Tuesday, June 23, 2015

A Guest poem for summer


On July 4, weather permitting, four children--one baby, a 1-year-old, a toddler and a grown-up 4-year-old--will grace my back yard with their parents, their parents' parents, aunts and uncles and cousins galore. Anticipating that, here is a summer poem by Edgar A. Guest pulled from Collected Verse of Edgar A. Guest, published by The Reilly & Lee Co. of Chicago in 1934.
This poem is for the children. All children.

THE SUMMER CHILDREN
 
I like 'em in the winter when their cheeks are slightly pale,
I like 'em in the spring time when the March winds blow a gale;
But when summer suns have tanned 'em and they're racing to and fro,
I somehow think the children make the finest sort of show.
 
When they're brown as little berries and they're bare of foot and head,
And they're on the go each minute where the velvet lawns are spread,
Then their health is at its finest and they never stop to rest,
Oh, it's then I think the children look and are their very best.
 
We've got to know the winter and we've got to know the spring,
But for children, could I do it, unto summer I would cling;
For I'm happiest when I see 'em, as a wild and merry band
Of healthy, lusty youngsters that the summer sun has tanned.
 
 

Google images
 


Thursday, June 18, 2015

Blogging about some scenes and such - poems

Pears are ripening - PL
 
TANKA
 
recorded giggles
from the nearby carnival
echo braggart's joke--
   "I'll eat more crawfish than you--
   take that trophy to Texas."
[news photo, 6.16.'97]
 
~~
 
CINQUAIN
"Typhoon Season"
 
Who owns
Scarborough Shoals
in the south China sea--
China? the Philippines? Both pull
their ships.
[J. Perlez, NYT, 6.19.'12]
~~
 
TANKA
 
wheelbarrow
going places without
leaving home
   it also fits the contours
   of my tired body
[Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons, 6.17. '07]
~~
 
CINQUAIN
"Jennings Osbourne"
 
He looked
at everything
the same, whether it cost
twenty-thousand dollars or just
two bucks.
[David Koon, AR Times, 6.16.'12]
~~
 
TANKA
 
looking up
from my reading, I see
the red mandevilla
highlighted by morning's sun
and swaying in a slight breeze
[actual, 5. 16. '12]
~~
 
CINQUAIN
 
Beside
I-95,
a man holds a woman
tenderly next to their auto
nearby.
[actual, South Carolina, 6. 27. '10]

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Floods and their aftermath--poems

Google Images
 
 
after the flood
yard full of photos
drying out
~~
 
black sodden fields--
slender streams snake through
toward the river
~~
 
the flood
taking his seventy-year
collection of treasures
~~
 
new torrents in flooded town:
    tears of the victims
    viewing their losses
~~
 
82-year-old's
jet ski of no use now
the rising river
~~
 
family of ducks
s~w~i~m~m~i~n~g
the flooded street
~~
 
red mud
sucking at the worker's shoes
seven days of rain
~~
 
catching "zzz"s and rays
weary floodfighter
waits for more sandbags
~~
 
on the fire escape
a man in suit and top hat
signals for rescue
~~
~~
 
c 2015 Pat Laster dba lovepat press


Saturday, June 6, 2015

My first sonnet


I SOUGHT YOU LONG, O LOVE
 
Through mocking, taunting games of hide-and-seek,
you torture and delay. A challenged sleuth,
I search in crannies--vertical, oblique--
for angles, images. Like savage youth,
I rip apart the weedy, matted clumps
of phrases adequate another time.
Your shadow leads me further, over humps
of clichés, scrabbling for a word sublime.
Perhaps my efforts trample fragile seed.
Oh, accents, meter, rhyme, emerge now from
your hiding place. Give up. No more impede
my crazed, frenetic goal to pen a psalm.
   The chase was long--through bramble, thicket, thorn.
   The prize is won: a sonnet newly born.
 
--PL, from variations, 1994