry was that dribbling out of my twisted brain?

God is unkind to gardeners and reapers. Slanted rain coils and falls from up high And the wide raincoats catch water, That once had reflected the sky. In underwater realm are fields and meadows And the free currents sing a lot, Plums rupture on bloated branches And grass strands, lying down, rot. And through the dense and watery net I see your darling face, A quiet park, a round porch And a Chinese arbour-place.

How hard it is, to be forced to the conclusion that people should be, nine tenths of the time, left alone! - When there is that in me that longs for absolute commitment. One of the poem-ideas I had was that one could respect only the people who knew that cups had to be washed up and put away after drinking, and knew that a Monday of work follows a Sunday in the water meadows, and that old age with its distorting-mirror memories follows youth and its raw pleasures, but that it's quite impossible to love such people, for what we want in love is release from our beliefs, not confirmation in them. That is where the 'courage of love' comes in - to have the courage to commit yourself to something you don't believe, because it is what - for the moment, anyway - thrills your by its audacity. (Some of the phrasing of this is odd, but it would make a good poem if it had any words...)

Summer days, and the flat water meadows and the blue hills in the distance, and the willows up the backwater and the pools underneath like a kind of deep green glass. Summer evenings, the fish breaking the water, the nightjars hawking round your head, the smell of nightstocks and latakia. Don’t mistake what I’m talking about. It’s not that I’m trying to put across any of that poetry of childhood stuff. I know that’s all baloney. Old Porteous (a friend of mine, a retired schoolmaster, I’ll tell you about him later) is great on the poetry of childhood. Sometimes he reads me stuff about it out of books. Wordsworth. Lucy Gray. There was a time when meadow, grove, and all that. Needless to say he’s got no kids of his own. The truth is that kids aren’t in any way poetic, they’re merely savage little animals, except that no animal is a quarter as selfish. A boy isn’t interested in meadows, groves, and so forth. He never looks at a landscape, doesn’tgive a damn for flowers, and unless they affect him in some way, such as being good to eat, he doesn’t know one plant from another. Killing things - that’s about as near to poetry as a boy gets. And yet all the while there’s that peculiar intensity, the power of longing for things as you can’t long when you’re grown up, and the feeling that time stretches out and out in front of you and that whatever you’re doing you could go on for ever.

Russia—not her politics, but her language, woodlands and meadows, rivers and lakes, centuries-old capitals, her poetry, her prayers, Tolstoy, Gogol, Bulgakov, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Akhmatova, Mayakovsky, Pasternak, the White Nights, summers and winters, families, dachas, and above everything else, her ballet—birthed us and gave us a reason for life. I loved this land, and my place in it was at the theater. And if some things weren’t as they should be, that was also the case in every other country.

Outside, the meadows - dewy and golden are cloaked in summer blooms. My heart, scorching and desolate sighs and sings sad songs of despair And while I gather hundreds of broken pieces of my heart Outside, the meadows - dewy and golden are cloaked in summer blooms.

Orpheus chose to be the leader of mankind. Ah, not even Orpheus had attained such a goal, not even his immortal greatness had justified such vain and presumptuous dreams of grandeur, such flagrant overestimation of poetry! Certainly many instances of earthly beauty--a song, the twilit sea, the tone of the lyre, the voice of a boy, a verse, a statue, a column, a garden, a single flower--all possess the divine faculty of making man hearken unto the innermost and outermost boundaries of his existence, and therefore it is not to be wondered at that the lofty art of Orpheus was esteemed to have the power of diverting the streams from their beds and changing their courses, of luring the wild beasts of the forest with tender dominance, of arresting the cattle a-browse upon the meadows and moving them to listen, caught in the dream and enchanted, the dreamwish of all art: the world compelled to listen, ready to receive the song and its salvation. However, even had Orpheus achieved his aim, the help lasts no longer than the song, nor does the listening, and on no account might the song resound too long, otherwise the streams would return to their old courses, the wild beasts of the forest would again fall upon and slay the innocent beasts of the field, and man would revert again to his old, habitual cruelty; for not only did no intoxication last long, and this was likewise true of beauty's spell, but furthermore, the mildness to which men and beasts had yielded was only half of the intoxication of beauty, while the other half, not less strong and for the most part far stronger, was of such surpassing and terrible cruelty--the most cruel of men delights himself with a flower--that beauty, and before all the beauty born of art, failed quickly of its effect if in disregard of the reciprocal balance of its two components it approached man with but one of them.

There are such days before the spring: When meadows rest beneath the snow, And dry and cheerful branches swing When gentle warm winds blow. You marvel at your body’s lightness And do not recognize your home, And sing again with new excitement The song that once seemed tiresome.

After a while in a very gentle voice he asked, ‘Would you like to leave now? We’ll be better off in the boat.’ ‘All right my pet,’ she said. Awash with forgiveness and with tears still in his eyes he held her two hands tightly and helped her on board. Basking in the warmth of the afternoon they rowed upstream again past the willows and the grass-covered banks. When they reached Le Grillon once more it was not yet six, so, leaving their skiff, they set off on foot towards Bezons across the meadows and past the high poplars bordering the banks. The wide hayfields waiting to be harvested were full of flowers. The sinking sun cast a mantle of russet light over all and in the gentle warmth of the day’s end the fragrance of the grass wafted in on them mingling with the damp smells of the river and filling the air with easy languor and an atmosphere of blessed well-being. He felt soft and unresistant, in communion with the calm splendour of the evening and with the vague, mysterious thrill of life itself. He felt in tune with the all-embracing poetry of the moment in which plants and all that surrounded him revealed themselves to his senses at this lovely restful and reflective time of day. He was sensitive to it all but she appeared totally unaffected. They were walking side by side when suddenly, bored by the silence, she began to sing.

Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow as if it were a scene made-up by the mind, that is not mine, but is a made place, that is mine, it is so near to the heart, an eternal pasture folded in all thought so that there is a hall therein that is a made place, created by light wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall. Wherefrom fall all architectures I am I say are likenesses of the First Beloved whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady. She it is Queen Under The Hill whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words that is a field folded. It is only a dream of the grass blowing east against the source of the sun in an hour before the sun’s going down whose secret we see in a children’s game of ring a round of roses told. Often I am permitted to return to a meadow as if it were a given property of the mind that certain bounds hold against chaos, that is a place of first permission, everlasting omen of what is.

Sirius Sojourn by Stewart Stafford Cottage in an aromatic meadow, Summer's languid haze hanging, The old windmill's sundial stilled, Chirping birds and insect drones. Flowing brooks at a funereal pace, A bloated lull duels exiguous energy, Thick air's blanketing somnolence, Liquid refreshment soothes inertia. Salmon sundown slithers to a siesta, In a clear purple sky nodding assent, The intense day imperceptibly eased, As the night's humid embrace begins. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

Жираф Сегодня, я вижу, особенно грустен твой взгляд, И руки особенно тонки, колени обняв. Послушай: далёко, далёко на озере Чад Изысканный бродит жираф. Ему грациозная стройность и нега дана, И шкуру его украшает волшебный узор, С которым равняться осмелиться только Луна, Дробясь и качаясь на влаге широких озёр. Вдали он подобен цветным парусам корабля, И бег его плавен, как радостный птичий полёт. Я знаю, что много чудесного видит земля, Когда на закате он прячется в мраморный грот. Я знаю весёлые сказки таинственных стран Про чёрную деву, про страсть молодого вождя, Но ты слишком долго вдыхала тяжёлый туман, Ты верить не хочешь во что-нибудь, кроме дождя. И как я тебе расскажу про тропический сад, Про стройный пальмы, про запах немыслимых трав... Ты плачешь? Послушай... далёко, на озере Чад Изысканный бродит жираф. The Giraffe O, the look in your eyes this morning is more than usually sad, With your little arms wrapped round your knees and body bent in half. Let me tell you a story: far, far away, on the distant shores of Lake Chad, There roams a most majestic giraffe Blessed with a handsome build and graceful carriage And a coat painted hypnotic, magical patterns, With which none but the moon above dare compare When her light falls down to be scattered and rocked on the waters, Passing like a blazing sail far out at sea As she runs by, nimble and carefree as a bird in flight. I hear tell the earth has seen many wonderful things When the giraffe hides herself away and the sun sets into night. I know fabulous tales of far off, alien lands, Of a dark maiden, of a young captain’s burning desire, all this I know, But you’ve breathed in the damp marsh air for so long You don’t want to believe in anything but the rain out your window. I still haven’t told you about her tropic garden, with the slenderest palm trees, The sweetest wildflowers, meadows of unbelievable grass . . . Are you crying? Let me tell you a story: far away, on the distant shores of Lake Chad, There roams a most majestic giraffe.

The construction of castle arbours, monastic cloister gardens and Byzantine courtyards with trees and flowers attested to Western interest in the natural world. Paradise remained synonymous with perfect environments. In Anglo-Saxon, 'paradise' translated as 'meadow' or 'pasture'. Notions of a classical Golden Age, local legends, religion and romantic poetry all perpetuated the concept of nature as a refuge from society. For the nobility, nature signified a retreat for aesthetic pleasure and a venue for spiritual uplift. However, for the average medieval peasant, the organic world meant livestock rearing and crop production.

remember how we used to play" in the upper atmosphere in the vertical climb in the sky above the clouds remember how we used to play in the nautical dusk along the radians of midheaven… out there amid the scattered wavelengths within the aerosols of a meteorological meadow we tread upon the aether side by side the ampere and the joule the whisper and the gleam borne along effervescent freeways remember how we came to rest inside the amethyst auditorium of a storm there - suspended in an echo-plex of thunder you drew me close and I tasted the voltage of your skin the radiometry of your eyes the amphetamine of your lips the flushed cushion of your tongue

Homer's Hymn to the Earth: Mother of All Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818. O universal Mother, who dost keep From everlasting thy foundations deep, Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee! All shapes that have their dwelling in the sea, All things that fly, or on the ground divine Live, move, and there are nourished—these are thine; These from thy wealth thou dost sustain; from thee Fair babes are born, and fruits on every tree Hang ripe and large, revered Divinity! The life of mortal men beneath thy sway Is held; thy power both gives and takes away! Happy are they whom thy mild favours nourish; All things unstinted round them grow and flourish. For them, endures the life-sustaining field Its load of harvest, and their cattle yield Large increase, and their house with wealth is filled. Such honoured dwell in cities fair and free, The homes of lovely women, prosperously; Their sons exult in youth's new budding gladness, And their fresh daughters free from care or sadness, With bloom-inwoven dance and happy song, On the soft flowers the meadow-grass among, Leap round them sporting—such delights by thee Are given, rich Power, revered Divinity. Mother of gods, thou Wife of starry Heaven, Farewell! be thou propitious, and be given A happy life for this brief melody, Nor thou nor other songs shall unremembered be.

