A Challenge

If you enter the New York City Public Library along 41st Street, you will walk past a series of brass engraved plaques.

The Challenge: Look through all the quotes and comment here in the blog on the one that spoke you the most.

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Ashokan Farewell

by Grian MacGregor

TO WATCH: http://youtu.be/HxDP6q6C5mE

The sun is sinking low in the sky above Ashokan.
The pines and the willows know soon we will part.
There's a whisper in the wind of promises unspoken,
And a love that will always remain in my heart.

My thoughts will return to the sound of your laughter,
The magic of moving as one,
And a time we'll remember long ever after
The moonlight and music and dancing are done.

Will we climb the hills once more?
Will we walk the woods together?
Will I feel you holding me close once again?
Will every song we've sung stay with us forever?
Will you dance in my dreams or my arms until then?

Under the moon the mountains lie sleeping
Over the lake the stars shine.
They wonder if you and I will be keeping
The magic and music, or leave them behind.

To Autumn-Keats

 
I

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
      Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.


II                                  

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
   Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.


III

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
   Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
      The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Ode to the West Wind - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Please look here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2018182534522.2100203.1242652615

Remember Me



REMEMBER me when I am gone away,   
Gone far away into the silent land;   
When you can no more hold me by the hand,   
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.   
Remember me when no more day by day 
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:   
Only remember me; you understand   
It will be late to counsel then or pray.   
Yet if you should forget me for a while   
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave   
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,   
Better by far you should forget and smile   
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Rossetti

I am from...

“I am from”

Got this idea from the radio show and blog "ON BEING." Let’s use this incomplete line as an opportunity to share and learn about each other, have a little fun.

Here are the guidelines: answer it any way you like. If you want to build on this phrase in prose — with one word, one sentence, one paragraph, one essay, then do so. If you want to finish this phrase with a photo or a photo essay, then do it. If you want to elaborate on this phrase with a line of poesy or a stanza, then do so.

Share something about yourself, your heritage, your geography, your interior mind, your imaginings or vulnerabilities.

Guess Title and Fill In Blanks, Just One Word.

My mother loves ___ more than I do,

more than anyone. She pulls chunks off

the stick and eats it plain, explaining

cream spun around into ____! Growing up

we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon

and ____, ____ and cheese on green noodles,

___ melting in small pools in the hearts

of Yorkshire puddings, ___ better

than gravy staining white rice yellow,

___ glazing corn in slipping squares,

___ the lava in white volcanoes

of hominy grits, ___ softening

in a white bowl to be creamed with white

sugar, ___ disappearing into

whipped sweet potatoes, with pineapple,

___ melted and curdy to pour

over pancakes, ___ licked off the plate

with warm Alaga syrup. When I picture

the good old days I am grinning greasy

with my brother, having watched the tiger

chase his tail and turn to ___. We are

Mumbo and Jumbo’s children despite

historical revision, despite

our parent’s efforts, glowing from the inside

out, one hundred megawatts of ___.

My turn please?

GUESS THE TITLE?

WHEN the long day’s tramp is over, when the journey’s done,

I shall dip down from some hill-top at the going down o’ the sun,

And turn in at the open door, and lay down staff and load,

And wash me clean of the heat o’ day, and white dust o’ the road.

There shall I hear the restless wind go wandering to and fro.

That sings the old wayfaring song—the tune that the stars know;

Soft shall I lie and well content, and I shall ask no more

Than just to drowse and watch the folk turn in at the open door.

To hail the folk I used to know, that trudged with me in the dust,

That warmed their hands at the same fire, and ate o’ the same crust,

To know them safe from the cold wind and the drenching rain,

Turn a little, and wake a little, and so to sleep again. 

What am I?

Just for a little fun, see if you can tell what this poem is about.

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by Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very Whitely,

discreetly, Very quietly 

Our toes, our noses

Take hold on the loam,

Acquire the air. 



Nobody sees us, Stops us,

betrays us;

The small grains make room. 

Soft fists insist on

Heaving the needles,

The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.



Our hammers, our rams,

Earless and eyeless, 

Perfectly voiceless,

Widen the crannies,

Shoulder through holes.



We diet on water,

On crumbs of shadow,

Bland-mannered,

asking 

Little or nothing.



So many of us!

So many of us! 

We are shelves,

we are Tables,

we are meek,

We are edible, 



Nudgers and shovers

In spite of ourselves.

Our kind multiplies: 

We shall by morning

Inherit the earth.

Our foot's in the door.

The Treasure

By Robinson Jeffers

Mountains, a moment’s earth-waves rising and hollowing; the earth too’s an ephemerid; the stars—

Short-lived as grass the stars quicken in the nebula and dry in their summer, they spiral

Blind up space, scattered black seeds of a future; nothing lives long, the whole sky’s

Recurrences tick the seconds of the hours of the ages of the gulf before birth, and the gulf

After death is like dated: to labor eighty years in a notch of eternity is nothing too tiresome,

Enormous repose after, enormous repose before, the flash of activity.

Surely you never have dreamed the incredible depths were prologue and epilogue merely

To the surface play in the sun, the instant of life, what is called life? I fancy

That silence is the thing, this noise a found word for it; interjection, a jump of the breath at that silence;

Stars burn, grass grows, men breathe: as a man finding treasure says “Ah!” but the treasure’s the essence:

Before the man spoke it was there, and after he has spoken he gathers it, inexhaustible treasure.

Dedicated to the 1 I love !

Happy Birthday

MR B

Let it Be !....Let it B