Picnic Timeless

[jjhunter]

Sunday, every Sunday, let's have a community picnic. It's probably been a long week, and it's lovely to have a few minutes to sit back and relax and enjoy some good conversation in a less formal space. Feel free to bring something for the Picnic Basket - a poem you liked this week, a thought you had or something you experienced, or even something completely unrelated to poetry whatsoever that you just feel like sharing. Just take a moment to say hello, and maybe have a bite to eat; no one is going anywhere fast, and the shade promises some relief from the everyday heat. Let’s get to know each other a bit better, here under the branches of the poet’s tree.

Comments

[untonuggan]

I found this poem in a lovely collection I got from the library called Sweeping Beauty: contemporary women poets do housework

Down on My Knees
Ginger Andrews

cleaning out my refrigerator
and thinking about writing a religious poem
that somehow combines feeling sorry for myself
with ordinary praise, when my nephew stumbles in for coffee
to wash down what looks like a hangover
and get rid of what he calls hot dog water breath.
I wasn't going to bake the cake

now cooling on the counter, but I found a dozen eggs tipped
sideways in their carton behind a leftover Thanksgiving Jell-O dish.
There's something therapeutic about baking a devil's food cake,
whipping up that buttercream frosting,
knowing your sisters will drop by and say Lord yes
they'd just love a little piece.

Everybody suffers, wants to run away,
is broke after Christmas, stayed up too late
to make it to church Sunday morning. Everybody should

drink coffee with their nephews,
eat chocolate cake with their sisters, be thankful
and happy enough under a warm and unexpected January sun.

[raze]

Huh! I found myself being really tickled by this despite reading the title of the collection it came from and assuming - wrongly - that it wasn't really up my alley. Thanks for sharing!

[untonuggan]

Thanks for reading!

[spiralsheep]

Poem swap.... this week I read Said the Lord by Moira Burgess, which is about religion and being a woman and (inevitably) housework:

http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/said-lord

[untonuggan]

I love it. Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

The Greater Cats - Vita Sackville-West

The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and the different skies,
And night with different stars.
They prowl the aromatic hill,
And mate as fiercely as they kill,
To roam, to live, to drink their fill;
But this beyond their wit know I:
Man loves a little, and for long shall die.

Their kind across the desert range
Where tulips spring from stones,
Not knowing they will suffer change
Or vultures pick their bones.
Their strength's eternal in their sight,
They overtake the deer in flight,
And in their arrogance they smite;
But I am sage, if they are strong:
Man's love is transient as his death is long.

Yet oh what powers to deceive!
My wit is turned to faith,
And at this moment I believe
In love, and scout at death.
I came from nowhere, and shall be
Strong, steadfast, swift, eternally:
I am a lion, a stone, a tree,
And as the Polar star in me
Is fixed my constant heart on thee.
Ah, may I stay forever blind
With lions, tigers, leopards, and their kind.

[spiralsheep]

Poem swap.... I previously posted Suniti Namjoshi's poem Among Tigers here:

http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/354951.html

I hope you enjoy it anon.

[raze]

I will admit that I find much of modern Animal Rights poetry a little eyeroll-worthy, and I say this as a vegan. But I came across the following by Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns and thought it was pretty fantastic.

Sounds of a Battery Hen
by Karen Davis

You can tell me: if you come by the
North door, I am in the twelfth pen
on the left-hand side of the third row
from the floor; and in that pen
I am usually the middle one of three.

But even without directions, you'd discover me.
We have the same orange-red comb,
yellow beak and auburn feathers,
but as the door opens and you hear
above the electric fan a kind of
one-word wail, I am the one
who sounds the loudest in my head.


For context: a modern industrial egg farms involves large sheds filled with stacked cages of literally hundreds to thousands of chickens. If you've ever heard the sound of one of these operations... well, I'd suggest you just go find video of it, because it is indescribable.

[spiralsheep]

That last line's a kicker!

Poem swap.... Pam Ayres, mostly known for her wryly comic verse, originally came to public attention in Britain in 1974 with a poem called The Battery Hen (not an activist poem except that it was effective as a consciousness raiser for many people).

Online (without the poet's permission, although I'm not sure she'd object) here:

http://forum.homemadelife.com/t1061-the-battery-hen-by-pam-ayres

[ashestosnow]

I'm quite blown away by this.

In particular, the chicken-centric perspective; the way the chicken assumes she is giving directions to another chicken jolts one out of one's normal mode of viewing the world. Combined with the description of the bird as a complex emotional being... it's realy powerful.

Thank you for sharing.

[untonuggan]

Wow, that is really powerful. Thanks for sharing all of this animal rights poetry (over the period of time I've been following). I really appreciate it.

[lnhammer]

We're in the middle of a severe culling of our library (we need to free up about a bookcase and a half of space), which means *gasp* the horror of having to wait around in used book stores while they go through a dozen-odd bags at a time.

Best find so far: The Tale of an Anklet, being a translation of Cilappatikâram, a 5th century Tamil epic. Also an anthology of Ovid translations from Chaucer through the 1990s and a very pretty haiku collection, but the epic was the real score.

---L.

[spiralsheep]

I'm still having fun writing poetry. This week I was also lucky enough to be invited to visit an artist friend in his studio, which was fascinating.

Earlier this week I briefly reviewed a truly dire book of poetry but if I were you I'd save your time for more interesting reading material. :-)

[lnhammer]

Oh my -- that sounds impressively dire.

---L.

[spiralsheep]

I'm still surprised how dull it was. I usually manage to find redeeming features, even in poetry I actively dislike.