1. Poems to share #litcomcumbres at Twitter Wednesday, October 5th
2. The Flower-Fed Buffaloes Author: Vachel Lindsay – (1879/1931) The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring In the days of long ago, Ranged where the locomotives sing And the prairie flowers lie low; The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass Is swept away by wheat, Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by In the spring that still is sweet. But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring Left us long ago. They gore no more, they bellow no more, They trundle around the hills no more: With the Blackfeet lying low, With the Pawnees lying low.
3. Time Author: Allen Curnow - (1911/2001) I am the nor-west air among the pines I am the water-race and the rust on railway lines I am the mileage recorded on the yellow signs. I am dust, I am distance, I am lupins back of the beach I am the sums the sole-charge teachers teach I am cows called to milking and the magpie’s screech. I am nine o’clock in the morning when the office is clean I am the slap of the belting and the smell of the machine I am the place in the park where lovers were seen. >>
4. I am recurrent music the children hear I am level noises in the remembering ear I am the sawmill and the passionate second gear. I, Time, am all these, yet these exist Among my mountainous fabrics like mist, So do they the measurable world resist. I, Time, call down, condense, confer On the willing memory the shapes these were: I, more than your conscious carrier, Am island, am sea, am father, farm, and friend, Though I am here all things my coming attend; I am, you have heard it, the Beginning and the End.
5. Marrysong Author: Dennis Scott - (1939/1991) He never learned her, quite. Year after year that territory, without seasons, shifted under his eye. An hour he could be lost in the walled anger of her quarried hurt on turning, see cool water laughing where the day before there were stones in her voice. >>
6. He charted. She made wilderness again. Roads disappeared. The map was never true. Wind brought him rain sometimes, tasting of sea – and suddenly she would change the shape of shores faultlessly calm. All, all was each day new; the shadows of her love shortened or grew like trees seen from an unexpected hill, new country at each jaunty helpless journey. So he accepted that geography, constantly strange. Wondered. Stayed home increasingly to find His way among the landscapes of her mind.
7. Amends Author: Adrienne Rich - (1929…) Nights like this: on the cold apple-bough a white star, then another exlploading out of the bark: on the ground, moonlight picking at small stones as it picks at greater stones as it rises with the surf laying its cheeck for moments on the sand as it licks the broken ledge, as it flows up the cliffs, as it flicks across the tracks >>
8. as it unavailing pours into gash of the sand-and-gravel quarry as it leans across the hangared fuselage of the crop dusting plane as it soaks through cracks into trailers tremulous wit sleep as it dwells upon the eyelids of sleepers as if to make amends.
