Tag Archives: poems

poems, poetry

Trees as barques

Is it a wonder that no one dance
can capture the forest prance?

Slender barques move
to their journey’s end.

Forest rood, slender forest stood
as early light’s lithe fingers
brush against a young pinewood.

Beach, oak and sycamore lift their tongues
praising Father, Son and the Breathing One,
pushing leaves across the verdant earth.

All the thorns of Adam’s birth
lie beneath skin, branch and earth.

Leaves, open mouthed, catch water
from sacred skies;
heavy clouds like
angels pouring bread.

© rl busséll 2019 – All rights reserved.

Standard
poetry

Our Aleph-Bets

To the sounds of our twenty-six;
to the sounds of our aleph-bets,
we’re sounding our lives
‘round our sounds.

And all our soundings
press us into what we are.

So I give thanks to Wycliffe, Webster, and Will
for still I hear them sounding their depths.
I am deeper because they willed words,
words that are pressed into my every cell,
words that speak to my soul, words that call,
words that stall the beating of my heart.

Start, if you recall
the first you heard of Juliet
and her dead Romeo;
and that bachelors may marry yet,
and of the night that our dead Hero
was from death recalled.

Start, if you recall
the beginning of beginnings,
when nothingness was formed
into rib and woman formed,
when the first light of dawn spilled
from Word and Wind,
when from fire, God did call.

Start, if you recall
finding Noah’s book
laid upon a table faire,
of spelling words like fare and hair,
of all the varied tongues that form
our England and America,
and of how large it seemed all.

And because of this I wonder still:
symbols making sounds,
sounds making meaning,
meaning making men.

© rl busséll 2019 – All rights reserved

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poetry

I can’t dance

I don’t know how many days
I will have with you.
I don’t know how you came
to be with me.

I can’t dance
and the tunes I carry
are always wrong.
Somehow they sound better
when they’re stuck inside;
then the beat is always right,
then the cadence slides
softly to the side.

How could you have come from me?

It’s not just these things,
but your warm and open
heart; your faith
that causes me to praise.
You seek to do the good.
You seek the highest mark.
You seek His glorious name.

I thank you for being mine.
I thank you for laughing lines.
I thank you for silver shrines.

You are the little one,
the one with the “funny” name,
the one that gets the pun,
the one that dances in the frame.

for the one with the funny name

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.

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poetry

Full and Without

I’ll stumble up and take hold
of starlit dust and hold,
hold with vigor the mighty
flames of rite.
I’ll bend my knee for the fight.

I need not tell you of my plight
I need not tell you of my blight
I need not tell you of my night.

There are too many failings,
too many wantings to fill me up.

I am bottomless;
I am full
and cannot be filled.

My emptiness is full and without.

I cannot reason why.
I cannot spy into the glass
to see and correct my past.
Would that I could,
with hindsight, never to have set
foot near the pit,
never to have dared to spit.
For my strength, it flies,
it flies like lightening from the sky —
furious, pitiless, and hot.

Then I am not.

It is not that I cease to be.
It is not that I cease to reason.
It is not that I cease to have flesh and soul.
It is that I cease to look.
I cease to remember the price paid.
I cease to recall. I cease to call.

And the gilded calf, the flowered staff, and
the manna he did breathe
should be carved into me.
They should, by God, leave me with a mark.
There should be something,
There should be something,
There should be something
left upon this ark.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.

Standard
poetry

O Haiku

Over oar, over
O’er oarsmen’s opposition —
Ocean owns oarsman

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved

Photo by Emily Bauman

Alphabet Haiku Challenge

  • Every word in the haiku must begin with the same letter
  • When written in English, it generally follows the syllabic pattern 5-7-5
  • Haiku/Senryu Poetry – Here is an in-depth description of Haiku/Senryu Poem (also called human haiku) is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all. Senryu is usually written in the present tense and only references to some aspect of human nature or emotions. They possess no references to the natural world and thus stand out from nature/seasonal haiku.
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poetry

Sonnet four

For my mind is filled with remembrance for:
four and twenty blackbirds baked and pie’d;
Pied Piper piping, gathering his corps;
The lore of a miss ‘for a spider spied,
Spied, in the throws of the sun; tumblin,
tumblin Icarus — the very one;
One boy, one dame, one lord, one black sheep kin;
Kin and king cursed with golden fingers won;
One hero with Golden Fleece in open hand;
Hands waking our John-a-late-for-matins;
Matin-bells ringing, ringing through the land;
Land, shaped, formed by Blue Ox and Bunyan,
Bunyan’s mighty ax taming dirt and sky;
Sky, set to call, this storied list to my mind’s eye.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

“Fairytales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten” — G.K. Chesterton

The stories of our childhood stay with us forever. They are our companions, our boon, and the boon we give to others; by them we are shaped. Tell stories to your children; write upon their souls.

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poetry

Lavrans’ Day

”Life is held in flowered holds”

Slender tapers’ light
flickers, sputters, splashes and holds
his dying might
in the evens’ hold.