I love the handful of the earth you are. Because of its meadows, vast as a planet, I have no other star. You are my replica of the multiplying universe. Your wide eyes are the only light I know from extinguished constellations; your skin throbs like the streak of a meteor through rain. Your hips were that much of the moon for me; your deep mouth and its delights, that much sun; your heart, fiery with its long red rays, was that much ardent light, like honey in the shade. So I pass across your burning form, kissing you—compact and planetary, my dove, my globe. — Pablo Neruda, “XVI,” transl. Stephen Tapscott, from One Hundred Love Sonnets, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, ed. Ilan Stavans (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003)

Poetry ~~ No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requistions. It is indeed all that we do not know. The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth, grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks, but only how good potato blows are. The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight has rested on this ground. It has a logic more severe than the logician's. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.

I think translation can be much harder than original composition in many ways. The poet is free to say whatever he likes, you see – he can choose from any number of linguistic tricks in the language he’s composing in. Word choice, word order, sound – they all matter, and without any one of them the whole thing falls apart. That’s why Shelley writes that translating poetry is about as wise as casting a violet into a crucible.* So the translator needs to be translator, literary critic, and poet all at once – he must read the original well enough to understand all the machinery at play, to convey its meaning with as much accuracy as possible, then rearrange the translated meaning into an aesthetically pleasing structure in the target language that, by his judgment, matches the original. The poet runs untrammelled across the meadow. The translator dances in shackles.

The Fairy Bride The fairy bride picked the lock And tiptoed through the summer wood She gave no mind to life behind Or shadows thrown by bad or good She gave no mind to wrong or right Or screeching call of owls at night She listened for the haunting cries That called her from her blushing bud Ferns unfurl a tickled fronds Laughing at her slightest brush Dewdrops glisten with green eyes Meadows sway with lightest hush A captive note arrests her breath Dreamers weave intricate maze Lithe and quick she shines the light Illuminating shadow glades She gives no mind to life and limb Or captor’s hiss from deep within Her purity will seize the thread Dangling loose from dreamer’s web She spins a silver spool of light To catch the rays of stars at night Now innocence can spread its wings Making haste for freedom flight She gives no mind to where they fly Or how tall grasses lift her high She clicks the lock and in she glides All nature hails the fairy bride

All at once, something wonderful happened, although at first, it seemed perfectly ordinary. A female goldfinch suddenly hove into view. She lighted weightlessly on the head of a bankside purple thistle and began emptying the seedcase, sowing the air with down. The lighted frame of my window filled. The down rose and spread in all directions, wafting over the dam’s waterfall and wavering between the tulip trunks and into the meadow. It vaulted towards the orchard in a puff; it hovered over the ripening pawpaw fruit and staggered up the steep faced terrace. It jerked, floated, rolled, veered, swayed. The thistle down faltered down toward the cottage and gusted clear to the woods; it rose and entered the shaggy arms of pecans. At last it strayed like snow, blind and sweet, into the pool of the creek upstream, and into the race of the creek over rocks down. It shuddered onto the tips of growing grasses, where it poised, light, still wracked by errant quivers. I was holding my breath. Is this where we live, I thought, in this place in this moment, with the air so light and wild? The same fixity that collapses stars and drives the mantis to devour her mate eased these creatures together before my eyes: the thick adept bill of the goldfinch, and the feathery coded down. How could anything be amiss? If I myself were lighter and frayed, I could ride these small winds, too, taking my chances, for the pleasure of being so purely played. The thistle is part of Adam’s curse. “Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” A terrible curse: But does the goldfinch eat thorny sorrow with the thistle or do I? If this furling air is fallen, then the fall was happy indeed. If this creekside garden is sorrow, then I seek martyrdom. I was weightless; my bones were taut skins blown with buoyant gas; it seemed that if I inhaled too deeply, my shoulders and head would waft off. Alleluia.

Tell me not here, it needs not saying, What tune the enchantress plays In aftermaths of soft September Or under blanching mays, For she and I were long acquainted And I knew all her ways. On russet floors, by waters idle, The pine lets fall its cone; The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing In leafy dells alone; And traveler's joy beguiles in autumn Hearts that have lost their own. On acres of the seeded grasses The changing burnish heaves; Or marshalled under moons of harvest Stand still all night the sheaves; Or beeches strip in storms for winter And stain the wind with leaves. Possess, as I possessed a season, The countries I resign, Where over elmy plains the highway Would mount the hills and shine, And full of shade the pillared forest Would murmur and be mine. For nature, heartless, witless nature, Will neither care nor know What stranger's feet may find the meadow And trespass there and go, Nor ask amid the dews of morning If they are mine or no.

If any of us knew what we were doing, or where we are going, then when we think we best know! We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered, that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us. All our days are so unprofitable while they pass, that 'tis wonderful where or when we ever got anything of this which we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. We never got it on any dated calendar day. Some heavenly days must have been intercalated somewhere, like those that Hermes won with dice of the Moon, that Osiris might be born. It is said, all martyrdoms looked mean when they were suffered. Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon. Our life looks trivial, and we shun to record it. Men seem to have learned of the horizon the art of perpetual retreating and reference. `Yonder uplands are rich pasturage, and my neighbor has fertile meadow, but my field,' says the querulous farmer, `only holds the world together.

