“The value of the poetic spirit is that it helps us to think loftily. It enables us to remember that we have kinship not only with the dusty street but with the stars.” Walter Russell Bowie. From On Being Alive, published in 1932…so, yes, old…by “contemporary” standards.
But by old-fashioned, more philosophical, historical “standards”?
It rings loud and clear!
Is it too sentimental? Who uses loftily in today’s world?
I don’t know. I don’t really care. The quotation just rings loud and clear, and true.
I’ve been spending these last four, Covid-closeted months with quite a few of my old-fashioned friends at The Imagination Lab. We didn’t wear masks! Wait! Don’t worry!
Of course I’m talking BOOKS here. Books who communicate from the heart in silence: glorious, contagious silence.
They keep encouraging me to stay close to all my other friends. “Are you sharing with them?” they ask me.
So, Hi!
July 7, 2020 Hello, from “The Poet’s Corner.”
I couldn’t sleep in the wee small hours after the strangely curbed-in, crowd-forbidden Independence Day celebrations across the United States. I kept rolling around, cat to one side, heap of sheets and blankets to the other.
It was stuffy inside my house without the swamp cooler, and it was cold with it. I rolled around. I thought of the July Fourths of my childhood. Each one of those usually started with me and my brothers crawling out the second-story window of our parents’ bedroom, onto the front-porch, shingled roof. It was rough on the bottom, but it allowed a balcony seat at the parade down the broad street in front of our house.
My parents—well, my mother—usually made us crawl back in: the roof angled sharply down. She preferred we walk down: 15 stairs, across the living room, and out the front door to ground-level, front row center: our yard—instead of being dumped there during horse-play or Independence-Day glee.
Parents. My mother. My father. We all have them.
But mine couldn’t keep me company, comfort me, couldn’t call me back in, to safety. Instead, here’s the poem that kept me company in those restless, wee-small hours…
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did
Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that none loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone’s any was all to her
someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then) they
said their nevers they slept their dream
stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died I guess
(and no one stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
no one and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
e e cummings
1894-1962