TUESDAY POEM | The Soldier & The Poet by CB and Elizabeth Brooke-Carr

High on the peninsula hills directly opposite my house stands a lone soldier. A welcome part of my everyday landscape, I have wondered often about him and his - as far as I know - untold story. In early 2009, a poem arrived, landing on the page as if the soldier had called it forth, as if he had turned his face to my window and was listening. 

A month or two ago, my friend Elizabeth sent me a letter. "I'm not sure how to tell you this," she said, "but the soldier has written a reply to his poet. . . "

"Every love poem is also a peace poem."

Kevin Clements | National Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies, University of Otago  

This week's editor on the Tuesday Poem hub - with our second post of the new year - is Jennifer Compton. 

Jen has chosen Bogong Moth by Joe Dolce. The second stanza of this heart-stopping poem reads. . . 

                                                            I look up from my book

                                                            accepting the immortal,
                                                            fatal dance
                                                            of life and light,
                                                            like Icarus’s father
                                                            resigned to watch
                                                            his flying boy
                                                            hurl against brilliance.

To read Joe's poem and Jen's zippy commentary, please click on the quill.

A belated HAPPY NEW YEAR to us all. 

(I've been a distracted blog writer and reader this past month and more; immersed in various projects prompting the building and rebuilding of a website or two - exciting things are in the wings, the details of which will follow. . . ) 

Tuesday Poem - Her Passion

Her Passion

Thinking about Michelangelo's Pieta

If Mary could raise her marble-lidded eyes,

look up from her son's stilled face

and catch our distant gaze;

if she could coax some circulation

into the crook of her arm

where the slump of his shoulders

has set like a bow in the clouds

of her sculptured gown and flex her fingers

stiff with loss to beckon us;

if she could ease the weight of death

draped in stone across her breast to draw us in

and, raising his head, turn it aside from her

aching vigil to speak of her stigmata

the silver barcode of maternity

stretch-marked across her belly

what would she say to us, we mothers of sons

hell bent on challenging authority

and changing the world?

Elizabeth Brooke-Carr

Elizabeth Brooke-Carr is a Dunedin-based poet, novelist & friend.

Her Passion was first published as Monday's Poem in the Otago Daily Times, 2009

(Thank you, Ms Liz - x)

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This is an open invitation to all bloggers & poets to post a poem on Tuesdays. In the words of Mary McCallum, who started the ball rolling, 'This is the blogosphere's equivalent of an open-mic night - as stimulating and as fun!'

If you'd like to join in, please leave a comment on any of the participating bloggers' sites; that way we can add links to your poem?

So far we have poets contributing from NZ and the US; if I've done my sums right, our Northern/Southern hemisphere span means that between us we have a 37 hr day. This implies that poems from here, there and everywhere have more time than usual to arrive! I love the idea of Roomy Tuesdays -

Mary McCallum

Cadence

Premium T

Vespersparrow

Tim Jones

Helen Rickerby

ilikesweating

Fifi Colston

Paradoxical Cat

Kay McKenzie Cooke

Penelope Todd

Harvey Molloy

Helen Heath