Yorick's Used and Rare Books had a small storefront on Channing but a deep interior shaded by tall bookcases crammed with history, poetry, theology, antiquated anthologies. There was no open wall space to hang the framed prints for sale, so Hogarth's scenes of lust, pride, and debauchery leaned rakishly against piles of novels, folk tales, and literary theory. In the back room these piles were so tall and dusty that they took on a geological air, rising like stalagmites. Jess often felt her workplace was a secret mine or quarry where she could pry crystals from crevices and sweep precious jewels straight off the floor. As she tended crowded shelves, she opened one volume and then another, turning pages on the history of gardens, perusing Edna St. Vincent Millay: "We were very tired, were very merry, / We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry..." dipping into Gibbon: "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay..." and old translations of Grimm's Fairy Tales: "They walked the whole day over meadows, fields, and stony places. And when it rained, the little sister said, 'Heaven and our hearts are weeping together...

Robin leaned back and drained the rest of his Madeira. Several seconds passed before he realized that the poem had ended, and his appraisal was required. ‘We have translators working on poetry at Babel,’ he said blandly, for lack of anything better to say. ‘Of course that’s not the same,’ Pendennis said. ‘Translating poetry is for those who haven’t the creative fire themselves. They can only seek residual fame cribbing off the work of others.’ Robin scoffed. ‘I don’t think that’s true.’ ‘You wouldn’t know,’ said Pendennis. ‘You’re not a poet.’ ‘Actually—’ Robin fidgeted with the stem of his glass for a moment, then decided to keep talking. ‘I think translation can be much harder than original composition in many ways. The poet is free to say whatever he likes, you see – he can choose from any number of linguistic tricks in the language he’s composing in. Word choice, word order, sound – they all matter, and without any one of them the whole thing falls apart. That’s why Shelley writes that translating poetry is about as wise as casting a violet into a crucible.* So the translator needs to be translator, literary critic, and poet all at once – he must read the original well enough to understand all the machinery at play, to convey its meaning with as much accuracy as possible, then rearrange the translated meaning into an aesthetically pleasing structure in the target language that, by his judgment, matches the original. The poet runs untrammelled across the meadow. The translator dances in shackles.

You whom I could not save, Listen to me. Can we agree Kevlar backpacks shouldn’t be needed for children walking to school? Those same children also shouldn’t require a suit of armor when standing on their front lawns, or snipers to watch their backs as they eat at McDonalds. They shouldn’t have to stop to consider the speed of a bullet or how it might reshape their bodies. But one winter, back in Detroit, I had one student who opened a door and died. It was the front door to his house, but it could have been any door, and the bullet could have written any name. The shooter was thirteen years old and was aiming at someone else. But a bullet doesn’t care about “aim,” it doesn’t distinguish between the innocent and the innocent, and how was the bullet supposed to know this child would open the door at the exact wrong moment because his friend was outside and screaming for help. Did I say I had “one” student who opened a door and died? That’s wrong. There were many. The classroom of grief had far more seats than the classroom for math though every student in the classroom for math could count the names of the dead. A kid opens a door. The bullet couldn’t possibly know, nor could the gun, because “guns don’t kill people,” they don’t have minds to decide such things, they don’t choose or have a conscience, and when a man doesn’t have a conscience, we call him a psychopath. This is how we know what type of assault rifle a man can be, and how we discover the hell that thrums inside each of them. Today, there’s another shooting with dead kids everywhere. It was a school, a movie theater, a parking lot. The world is full of doors. And you, whom I cannot save, you may open a door and enter a meadow, or a eulogy. And if the latter, you will be mourned, then buried in rhetoric. There will be monuments of legislation, little flowers made from red tape. What should we do? we’ll ask again. The earth will close like a door above you. What should we do? And that click you hear? That’s just our voices, the deadbolt of discourse sliding into place.

Vile people displayed no gift for poetry or aptitude to display kindness. The Captain could not stretch the lineament of his mind beyond his own hide. He did not see his shadow. He could not hear the Parnassus muse whose voice raps at the hidden door of the poet’s soul. He had no coyote spirit to guide him; he was unable to comprehend the passionate wilderness of life. He could not talk to nature. He could not make friends with the thunder and he could not see beauty in the lightning. He did not open his bedroom window to let in the sweet smell of night rain. His hooded eyes did not glow in the moonlight. He did not appreciate the taste of quaintness. He could not sense the feelings of other people who soaked in the rose scented silence of a sunset. He was incapable of oneness. He never discovered how to dance barefooted for pure joy under a sprinkle of stars or take a knee in a meadow of tears mourning other people’s sorrow.

