The nature of this flower is to bloom Rebellious. Living Against the elemental crush A song of color Blooming for deserving eyes. Blooming gloriously For Its Self. Alice Walker
The Priest
Posted on by James Woodward
The priest picks his way Through the parish. Eyes watch him From windows, from the farms; Hearts wanting him to come near. The flesh rejects him. Women, pouring from the black kettle, Stir up the whirling tea-grounds Of their thoughts; offer him a dark Filling in their smiling sandwich. Priests have a long […]
a sunflower
Posted on by James Woodward
Helen says heaven, for her, would be complete immersion in physical process, without self-consciousness— to be the respiration of the grass, or ionized agitation just above the break of a wave, traffic in a sunflower’s thousand golden rooms. from Mark Doty, Heaven for Helen
greenness
Posted on by James Woodward
The beautiful changes as a forest is changed By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it; As a mantis, arranged On a green leaf, grows Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves Any greenness is greener than anyone knows. from Richard Wilbur, The beautiful changes
the scent of mint
Posted on by James Woodward
Oh, the littles that remain! Scent of mint out in the lane; Flare of window; sound of bees; — These, but these. Three times sitting down to bread; One time climbing up to bed; Table-setting o’er and o’er; Drying herbs for winter’s store; This thing; that thing;—nothing more. But just now out in […]
as dew clarifies air
Posted on by James Woodward
They say eyes clear with age, As dew clarifies air To sharpen evenings, As if time put an edge Round the last shape of things To show them there; The many-levelled trees, The long soft tides of grass Wrinkling away the gold Wind-ridden waves–all these, They say, come back to focus As we grow old. […]
hopeful green
Posted on by James Woodward
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the […]
thorn
Posted on by James Woodward
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread: you put this rather beautifully, and gave me leave to sing my work until my work became the song. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it: a line on which a man might ring the changes as he tills the ground from which he […]
Clergy work in St Georges House
Posted on by James Woodward
A Church in Bavaria Everything bends to re-enact the poem lived, lived, not written, the poem spoken by Christ, who never wrote a word, saboteur of received ideas who rebuilt Rome with the words he never wrote; whether sacred, whether human, himself […]
flint
Posted on by James Woodward
An emerald is as green as grass; A ruby red as blood; A sapphire shines as blue as heaven; A flint lies in the mud. A diamond is a brilliant stone, To catch the world’s desire; An opal holds a fiery spark; But a flint holds fire. Christina Rossetti, Jewels
St. Peter and the Angel
Posted on by James Woodward
Delivered out of raw continual pain, smell of darkness, groans of those others to whom he was chained– unchained, and led past the sleepers, door after door silently opening– out! And along a long street’s majestic emptiness under the moon: one hand on the angel’s shoulder, one feeling the air before him, eyes open […]
ribbon
Posted on by James Woodward
The curl of the ribbon by leaves of the reeds, the grasses paint peeling on the wet clapboards like the curl of the flat ribbon pulled by the blade of scissors wrapping a package in gold moving in the autumn breeze bathed in a puddle of light grasses above the maple leaves calling my […]
rosemary
Posted on by James Woodward
Beauty and Beauty’s son and rosemary – Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly – born of the sea supposedly, at Christmas each, in company, braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary – since the flight to Egypt, blooming indifferently. With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath, its flowers – white […]
opening and upward
Posted on by James Woodward
here’s to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap and to your(in my arms flowering so new) self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain and here’s to silent certainly mountains; and to a disappearing poet of always, snow and to morning; and to morning’s beautiful friend twilight (and a first dream […]
Colours
Posted on by James Woodward
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly, […]
a sheet of interrupting water
Posted on by James Woodward
The roaring alongside he takes for granted, And that every so often the world is bound to shake. He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward, In a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake. The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet Of interrupting water comes and goes […]
Money
Posted on by James Woodward
I listen to money singing. It’s like looking down From long French windows at a provincial town, The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad In the evening sun. It is intensely sad. from Philip Larkin, Money Wearing worry about money like a hair shirt I lie down in my bed […]
flowering
Posted on by James Woodward
Light splashed this morning on the shell-pink anemones swaying on their tall stems; down blue-spiked veronica light flowed in rivulets over the humps of the honeybees; this morning I saw light kiss the silk of the roses in their second flowering, my late bloomers flushed with their brandy. A curious gladness shook me. […]
springtime
Posted on by James Woodward
A gentle spring evening arrives airily, unclouded by the world. Three times the bell tolls; it echoes like a wave. We see heaven upside-down in the lake. Love is a vast sea. It cannot be emptied. And, like springtime, insight flows easily, everywhere. Where is nirvana? Why, here, of course. […]
morning rain
Posted on by James Woodward
The dawn light. A light rain. I hear it on the treetop leaves. Then, the mist. The morning wind blows it and the clouds away. Now colours deepen, and a sense of grace: the presence of water. And then, across the landscape the smell of morning rain. Du Fu (712-770 AD)