We Have Been Friends Together


We have been friends together, 
  In sunshine and in shade; 
Since first beneath the chestnut-trees 
  In infancy we played. 
But coldness dwells within thy heart,
  A cloud is on thy brow; 
We have been friends together— 
  Shall a light word part us now? 
 
We have been gay together; 
  We have laugh'd at little jests;
For the fount of hope was gushing 
  Warm and joyous in our breasts. 
But laughter now hath fled thy lip, 
  And sullen glooms thy brow; 
We have been gay together—
  Shall a light word part us now? 
 
We have been sad together, 
  We have wept, with bitter tears, 
O'er the grass-grown graves, where slumber'd 
  The hopes of early years.
The voices which are silent there 
  Would bid thee clear thy brow; 
We have been sad together— 
  Oh! what shall part us now?

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton 

 ::)You're right.. I am poor at keeping up with the news these day's.  I just read it was worse than first thought. 8)

Thankfully this was a miss, but close.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/15/meteorite-streaks-across-russian-urals_n_2691904.html

Crossings   
by Ravi Shankar 


Between forest and field, a threshold
like stepping from a cathedral into the street—
the quality of air alters, an eclipse lifts,

boundlessness opens, earth itself retextured
into weeds where woods once were.
Even planes of motion shift from vertical

navigation to horizontal quiescence:   
there's a standing invitation to lie back
as sky's unpredictable theater proceeds.

Suspended in this ephemeral moment
after leaving a forest, before entering
a field, the nature of reality is revealed.

Goddess of Maple at Evening   
by Chard deNiord 


She breathed a chill that slowed the sap
inside the phloem, stood perfectly still
inside the dark, then walked to a field
where the distance crooned in a small
blue voice how close it is, how the gravity
of sky pulls you up like steam from the arch.
She sang along until the silence soloed
in a northern wind, then headed back
to the sugar stand and drank from a maple
to thin her blood with the spirit of sap.
To quicken its pace to the speed of sound
then hear it boom inside her heart.
To quicken her mind to the speed of light
with another suck from the flooded tap.

Affirmation   
by Donald Hall 


To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

Love, Langston Hughes, Sven.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers   
by Langston Hughes 
 


I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
     flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
     went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Spellbound   
by Emily Brontë 


The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

The Small Hour

No more my little song comes back;
  And now of nights I lay
My head on down, to watch the black
  And wait the unfailing gray.

Oh, sad are winter nights, and slow;
  And sad's a song that's dumb;
And sad it is to lie and know
  Another dawn will come

Dorthy Parker

" Mz.Lily, your poetic choices are wonderful, I admire Jane Kenyon and loved her poem that you posted.  I saw it for the first time, thank you."

Thanks Sven, I have been busy with other things. But, today seems like a good day for poetry.  I need some new poems to read. Any suggestions?
Oh, and by the way I have missed you and being here.       

[Sleeping sister of a farther sky]

By Karen Volkman b. 1967

Sleeping sister of a farther sky,
dropped from zenith like a tender tone,
the lucid apex of a scale unknown
whose whitest whisper is an opaque cry

of measureless frequency, the spectral sigh
you breath, bright hydrogen and brighter zone
of fissured carbon, consummated moan
and ceaseless rapture of a brilliant why.

Will nothing wake you from your livid rest?
Essence of ether and astral stone
the stunned polarities your substance weaves

in one bright making, like a dream of leaves
in the tree's mind, summered. Or as a brooding bone
roots constellations in the body's nest.

Proverbial

By Wendy Videlock


It's always darkest before the leopard's kiss.


Where there's smoke there is emphasis.


A bird in the hand is bound for the stove.


The pen is no mightier than the soul.


Never underestimate the nib of corruption.


Better late than suffer the long introduction.


All work and no play is the way of  the sloth.


If  you can dream it bring the child the moth.


He is not wise that parrots the wise.


All that glitters has been revised.


An idle mind is a sign of  the time.


The less things change the more we doubt design.



Source: Poetry (January 2013).

When You are Old   
by W. B. Yeats 


When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Your Mother wait's.....

You asked your mom
before going to school
in your sweet voice
with love in your eyes
"When I get back,
will you play with me?"
and she replied
with a big hug and smile
yes my love, I will
then she gave you a kiss
and you went to school
to return back home soon

But that was not meant to be...

Devil struck in a human shape
and your innocent life was taken away
there is no doubt in anyone's mind
you went to heaven straight away

but what about your mom
though many days have passed by
she is still in disbelief
and cannot sleep at nights
she just remembers
when you asked her
before going to school
in your sweet voice
with love in your eyes
"When I get back,
will you play with me?"
and she is still waiting for you....

Author Unknown

I Wish You Tears,  I wish You Prayer's
In Memory Of Sandy Hook Elementary School by

I wish you a million tears,
I wish you A thousand prayers.
I wish you a great prayer,
I  lift my voice to your hearts,
I lift my ears to your words.
I bless you with the voice of God,
I bless you with the words
of reason and compassion.
I wish you a million tears.
I wish  you a thousand prayers




Author JWW

Newtown Ct, the World grieves with you....