Each Friday we provide the link to the blogger who is hosting a celebration of poetry around the blogosphere. There you can find the links to the many other blogs that are posting poems (new and old), discussions of poems, and reviews of poetry books. It’s also a great way to explore the internet.
Enjoy the festivities!
The host this week is Sara Lewis Holmes.
You can visit her here at Read Write Believe.
(The Acanthus, paper cutout collage by Henri Matisse,
1869-1954, French printmaker, painter, and sculptor)
“Love is the poetry of the senses.” ~ Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), French writer
SOLO FOR SATURDAY NIGHT GUITAR
Time was. Time is. Time shall be.
Man invented time to be used.
Love was. Love is. Love shall be.
Yet man never invented love
Nor is love to be used like time.
A clock wears numbers one to twelve
And you look and read its face
And tell the time pre-cise-ly ex-act - ly.
Yet who reads the face of love?
Who tells love numbers pre-cise-ly ex-act-ly?
Holding love in a tight hold for keeps,
Fastening love down and saying
“It's here now and here always.”
You don’t do this off hand, careless-like.
Love costs. Love is not so easy
Nor is the shimmering of star dust
Nor the smooth flow of new blossoms
Nor the drag of a heavy hungering for someone.
Love is a white horse you ride
or wheels and hammers leaving you lonely
or a rock in the moonlight for rest
or a sea where phantom ships cross always
or a tall shadow always whispering
or a circle of spray and prisms —
maybe a rainbow round your shoulder.
Heavy heavy is love to carry
and light as one rose petal,
light as a bubble, a blossom,
a remembering bar of music
or a finger or a wisp of hair
never forgotten.
~ Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), American poet, writer, and biographer of Lincoln
8 comments:
“Love is the poetry of the senses.” ~ Honoré de Balzac
That's a perfect quote, Maria! And what a great Sandburg poem.
"Yet who reads the face of love?
Who tells love numbers pre-cise-ly ex-act-ly?"
LOVE this poem, especially the second stanza. What gorgeous images and metaphors. "Poetry of the senses" indeed! Thanks for this dose of beauty today, Maria.
This one's going in my poetry common book so I can (try) to keep it forever. I'd really love to hear him read those lines. Exquisitely true and mysterious and solid, all at once.
"Heavy heavy is love to carry
and light as one rose petal,"
Yes! That about says it all.
Hi Maria. It always gives me so much pleasure to visit you here every Friday. And yes like Andi noted above, I enjoyed those two lines as well:
"Heavy heavy is love to carry
and light as one rose petal,
light as a bubble, a blossom,
a remembering bar of music
or a finger or a wisp of hair
never forgotten."
Made me wistful of a love that was, that is, and shall be.
Now I know why Friday is my favorite day of the week. Brings me to words like these. Fills my senses.
Love and Time.
Life.
Beautiful description of love. And how true - "Love costs." Thanks for the lovely Matisse collage too!
How is it I had never seen this poem before? It is so full of telling images and metaphors...I'm definitely going to dwell on this one a while!
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