poetry

Pelicans

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Pelican diving into the ocean with gull in the background

“In a dive” by Coveredinsevindust.
Released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.

Pelicans

by Robinson Jeffers, 1925-26

Four pelicans went over the house,
Sculled their worn oars over the courtyard: I saw that ungainliness
Magnifies the idea of strength.
A lifting gale of sea-gulls followed them; slim yachts of the element,
Natural growths of the sky, no wonder
Light wings to leave the sea; but those grave weights toil, and are powerful,
And the wings torn with old storms remember
The cone that the oldest redwood dropped from, the tilting of continents,
The dinosaur’s day, the lift of new sea-lines.
The omnisecular spirit keeps the old with the new also.
Nothing at all has suffered erasure.
There is life not of our time. He calls ungainly bodies
As beautiful as the grace of horses.
He is weary of nothing; he watches air-planes; he watches pelicans.

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bantams

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Bantams in Pine-Woods

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

Damned universal cock, as if the sun
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.

Fat!  Fat!  Fat!  Fat!  I am the personal.
Your world is you.  I am my world.

You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat!
Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines,

Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.

—Wallace Stevens

via Steve.

pity, not

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pity this busy monster,manunkind... (XIV)

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
                          A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

E. E. Cummings (1944)

Found at My Favourite Poetry // suggested by Steve.

A Valley Like This

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William Stafford poem at Washington Pass

A Valley Like This is one of the seven Methow Valley poems by William Stafford. The poems are placed along the watershed of the Methow Valley, from Washington Pass to the Columbia River. This is the poem that was read at our wedding.

The locations of all seven poems:

  1. Time for Serenity, Anyone? – where the Methow River meets the Columbia.
  2. From the Wild People – between the towns of Methow and Carlton.
  3. Ask Me – north of the ranger station in Winthrop.
  4. Is This Feeling About the West Real? – also north of the ranger station in Winthrop.
  5. Where We Are – near the suspension footbridge east of Mazama.
  6. Silver Star – in front of Silver Star mountain.
  7. A Valley Like This – at the scenic overlook at Washington Pass.
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Goatee

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I have a goatee on my chin,
It makes me look sagacious.
People know that when I speak
My words won't be fallacious.

Much easier than reading books
Or growing self-aware,
Is setting razor blade aside
And sprouting hoary hair.

Philosophers in years to come
Will seek the truth within;
But I can fake it easily
With whiskers on my chin.

— S.E.A.