Tuesday, March 24, 2015

TUESDAY POEM | BIRD by Pablo Neduda


Artist Unknown


                     BIRD

                     It was passed from one bird to another,
                     the whole gift of the day.
                     The day went from flute to flute,
                     went dressed in vegetation,
                     in flights which opened a tunnel
                     through the wind would pass
                     to where birds were breaking open
                     the dense blue air -
                     and there, night came in.

                     When I returned from so many journeys,
                     I stayed suspended and green
                     between sun and geography -
                     I saw how wings worked,
                     how perfumes are transmitted
                     by feathery telegraph,
                     and from above I saw the path,
                     the springs and the roof tiles,
                     the fishermen at their trades,
                     the trousers of the foam;
                     I saw it all from my green sky.
                     I had no more alphabet
                     than the swallows in their courses,
                     the tiny, shining water
                     of the small bird on fire
                     which dances out of the pollen. 

                     Pablo Neruda



This week on the Tuesday Poem hub, Helen Rickerby has chosen a prose poem I find riveting - 'New Margins' by Joan Fleming.


"On the way home from art school she stopped to shave off a piece of her hair. The skin was new

 under there, soft as soft bristle, a new field of thought. . . "

Please click on the quill. 





Tuesday, February 17, 2015

TUESDAY POEM | I Saw Her Dancing by Marge Piercy




                                     I SAW HER DANCING 

                                     Nothing moves in a straight line,
                                     But in arcs, epicycles, spirals and gyres.
                                     Nothing living grows in cubes, cones, or rhomboids,
                                     But we take a little here and we give a little there,
                                     And the wind blows right through us,
                                     And blows the apples off the tree, and hangs a red kite suddenly there,
                                     And a fox comes to bite the apples curiously,
                                     And we change.
                                     Or we die
                                     And then change.
                                     It is many as raindrops.
                                     It is one as rain.
                                     And we eat it, and it eats us.
                                     And fullness is never,
                                     And now.


                                     Marge Piercy




This week’s editor on the Tuesday Poem hub is Wellington poet and publisher, Helen Rickerby. Sugar Magnolia Wilson, her chosen poet, is from a valley called Fern Flat in the Far North of New Zealand.

"Pen Pal, by Sugar Magnolia Wilson (or Magnolia, as she is generally known), is a rather twisty sequence of poems, in the voice of a young, not-so-sweet, not-so-innocent, and actually very real girl. . . "



Today's selection from 'Pen Pal' includes a car crash, mangroves, guinea pigs, a falling meteorite and a 'spell for apology'. Enjoy!