Tag: nature

Poem for Today ~ Return

Return

Sterling A. Brown

I have gone back in boyish wonderment
To things that I had foolishly put by. . . . 
Have found an alien and unknown content 
In seeing how some bits of cloud-filled sky 
Are framed in bracken pools; through chuckling hours 
Have watched the antic frogs, or curiously
Have numbered all the unnamed, vagrant flowers, 
That fleck the unkempt meadows, lavishly. 

Or where a headlong toppling stream has stayed
Its racing, lulled to quiet by the song 
Bursting from out the thickleaved oaken shade, 
There I have lain while hours sauntered past—
I have found peacefulness somewhere at last, 
Have found a quiet needed for so long. 

Poem for Today ~ Solitude

Solitude

Irving W. Underhill

Oh, solitude, where is the sting,
    That men ascribe to thee?
Where is the terror in thy mien?
    I look, but cannot see.

Where hidest thou, that loneliness
    The world pretends to fear?
While lying on thy loving breast
    I find my sweetest cheer.

They do not understand thee, no,
    They are but knaves or fools,
Or else they must discern in thee
    Dame Nature’s queen of schools.

For in thy care, with naught but books,
    The bards and saints of old,
Become my friends and to mine ear
    Their mystic truths unfold.

When problems and perplexities
    Of life becloud my mind,
I know in thee, oh, solitude,
    The answer I can find.

When grief and sorrow crowd my heart
    To breaking, with their fears
Within thy arms, oh, solitude,
    I find relief in tears.

And when I weary of the world’s
    Deceits and cares and strife,
I find in thee sweet rest and peace
    And vigorous new life.

My garden never is complete
    Without a blooming rose,
Nor is my life, oh, solitude,
    Without thy sweet repose.

Poem for Today ~ Harvest Time

Harvest Time

Emily Pauline Johnson

Pillowed and hushed on the silent plain,
Wrapped in her mantle of golden grain,

Wearied of pleasuring weeks away,
Summer is lying asleep to-day,—

Where winds come sweet from the wild-rose briers
And the smoke of the far-off prairies fires;

Yellow her hair as the golden rod,
And brown her cheeks as the prairie sod;

Purple her eyes as the mists that dram
At the edge of some laggard sun-drowned stream;

But over their depths the lashes sweep,
For Summer is lying to-day asleep.

The north wind kisses her rosy mouth,
His rival frowns in the far-off south,

And comes caressing her sunburnt cheek,
And Summer awakes for one short week,—

Awakes and gathers her wealth of grain,
Then sleeps and dreams for a year again.

Source

Feel Good Tip ~ Planting an Olive Tree

I stopped by Trader Joe’s to a bit of shopping the other day. I generally know what I want and I’m quickly in and out – not this time. On the way into Trader Joe’s I spotted olive tree plants for sale. I love olives. I thought, my olive tree would go with my fig tree, I can picture the two of them already. The olive tree came home with me. I planted the olive tree today. I felt good digging of soil and planting the tree. It will be a few years before olives appear. Until that time I’m going to give it a happy home.

Poem for Today ~ somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond

somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond

e. e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Source

Poem for Today ~ The Heart of the Tree

The Heart of the Tree

Henry Cuyler Bunner

What does he plant who plants a tree?
   He plants a friend of sun and sky;
He plants the flag of breezes free;
   The shaft of beauty, towering high;
   He plants a home to heaven anigh;
      For song and mother-croon of bird
      In hushed and happy twilight heard—
The treble of heaven’s harmony—
These things he plants who plants a tree.

What does he plant who plants a tree?
   He plants cool shade and tender rain,
And seed and bud of days to be,
   And years that fade and flush again;
      He plants the glory of the plain;
      He plants the forest’s heritage;
      The harvest of a coming age;
The joy that unborn eyes shall see—
These things he plants who plants a tree.

What does he plant who plants a tree?
   He plants, in sap and leaf and wood,
In love of home and loyalty
   And far-cast thought of civic good—
   His blessings on the neighborhood,
      Who in the hollow of His hand
Holds all the growth of all our land—
A nation’s growth from sea to sea
Stirs in his heart who plants a tree.

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