Some Consequences of the Made Thing The End. Above these words the sky closes. It closes by turning white. Not The white of all clouds or being within a cloud. White of worldless light. The End. Feel a silence there that reminds you of a scent. Crushed grass the hooves galloped through Or is it the binder’s glue? Some silence never not real finally can be Heard. Silence before the first words. Precedent chaos. Or marrow work. Or just the sound of the throat opening to speak. Like those scholars of pure water Who rode through mountains and meadows To drink from each fresh spring a glass And then with brush and ink wrote poems On the differences of sameness, You too feel yourself taste the silent page Of the end and the silent page of beginning. They taste so much of whiteness never more White than white that’s been lost. You have some sense of the book Altering, page sewn secretly next to page, Last page stitched to first. O, earth— It rolls around the solar scroll Turning nothing into years and years into Nothing. At The End you’re a witness to this work That wears the witness away. And who are you Anyway. Pronoun of the 2nd person. Lover, Stranger, God. Student, Child, Shade. Something similar gathers in you. Another way of saying I in a poem— Of saying I in a poem that realizes at the end That I am just a distance from myself. And so are you. That same distance.

Death was everywhere. Death was everything. Career. Desire. Dream. Poetry. Love. Youth itself. Dying became just another way of living. Graveyards sprang up in parks and meadows, by streams and rivers, in fields and forest glades. Tombstones grew out of the ground like young children’s teeth. Every village, every locality, had its own graveyard.

A note to Pahelgam My visions are getting blurred, i can't see myself In a meadow, the one behind Aru Blue sapphire, my days and nights The holy water of Lidder I can't breathe, but your breeze Oh Kolhai! embrace my existence And to my eyes, Qurrata Ayun Your visions, wherever i see Across the country, but steadfast is my heart Under the bonfire of liddervat, a prolonged night May the creator, forgive my ignorance A tear about to vanish, but Alhamdulillah

Did you ever look back? To the times where things are easy. Its beautiful. Roses are red, as the sun shone its light on a crispy meadowed leaves. All the laughter and joy, memories of long lost innocence and naive optimism. Its another day in paradise. Have you ever wondered about the future? People grow apart, life gets lonely with your mind playing chase with you. Its daunting. Violets might not be blue, but I certainly do. Like the cold wind that freezes you in your track as you venture the dark, soulless night in this city of stars. Is this really the life in paradise? I walk alone on a crowded street, can't shake my loneliness in these busy madness. But the dawn did come, enlightening lost souls in its radiant crimson light. Like a fire rekindled to ignite this young body of an old soul. Its another day in paradise, and youre hoping to see it coming. And when the time comes, it will be nothing like you've ever seen.

Let me kiss you Irma! There in the middle, in the space between the light and dark, Let me love you in the corners bright, Where your heart beat is the mark, To guide me through the mist of time with all my might, Because my love it is you that spreads like brightness in my world, Where your memories cast everlasting light, On the darkest and desolate corners of my world, And then fills me with the spirit to fight, All my demons and my fears, Your simple look offers me endless joy, As my existence the drapery of your brightness wears, And I begin to foil life’s every ploy, To oust me from my dominion, that is mine, But little does it know one can never steal the scent from the rose, And your memories that enrich me, become my goldmine, Granting me courage that before the brightest flash of life, I may put up my best pose, So come let me bear you in my arms, Let me kiss you like the night kisses everything beyond those shadows, And as my heart with these beautiful feelings warms, Let me offer smiles to the life’s marooned widows, Who have moaned enough and grieved a lot, Let me kiss you and then wage the war, Between the right and the evil in the reality’s merciless plot, It may happen that then stars that seem too far, Would tumble from the skies, To bury the evil in the star dust, But let us tread with caution for haste is only good when catching flies, For lovers always do what they must, It is the destiny of love and maybe the price of the kiss, That we all pay for with our heart beats, So let me hold you in my arms and feel my real bliss, Before my fate confronts the destiny and my courage both of them meets, In the open playground of life and chance, Where the truthful and the valiant always wins, Because it is a well coordinated dance, Where one always has to win though it is a competition between the twins, So kiss me and wish for my victory, Because through me you shall win too, As we are cast in the life’s endless trajectory, Where there shall always be one constant Irma, that, I love you, So, let the stars bear witness to valour of love, And as you kiss me, let the stars tumble from the skies, Then let no one seek the Heavens above, Because for our love, our passions and joys, here is where a lover dies, And this is where Christ died, This is where crusades were waged, This is where goodness was promoted and this is where Judas lied, And this is where lovers are caged, So let our battles of love be fought here, For a kiss, for a warm embrace, for a sweet memory’s sake, Then as I see you and your beauty everywhere, Let me love you forever for love’s and my own sake, Tonight when the sky shall be lit with many a twinkling star, I shall wait under the open sky and the moonlight, And as my eyes behold their darling most star, We shall then be the shadows in the darkness secretly kissing our heart beats in the cover of the night. To cast particles of darkness and cover the moonlight, And make it a part of our own shadows, Then we shall create a romantic night, As we freely fleet across the night’s endless love meadows.

Besides, there was a strangely calming element of cosmic beauty in the hypnotic landscape through which we climbed and plunged fantastically. Time had lost itself in the labyrinths behind, and around us stretched only the flowering waves of faery and the recaptured loveliness of vanished centuries—the hoary groves, the untainted pastures edged with gay autumnal blossoms, and at vast intervals the small brown farmsteads nestling amidst huge trees beneath vertical precipices of fragrant brier and meadow-grass. Even the sunlight assumed a supernal glamour, as if some special atmosphere or exhalation mantled the whole region. I had seen nothing like it before save in the magic vistas that sometimes form the backgrounds of Italian primitives. Sodoma and Leonardo conceived such expanses, but only in the distance, and through the vaultings of Renaissance arcades. We were now burrowing bodily through the midst of the picture, and I seemed to find in its necromancy a thing I had innately known or inherited, and for which I had always been vainly searching.

