I came across this poem yesterday while I was reading through Winter: An Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur.
I don't know about you, but this time of year always puts me in the doldrums. What do I yearn for these days? Sunshine, spring, flowers, nesting birds, a trip home, and more. How about you? What do you yearn for? Let's write about that this week.
Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.
Yes, we've hadAll I could do was shake my head in agreement--vigorous agreement.
Enough of winter's white
And we long for the
Rich green of a
New season.
I don't know about you, but this time of year always puts me in the doldrums. What do I yearn for these days? Sunshine, spring, flowers, nesting birds, a trip home, and more. How about you? What do you yearn for? Let's write about that this week.
Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.
Actually, I have a poem on file that pretty much sums up yearning for me. It's for a YA collection I'm writing (slowly).
ReplyDeleteSometimes There’s Something
Sometimes there’s something
I want so much I think
my hands will fly off,
fingers fluttering like birds,
to search in the east
and my feet will run fast
by themselves to the west
and my head will dive down
to the ground to roll south,
my eyes flashing to find it
while my body flounders
around, trying to go north,
every bit of me wanting,
wanting to know what it is
that I’m wanting so much.
--Kate Coombs, 2010
BACKGROUND
ReplyDeleteReporter's microphone captures
background sounds of children
playing and unknown birds a-twitter.
Both groups unaware that they
put the war in context and make it
that much more unbelievable.
This is an old poem, but it has that sense of yearning in it so I thought I would share:
ReplyDeleteRound Frame
My father's past lies hidden in an round frame.
The child there has plump cheeks,
uncolored eyes; a heavy Russian hat
perches awkwardly on his baby curls.
He stares out at me, through me, daring me
to take away his manufactured birth
in Connecticut. All those years Ykaterinslav
was lost to me, when I could have celebrated
Ukrainian winters, learned words of love,
fashion, passion, paternity,
how to season the fish with pepper, not sugar,
how to cut the farfl from flat sheets of dough.
All I had was New Haven.
Would I go there now, when Ykaterinislav
no longer exists; go and see
what Cossacks, Hitler, Chernobyl could not conquer,
the little shtetl my father alone destroyed
by never speaking its name.
No, I shall stay here, at home, instead,
gazing back at the boy who stares at me,
whisper to him, through him, dare him,
"Tell me the story of Ykaterinslav,"
till one day the picture itself speaks.
ALL I WANT FOR BREAKFAST
ReplyDeleteBy Steven Withrow
is to hold
the interminable
spoon
of time
over the bowl
of what's possible
and wait,
to savor,
eat,
forever.
Each year I yearn
ReplyDeleteto write some fiction.
I think of dialogue
and diction,
characters
and motivation,
unreliable
narration,
rising action
point of view
(He and She
or Me and You?)
I do my best
with prose and plot
to do what poetry
does not:
Go on and on
and on and on
and on and on
and on and...yawn.
I toss my fiction
on the floor
and cuddle up
with Metaphor.
I love this Julie!
ReplyDeleteI wrote this one a few years ago. It was a time of very deep yearning for me.
ReplyDeleteStill, She Cannot Write the Spring
It was a cold Christmas
That chilled the roots and left no promise
Against the hard consonants of November.
A songless sparrow picks lichen
From trees standing bare in the wind
And listens with her for a touch
Of sunlight, for words to melt the icy ground,
To bear the burden of a crocus
Rising through frozen earth.
What I’d say to the mountains
ReplyDeleteYour blue edges blur
Beyond the belltower
at the edge the town,
over the river
outside my vision, just,
but hovering over us
to catch us
in the event of a sudden loss of gravity.
Why are you not here
In this flattest, barest place
Where no blue exists,
Nor belltowers, nor even towns,
Only white fields
And more white fields
And more white fields
And tufts of dried grasses?
I know your contours,
Your smoky smells.
I could draw you, with my finger, in the air
I could erase the train that carried me away,
And leave me standing on a mountaintop
Looking at a mountaintop
While the valley between us
Hums with pleasure.
But my train rumbled out
And I wished I’d yelled and leapt.
You would have caught me, I think,
Picked me out of the air and held me close
So I’d never need leave you,
Never need remembrance or the writing of poetry
But only the living of it
Without this missing piece at the middle.
"The hard consonants of November . . ." YES!
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of Dickinson's "the very Norway of the year."
And Julie--your poem made me giggle.
JaneY
Thanks, Jane. I am honored to have your comment on my poem. I'm looking forward to seeing you in person in Atlanta next week at the Southern Breeze SCBWI conference.
ReplyDeleteDoraine
Yearning
ReplyDeleteby Nicole Marie Schreiber
For passports and postcards,
countries with castles,
anywhere there’s tea brewing,
and tall ships at sea.
For sunrises on bridges
beaches with seashells,
anywhere with ruins,
and a tale not yet told.
For flowers and fairies,
dancing and music,
anywhere to read a book,
and a pillow to dream.
English Was Her Second Language
ReplyDeleteIn tears
Without words
Needed
She declared
THIS WALL IS WHITE.
White-
My husband said.
Our government said
Black
No. White-
My husband said.
We lost our jobs,
We lost our home,
We lost our servants,
All we had.
Yearning
In external form –
Hand slapped
Against a classroom wall…
THIS WALL IS WHITE.