Category Archives: poetry

A green wave full of fish.

death, poetry, ,

 

 

 

 

 

 

KIRKYARD

A silent conquering army,
The island dead.
Column on column, each with a stone banner
Raised over his head.

A green wave full of fish
Drifted far
In wavering westering ebb-drawn shoals beyond
Sinker or star.

A labyrinth of celled
And waxen pain.
Yet I come to the honeycomb often, to sip the finished
Fragrance of men.

-George Mackay Brown

The Dark Horse journal is really too erudite for me, but I happened to look into this current issue that is wholly dedicated to the writer George Mackay Brown, whom I knew nothing about before. What I read made me curious, and prompted me to find a whole book, a selection of his poems, which are fruits of his life in the Orkney Islands, and from which I picked this one.

Tomorrow on Veterans Day some of us will gather for prayers at a nearby cemetery, where we are remembering our archpriest who resposed several years ago, whose name day was this week, and who also had been a military chaplain before he became a parish priest. I’m looking forward to visiting that place where my goddaughter is also resting in her grave; these images of soldiers, fish and honeycomb are already enriching my own experience as I anticipate being where I might catch that unique “kirkyard” scent of heaven. Memory eternal!

Awake in autumn.

nature, poetry, , ,

This autumn,
How old I am getting:
Ah, the clouds, the birds!

Bashō

This verse that succinctly expresses my own feelings of the season, I found on the blog First Known When Lost, a place where I am always confident of finding beauty and serenity. In the post I link to, “Awake,” the blogger offers a well chosen smattering of haiku by Matsuo Bashō, including a good representation of autumn poetry, and commentary by by R. H. Blyth. Read the whole post to learn how Bashō can wake us up.

After rain after many days without rain.

nature, poetry, ,

LINGERING IN HAPPINESS

After rain after many days without rain,
It stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,
and the dampness there, married now to gravity,
falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground

where it will disappear — but not, of course, vanish
except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share,
and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss;
a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole’s tunnel;

and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years,
will feel themselves being touched.

–Mary Oliver