Month: July 2012

“SHE DWELT AMONG THE UNTRODDEN WAYS”
SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
–Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

***

Landscape With The Fall of Icarus
William Carlos Williams

——————————————————————————–

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

From Collected Poems: 1939-1962, Volume II by William Carlos Williams, published by New Directions Publishing Corp. © 1962 by William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

***

Lazy Way out

Seed from the bottom
of the parakeet cage
cascades over a ledge
and down the red brick wall.

An assortment of weeds
sprouts in the lily bed,
slender shoots, an offering
to the gardener’s cupped hand.

A tiger striped kitten
pounces on a mound
of fresh green leaves
shimmying up a cross breeze.

A young girl returns
to her bedroom window,
sowing seed to the wind–
The gardener waits.

8/02

(2)
Retired Seaman

The captain sits
at the breakfast table
scrimshawing voyages.
Cafe curtain sails
billow in morning’s bluster.

His shore wife leans
over the porch railing,
aging figurehead
counting goldfish
in a landlocked pond.

The clapboard house lists,
half-foundering to port.

Previously published in miller’s pond – 2001 edition

***