A Small Needful Fact

Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.
--Ross Gay from Split This Rock's 'The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database'

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Georges Seurat)

Flood

When all's said, and done,
if civilisation drowns
the last colour to go
will be gold -
the light on a glass,
the prow of a gondola,
the name of a rosewood piano
as silence engulfs it.

And first to return
to a waterlogged world,
the rivers slipping out to sea,
the cities steaming,
will be gold,
one dip from Bellini's brush,
feathers of angels, Cinquecente nativities,
and all that follows.
--Gillian Clarke

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Patricia Pinto)

July

Reading days tatter down
to dust in the library,
summer heat writing itself
as beads of sweat across
your body, dampening
all you touch.
I soothe your bronzed back in the evening
with a cold shower,
my tongue a brush
on canvas, painting myself
onto your taut, muscular chest.
Writing you into a poem.
--András Gerevich (tr.Andrew Fentham)

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Arthur Getz)

Dyed Carnations

There's blue, and then there's blue.
A number, not a hue, this blue
is not the undertone of any one
but there it is, primary.
I held the bouquet
in shock and cut the stems at a deadly angle.
I opened the toxic sachet of flower food
with my canine and rinsed my mouth.
I used to wash my hands and daydream.
I dreamed of myself and washed
my hands of everything. Easy math.
Now I can't get their procedure
at the florist off my mind.
The white flowers arrived! They overnighted
in a chemical bath
and now they have a fake laugh
that catches like a match
that starts the kind of kitchen fire
that is fanned by water.
They won't even look at me.
Happy Anniversary.
-- Robyn Schiff

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Danielle Parent)

A Cure of Souls

The pastor
of grief and dreams

guides his flock towards
the next field

with all his care.
He has heard

the bell tolling
but the sheep

are hungry and need
the grass, today and

every day. Beautiful
his patience, his long

shadow, the rippling
sound of the flock moving

along the valley.
--Denise Levertov

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Thelma Winter)

here yet be dragons

so many languages have fallen
off of the edge of the world
into the dragon's mouth. some

where there be monsters whose teeth
are sharp and sparkle with lost

people. lost poems. who
among us can imagine ourselves
unimagined? who

among us can speak with so fragile
tongue and remain proud?
- Lucille Clifton, from her collection 'How to Carry Water' published in 2021

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Ann Chaikin)

Insomniac

There are some nights when
sleep plays coy,
aloof and disdainful.
And all the wiles
that I employ to win
its service to my side
are useless as wounded pride,
and much more painful.
--Maya Angelou

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry #MayaAngelou @bookstodon

(Art credit: Edvard Munch)

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I said,
"You can never --"

"You lie," he cried,
And ran on.
--Stephen Crane

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Renée W. Stramel)

The Seed-Shop

Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
Faded as crumbled stone and shifting sand,
Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry -
Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

Dead that shall quicken at the voice of spring,
Sleepers to wake beneath June's tempest kiss;
Though birds pass over, unremembering,
And no bee find here roses that were his.

In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams;
A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust
That shall drink deeply at a century's streams;
These lilies shall make summer on my dust.

Here in their safe and simple house of death,
Sealed in their shells, a million roses leap;
Here I can stir a garden with my breath,
And in my hand a forest lies asleep.
--Muriel Stuart

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: June Erica Vess)

Granddaughters

I was a thought, a dream, a fish, a wing,
And then a human being
When I emerged from my mother's river
On my father's boat of potent fever
I carried a sack of dreams from a starlit dwelling
To be opened when I begin bleeding
There's a red dress, deerskin moccasins
The taste of berries made of promises
While the memories shift in their skins
At every moon, to do their ripening
--Joy Harjo

#TodaysPoem #FridayPoem #poetry #JoyHarjo @bookstodon

(Art credit: Jen Amaya)

Walkers With the Dawn

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,
Walkers with the sun and morning,
We are not afraid of night
Nor days of gloom,
Nor darkness-
Being walkers with the sun and morning.
--Langston Hughes

#FridayPoem #poetry #LangstonHughes #sunrise @bookstodon

(Art credit: Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo)

Old Man Rain

Old Man Rain at the
windowpane
Knocks and fumbles and
knocks again:
His long-nailed fingers slip and
strain:
Old Man Rain at the windowpane
Knocks all night but knocks in
vain.
Old Man Rain.
(........)
--Madison Cawein

#poetry #FridayPoem #reading @bookstodon

(Art: Tom Shropshire)

Despicable smudge
resists lens cleaner and cloth
just migrates across

#haiku #poetry #fridaypoem

Kidnap Poem

Ever been kidnapped
by a poet
if i were a poet
i'd kidnap you
put you in my phrases and meter
You to jones beach
or maybe coney island
or maybe just to my house
lyric you in lilacs
dash you in the rain
blend into the beach
to complement my see
Play the lyre for you
ode you with my love song
anything to win you
wrap you in the red Black green
show you off to mama
yeah if i were a poet i'd kid
nap you
--Nikki Giovanni

#poetry #FridayPoem @bookstodon

(Art: Ned Shuchter)

Good morning #poets! Are you newly freed from the bird? Are we creating a new path together? Can we have a #fridaypoem?

Rose #PhotoWork #photographing #FridayPoem #naturephotography #naturelovers #loveislove

To the Rain

Mother rain, manifold, measureless,
falling on fallow, on field and forest,
on house-roof, low hovel, high tower,
downwelling waters all-washing, wider
than cities, softer than sisterhood, vaster
than countrysides, calming, recalling:
return to us, teaching our troubled
souls in your ceaseless descent
to fall, to be fellow, to feel to the root,
to sink in, to heal, to sweeten the sea.
-Ursula K. Le Guin

#reading #poetry #FridayPoem #UrsulaLeGuin #art

Art credit: Barry Hilton

Atte Jongstra winnaar van de Ger Fritz Prijs 2022 met zijn gedicht "Glück auf", geschreven t.g.v. de eenzame uitvaart van meneer K.
http://www.eenzameuitvaart.nl/atte-jongstra-wint-ger-fritz-prijs-2022/
#vrijdaggedicht #poëzie #FridayPoem

The latest The text-langue Daily! https://paper.li/tanzmax/text-langue?edition_id=f21cd000-64dc-11ec-981c-fa163e65ae25 #fridaypoem