His life’s loves
and griefs:
a child crushed
beneath barreling bark,
another throws
herself against the ark,
another tied
to sister’s lark,
another sputtered with ne’er
a spark.

All his life spent
‘neath starry expanse,
spent lifting, warring
with word and blade,
is worthless now;
only breath beneath the brow
matters now.

Halberd’s glory, hoary head,
watchers watching
and the priest beside their bed
fade in the light of viaticum;
manna from heavens’ head,
life from life, bread from bread.

Oh, to borrow time instead,
instead of fading,
slipping from
flesh to bed,
from life to dead.

Oh, to forget not
and be not forgotten,
to spin the wheel
and leave some spark,
to leave a fire,
to leave some part,
to be given over
and leave a mark.

Viaticum:
the taste of life,
the taste of sorrow,
the taste of tears,
the taste of blood
upon the spear.

”Life is held in flowered holds”

His gold-haired beauty
pierced his heart
where blade could never stray;
blood poured from open wounds,
open sorrows, open swoons.
Anger flashed and held too long
broke what ne’er before was
broken long.

No matter now,
bridges mended;
babe was loved,
even if his spark
did flash before
the promise sworn.

”Life is held in flowered holds”

Sprinkle life
upon the spent
and with water
mend the rent.

Viaticum.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.

Dedicated to Sigrid Undset.

Few novels have an impact beyond the ink and paper, Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset, is one of those novels. If you need a novel to read and you don’t want to waste your time with fluff, read Kristin Lavransdatter.

Links to purchase “Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset” Tiina Nunnally (Translator) from Audible, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble:

Audible
Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Sigrid Undset as a young girl - Photographer Unknown

Sigrid Undset as a young girl – Photographer Unknown

Interested in learning more about Sigrid Undset, here are a couple of posts to wet your whistle:

Fascinating Facts about Sigrid Undset, Author of Kristin Lavransdatter
Modern Mrs. Darcy’s short post on Kristin Lavransdatter

From Sam Guzman Catholic Gentlemen’s Site Kristin Lavransdatter and Your Nordic Medieval Catholic Heart by Tyler Blanski

The Thomistic Institute Podcast Father Snyder “The Drama of Grace: Sigrid Undset and the Narrative of Conversion”

Catholic Stuff Podcast “Kristin’s Resentment”

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poetry

M Haiku Two

Many move mountains,
many more move molehills —
mouse moved mighty mane.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.

Alphabet Haiku Challenge

  • Every word in the haiku must begin with the same letter
  • When written in English, it generally follows the syllabic pattern 5-7-5
  • Haiku/Senryu Poetry – Here is an in-depth description of Haiku/Senryu Poem (also called human haiku) is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all. Senryu is usually written in the present tense and only references to some aspect of human nature or emotions. They possess no references to the natural world and thus stand out from nature/seasonal haiku.

Inspired by Touch Press’ beautiful iPad app “Five Fables” featuring Nobel Prize winning Seamus Heaney’s translation of Robert Henryson’s, a 15th-century Scottish poet, versification of Aesop’s “The Lion and the Mouse” and four other fables as read by Sir Billy Connolly. Genius.

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poetry

Another Ransomed to the Day

There she stood, a silent sentinel
at the edge of her quiet pool.
The dawn, that rose hooded mongrel,
stumbled from her dark vestibule,
and newly born, purchased color;
and wild with abandon spent it on her whims.
Water, rippled by a lone sculler,
pulsed against her slender limbs.
She stared with worry at the dawn.
Then her bright eyes pawed her prey,
and lightening quick, stabbed the dawn;
another bled, another ransomed to the day.
For the newborn day breeds bile,
and with a sway, sells death’s smile.

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.

Photo by Alfred Leung on Unsplash

Standard
poetry

J Haiku

jaybird jaws, jaws, jaws.
jabbering jibes jumble —
jackrabbit jumps

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.

Alphabet Haiku Challenge

  • Every word in the haiku must begin with the same letter
  • When written in English, it generally follows the syllabic pattern 5-7-5
  • Haiku/Senryu Poetry – Here is an in-depth description of Haiku/Senryu Poem (also called human haiku) is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all. Senryu is usually written in the present tense and only references to some aspect of human nature or emotions. They possess no references to the natural world and thus stand out from nature/seasonal haiku.

Photo by Erin Wilson on Unsplash

Standard
poetry

I Haiku

 

Ibexes incline,
inconceivable inches —
Ilsthorn’s igneous

© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.

Alphabet Haiku Challenge

  • Every word in the haiku must begin with the same letter
  • When written in English, it generally follows the syllabic pattern 5-7-5
  • Haiku/Senryu Poetry – Here is an in-depth description of Haiku/Senryu Poem (also called human haiku) is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all. Senryu is usually written in the present tense and only references to some aspect of human nature or emotions. They possess no references to the natural world and thus stand out from nature/seasonal haiku.
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