As the earth smiles in the memories of unremembered flowers, poetry breaks loose from the meadows for the blooms that have gone to sleep. Celebrating their stories, let it be a festival of memories, of somebody's last words, those last moments with untold goodbye...

THE MEADOWS OF MEDEA 'The meadows lay weeping with tears like an emerald's gleam; while every nightingale is seeking the shelter of its only willow's green. And silently, my step falls on leaves that carry me much further than I'd dream; for willows and thoughts are fading slowly while everything eternal is not seen - and yet they keep so many of us in good company - for some can not be on their own, nor can they be free. So I found peace, the one eternal each one seeks and so I left my soul for emerald's gleam; while the meadows still lay weeping with grief over my grave so quietly for it lays beneath the shadow of its only willow's green.

That’s so sweet.” “So says the romance novel reader.” “You have something against romance, Callahan?” “Not at all. I have something against schmaltz.” “Schmaltz! That wasn’t schmaltz.” “Darlin’, that picnic was the epitome of schmaltz.” “All right then, Casanova. What should Harry have done to romance his lady?” Gabe stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles. He linked his hands behind his head and considered the question. “The bouquet was way overdone. A single rose would be okay, or even better, whatever flower she considered her favorite. Hiring a violinist to ride behind the courting buggy ruined the whole thing.” “Now, why would you say that? It’s terribly romantic.” “You like threesomes, do you?” “What? No!” Gabe chuckled and continued, “A mountain meadow picnic was good, but a linen-draped table? Fine china? Roast duckling? No. Way too formal. Too stuffy. All you need for a romantic mountain meadow picnic is a quilt to spread on the grass and a picnic basket with finger foods. The champagne was a good idea, but it’d have been better if he’d put it to chill in the creek.” “That’s a good idea,” Nic agreed. “What about the poetry and the dancing?” “Depends on the woman, of course. If she’s into that, then yeah. Nothing’s wrong with poetry or dancing.” “What do you do for music if you’ve left the violinist back in town?” “If a guy can carry a tune at all, he can sing softly, or hum. You can dance to birdsong or music in your mind, as far as that goes.” She let that sit a minute, then said, “That’s not bad, Callahan. Not bad at all.” He

The mind is a poetic meadow for reification, where dark and light things are created

O wayfarer! Yearn finds quench, not in meadows, seashores or altitude of mountain peaks; but when being and dance are one.

O wayfarer! Yearn finds quench, not in meadows, seashores or altitude of mountain peaks; but when being becomes dance.

The meadows lay weeping with tears like an emeralds gleam; while every nightingale is seeking the shelter of its only willow's green. - And silently, my step falls on leaves that carry me much further than I'd dream; for willows and thoughts are fading slowly while everything eternal is not seen and yet they keep so many of us in good company for some can not be on their own, nor can they be free. - So I found peace, the one eternal each one seeks and so I left my soul for emerald's gleam; while the meadow still lays weeping with grief over my grave so quietly for it lays beneath the shadow of its only willow's green.

What she loved were the flashes of beauty in poems, the way the poet chose just the right word for a meadow or a river, one that made her realize there was more to meadows and rivers than she’d thought, that they had whole worlds hidden inside them. It was a different kind of magic, poetry. And she loved the strange words poets tossed about like enchantments. Evensong. Darkling. Vernal.

A Mind's Minotaur - A Soliloquy by Stewart Stafford In a labyrinth’s mental corridors, prisoner of consciousness, Fleeing a Minotaur I fear is me. Achilles' heel, masked by strength hath shown, An arrow cometh from Time's swift flight, For those with bountiful time enow, Find themselves slain in a heroic light. When thou dost gaze upon the world below, And scorn its depths, thou canst not comprehend The truths that pool o'er its shadow, glow. No tears stain that meadow of solace, A phantom limb, tickling in memory's store, Galley slaves in hurricane's heart so lashed. Transient madness and renown, conjoin on pomp’s bridge, Champions of the joust wave paramour's kerchief, Revered statues limp from a pedestal's ridge. The signs of pride and brittle ardour, The hubristic bite of isolation's cur. The death warrant quill must ne'er be stilled, For authority doth stifle beauty's song, Staged chaos through the written word is willed. Phantasy's balm to verity's scourging, A cleansing soak of battle-scarred minds, And in the dark, imagination reigns. He who hath fear of the dark hath vision keen, Whilst those who see but naught are dull and plain. Thus, let us not be swayed by others' lore, But splay in error, heal to prosper once more. Idolatrous moth to lechery's candlelight, In lover's tongues, passion's seared delight. © 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.

Each night my father counts backward from 100 like a shepherd climbing down meadow by meadow the Alps. Since his stroke he does this, he says, so his mind holds still, so it freezes, a suspect, hands on the wallpaper. That way it is there with his cane the next morning. When your mind runs away, well, it stashes parts of your real life forever, the names of lakes, the pretty faces of girls. When that happens, you count on nothing, a patch of sun on a green carpet, new snow on a roof framed by curtains. You call the woman “Nurse” and wonder why she cries. It is still a life, that chair between the cashews and windows. Then one day Bang! Doesn’t your mind come waltzing home, made up clown-style, sloshing memories like confetti in a pail? And don’t you take your life in your hands, counting out good times, counting out bad, marking time backward so it’s understood? Whatever you’re missing, he says, it’s what you don’t miss. Listen, he says, that sound in the old high ceilings of the house, not ice in the eaves, no man’s voice, no echo either... Only the wind, counting toward zero.

