Poem of the day : The Kiss

 

by Robert Graves

Are you shaken, are you stirred

    By a whisper of love,

Spellbound to a word

    Does Time cease to move,

Till her calm grey eye

    Expands to a sky

And the clouds of her hair

    Like storms go by?

Then the lips that you have kissed

    Turn to frost and fire,

And a white-steaming mist

    Obscures desire:

So back to their birth

    Fade water, air, earth,

And the First Power moves

    Over void and dearth.

Is that Love? no, but Death,

    A passion, a shout,

The deep in-breath,

    The breath roaring out,

And once that is flown,

    You must lie alone,

Without hope, without life,

    Poor flesh, sad bone.

~~~

Waiting for the moon to rise

The azure horizon
is first lit up
by a white radiance
like a pale sunrise
or a sunset afterglow

I leave the drapes open
like a lovers’ signal
for a secret meeting
gazing out the window
shiny-eyed in anticipation

Clouds appear
silvery and succulent
like they have eaten the moon
are with bursting
with moonlight

An advance party
a nebulous cavalcade
pulling up the moon
from the pit of the horizon
on wispy reins

I grow impatient,
after all the moon is revolving
at this crazy speed
and yet it makes me
wait and wait

But all good things in life
take their time
when I look up there it is
all bashful, borrowed light
limpid, liquid smile

pouring into me
deliciousness
I understand now
why the seas heave
their forever sighs

~~~

To kill a grasshopper

I killed a grasshopper
it was eating my prize rose
I threw it into the Green Bin
together with the grass clippings
I thought it would be happy
in the dark
eating grass all the time
after all it has grass in its name

but it escaped

I found it on the toilet floor
so I flushed it down the drain
twice, for good measure
it must have tunneled with the turds
into the sea
to be eaten by a fish

I wonder if
tsunamis and typhoons
feel lousy like I do
sowing death in their wake
reaping the dead with their scythe

maybe not

I wonder if
I should let Nature do her job
instead off
killing grasshoppers
to let a flower bloom
killing weeds
to let fruit trees grow

in the midst of Nature
that prefers the jungle
should I be tending a garden?

~~~

What do we get when we give to a good cause?

Apparently, a story ....

Read Seth Godin's article here

~~~

Want to be happy? Be grateful

A riveting talk by Brother David Steindl-Rast ....