poem

Light Takes the Tree

The Waking

By Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke, “The Waking” from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright 1953 by Theodore Roethke. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (Doubleday, 1961)

A Host of Golden Daffodils

In New York, for the last several years, early Spring has been heralded by hordes of tulips (I don’t remember when this became a thing; it definitely wasn’t when I was growing up). In Farnham, it seems to be daffodils which, unlike NYC’s daffodils, are growing wild everywhere you look.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

By William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Haiku (semi) Final

Here are some of the images from my final submission on the Pound haiku. These are the ones where I tried to illustrate the poem fairly literally:

The first one has 2 pictures that have a ratio of 12: 5 in width (like the 12 and 5 syllables in the 2 lines of the haiku.
The next 2 images go for a more classical 5, 7, 5 syllabic layout of images of the faces in the crowd and the petals on a wet black bough.
And the final image superimposes the apparition of the faces in the crowd over the petals on a wet black bough.

Click any image to see them all enlarged on the screen. I also submitted a bunch of other images that have already been shown here.

The Poet of Crescent Lake

Loving Love

New Year, New Paths

OK, so it’s not a yellow wood.

Ordinarily, I would never do such a hokey, cliché, Hallmark-card of a thing. I have passed this spot hundreds, if not thousands, of times without once thinking of Frost’s poem. But on this occasion of rare emptiness, and my wife stopping to observe a boat on the river, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the road not taken. So I did it. New Years is a good time to contemplate choices and the roads taken and not taken.