I’m red poppy from the mountains of the homeland The winds are my tunes The thunder is my voice When I object what is going on… Rains are my tears When I’m speechless The gushing sounds of water Are my hearty songs… *** I’m red poppy from the mountains of the homeland When I welt, I shall leave smiling And assured that my seeds Shall create vast meadows of wildflowers For future generations Wiser than you and I…

In a meadow full of flowers, you cannot walk through and breathe those smells and see all those colors and remain angry. We have to support the beauty, the poetry, of life

when the past and the future tug upon the present moment with delicate, unrelenting arms when ambition overreaches talent when dull-dark sunshine penetrates closed eyelids when the heart disregards the mind when the imaginary friend appears before the child when a sudden clap of thunder echoes across the meadow of intuition when the glint of an erupting star spreads over eons like a faint, frozen scream when blue-purple twilight settles upon the garden when the jaguar’s cuspids wrench open the elephant’s cranium when dew droplets gather upon the anthers of a cherry blossom when the Earth turns so slowly upon its axis only electrons can feel its drag when a summer’s night sitting by the water’s edge can stretch into forever… - We Pass Away, Alice Evermore

men never have to think about flowers.

I think and I think...thinking so much that it hurts again

take me back into those woods, where i can dwell, a child forever

Oh so gently, humanity creates its disease.

Points of Issue Errors or peculiarities in a book that help to differentiate it from other editions. No one else's marginalia inside. An unbroken spine and a pliable binding. No one else's marginalia unless it was penciled into her first pages then thoroughly erased. No ellipses but in the last chapters and then only in soliloquy. No strands of hair in the meadow chapter, nothing ripped out in the two after that. And halfway-a blank page, and a scrawl and dash from the girl. The final story of the back garden and her coiled braids and the dappled grey you kept too long. The harmonica on the dashboard and the girl who taught you your scales. And the book you were always reading, the pulled-off, pockmarked cover, the weight. The night you left it in the trunk bed and in the morning its swollen pages. The girl reading your father's Wordsworth, the scrolling clouds in the meadow, your hands steady on her heaving chest. The final story of the back garden and the coiled girl telling you no. The pages after that.

Say, is there Beauty yet to find? And Certainty? and Quiet kind? Deep meadows yet, for to forget The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?

The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.16 We have a system of national accounting that bears no resemblance to the national economy whatsoever, for it is not the record of our life at home but the fever chart of our consumption.17

The Cycle's Whisper by Stewart Stafford A crisp mountain breeze, Whispers on verdant meadows, In the starlings' murmuration, Bodies flutter as the wind blows. River salmon leap upstream, To the places of their siring, All the tests of life in the flesh, With thrashing bodies expiring. Starving bears lie in wait to Shorten the fading quest, Or a moribund swim home, To a watery boneyard's rest. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

The One Who Moves Me by Stewart Stafford Her caress and laughter, Cast out the darkness, And lull the choppy waters, Her embrace, a flowering meadow. Her absence stills the earth, Cracked ice on a frozen lake, Asphyxiating silence descends, The Faustian poker of loneliness. Lexicons filled with her silences, Seismic shifts of stinging rage, She, in naked imperfection as I, Together, reuniting in shelter. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

In the meadow, in adoration: am I not yours?

Time does this, sometimes -- pauses to appreciate an object of beauty. It grows so enamored that it forgets to move forward. A meadow or a clavicle or a painting might be the secret to immortality. Enough loveliness, & time will stop altogeher.

Eschew the skylark and the nightingale, birds that Audubon never found. A national literature ought to be built, as the robin builds its nest, out of the twigs and straws of one's native meadows.

Dear Secrets of the Earth, You are a place beyond belief. You are home to many, but only a few are able to understand you. When the wind is whooshing, it sounds like wind chimes. When the breeze offers its sweet gestures, it opens my heart and soul to be still and let everything—just be. The sky looks like a painting. It is a limitless portrait! When the streams collide, you can see the reflection of the sea of clouds. When the wind is whistling, it calms the meadow of the thoughts that form in my mind. The night air has such a deep definition of the earthbound because everything is asleep as it is firmly attached to the earth without movement—just resting to prepare for the next day. I always wondered how a wildflower can be so soft when it is stepped on and covered by weeds. It is because the earth has covered it in boundless, endless love. I am a wildflower; there is no such thing as being tamed; we take what is given and somehow find our way. I’ve been to thirteen homes in all. Yet, I still somehow and somewhere let love shine through the darkest hours, which lead to days. However, just like the wildflower, I am still here. Dear Secrets of the Earth, what are your golden rules? Is it to just go with the flow? Love endlessly without regret? Live and learn from your mistakes? Or is it something simple, such as continue to have faith while we reach for the stars? If so, could you give me a boost? Thank you for your company.

When the wind is whistling, it calms the meadow of the thoughts that form in my mind.

In Dante’s Inferno, Dante and his guide Virgil visited the Castle of Limbo, in the center of which was an idyllic green meadow. This was where the great pagan souls, the virtuous pagans, spent eternity. Limbo was a place of calm contemplation and tranquility. Its denizens were not tormented and tortured but left to their own devices. They could converse with one another among green fields and scenic towers. The most illustrious of them radiated an inner light, reflecting their genius. Even the Abrahamic God was dazzled by the enlightened pagans, the great heroes of philosophy, art, poetry, science and mathematics. No one can quench their light, and no one can remove their joy.

Compared with the Celt, the Northman is heavy, reserved, a child of earth, yet seemingly but half awakened. He cannot say what he feels save by vague indication, in a long, roundabout fashion. He is deeply attached to the country that surrounds him, its meadows and rivers fill him with a latent tenderness; but his home sense has not emancipated itself into love. The feeling for nature rings in muffled tones through his speech and through his myths, but he does not burst into song of the loveliness of the world. Of his relations with women he feels no need to speak, save when there is something of a practical nature to be stated; only when it becomes tragic does the subject enter into his poetry. In other words, his feelings are never revealed until they have brought about an event; and they tell us nothing of themselves save by the weight and bitterness they give to the conflicts that arise. Uneventfulness does not throw him back upon his inner resources, and never opens up a flood of musings or lyricism – it merely dulls him. The Celt meets life with open arms; ready for every impression, he is loth to let anything fall dead before him. The Teuton is not lacking in passionate feeling, but he cannot, he will not help himself so lavishly to life.

Cynthia then holiness spread in arctic dews, from lately month that it pinion'd the living world,there did swell the mild and greenish meadows,winter anew its frozen gold of treasury wild.

I have visions of hilly Pavlovsk, Meadow circular, water dead, With most heavy and most shady, All of this I will never forget. In the cast-iron gates you will enter, Blissful tremor the flesh does rile, You don't live, but you're screaming and ranting Or you live in another style. In late autumn fresh and biting Wanders wind, for its loneliness glad. In white gowns dressed the black fir trees On the molten snow stand. And, filled up with a burning fever, Dear voice sounds like song without word, And on copper shoulder of Cytharus Sits the red-chested bird.

Everyone wants to give a writer the perfect notebook. Over the years I’ve acquired stacks: one is leather, a rope of Rapunzel’s hair braids its spine. Another is tree-friendly, its paper reincarnated from diaries of poets now graying in cubicles. One is small and black as a funeral dress, its pages lined like the hands of a widow. There’s even a furry blue one that looks like a shag rug or a monster that would hide beneath it—and I wonder why? For every blown-out candle, every Mazel Tov, every turn of the tassel, we are handed what a writer dreads most: blank pages. It’s never a notebook we need. If we have a story to tell, an idea carbonating past the brim of us, we will write it on our arms, thighs, any bare meadow of skin. In the absence of pens, we repeat our lines deliriously like the telephone number of a parting stranger until we become the craziest one on the subway. If you really love a writer, fuck her on a coffee table. Find a gravestone of someone who shares her name and take her to it. When her door is plastered with an eviction notice, do not offer your home. Say I Love You, then call her the wrong name. If you really love a writer, bury her in all your awful and watch as she scrawls her way out.

The Kingdom of the Meadows (G)oldenrod C(o)smos Re(d)-hot poker Bea(r)dtongue Marg(u)erite Beeba(l)m Speedw(e)ll Blazing (s)tar ="s God Rules

In the Garden of Solace where Passion flows deep; your eyes fill with Dusk and I Love you to Sleep. On this night, As Our Souls travel this Journey together; The Universe suddenly seems so small. We enter your dreams' meadow, Only in Silence do we speak; A quiet knowing, As I Love you to Sleep.

I tried, alright? And I tried not to cry As you said goodbye But the words were haunting And your eyes were now daunting The pain is too much to bear And my eyes are tearing up with horror take me to Shadow Creek Where the meadows call my name Where I can see the blue sky Safe spaces, brown eyes and books Poetry, flowers and the smell of rain The mundanity, it scares me - Inked Confessions: The Untold Psych Ward Letters

lovely lion, with your claws twelve inches long, won't you sink your teeth into the back of my neck once more? won't you parade me around, march me to and fro, showing me all there is to know, and telling me i am your sweetest pet? lovely hawk, with your talons made of lonsdaleite, won't you pluck me from the earth once more? won't you soar into the sky, with me in your clutches, at blinding speeds, showing me all i deserve to see, and telling me i am your only darling? is this not love dear lion, dear hawk? shall i forever wait in the savannah, in the meadow, where you tossed me aside, longing to be picked up again?

I daydreamed about BEING Anne. Traipsing through nineteenth-century meadows, reciting Romantic poetry (Keats was my fave, because he died with such gruesome panache.) One day, I started creating my own original scenarios of Anne doing her plucky orphan thing. But I didn’t want to deal with the annoying stuff from old-timey days, like sexism and polio, so I moved up the timeline and transported her into modern life as a free-spirited teen heiress. I’d imagine Anne flying to Hong Kong on her private jet, or spying on Communists while she performed gymnastics for the US Olympic Team. Or simple things, like attending a new high school where she’d enter a classroom wearing designer jeans and everyone would gasp at how pretty she was. “Her hair is so long and red. Can I be her best friend immediately?

What goes up in sound must come down in silence / She who was with us in dusk is by dawn no longer / Death's corridor is a corn poppy meadow where a chord of Danubian meadow vipers becomes -- /A triangular welcome rug / An ancestral tambourine / An unspooling mother tongue