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Think in the Morning is returning to our poems and art series, specifically poems and Sea Gull Cellar Bar Napkin Art.  This is our 13th page of poems paired with napkin art.  Let us know if you enjoy these.  They take time to prepare and post.  You can find the other Poem pages by clicking on the magnifying glass (search) icon on the top right of our page and searching for Poems.

 

Fire and Ice

Robert Frost

 

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

 

 

Pike

Kai Carlson-Wee

 

Somewhere in her heart she remembers

the sound of lake water hitting the boat.

The low back-and-forth of buoyed weight

working to hold up the bodies inside.

Her father removing a worm from the loose

earth, threading the wet pink flesh with

a hook. Dirt on his fingers. The long, bleeding

body in agony, curling to feel its way

up the nylon line. Even as the bed nurse

changes the bag, squeezes her arm for

a vein, she remembers the sun-dried cork

in her hands. Clear reverberations through

the bamboo pole as the worm swung over

the psychedelic water and the lure weight

started to fall. In the distance, a loon’s call.

Or was it a boy calling out to his friend

on the dock? The way he said, Carl. Hey,

Carl, come here. She remembers the sadness

of that name: Carl. Brothers, of course,

and in love in a way she would never be able

to guess. Ladybugs dead in the silk of a cobweb,

eagle wings rasping the air. She watches

the window to take in the autumn trees,

cherry leaves dotting the lawn. She can feel

the long gold trail behind them, dance of

the motor. Her father saying, Tease it now.

Bring it to life. She remembers this, yes,

she is sure she remembers. Moon rising over

invisible water. The pole bent double, and, yes,

she is sure: the force pulling harder below.

 

 

Blessed Are

Charles Péguy

 

Blessed are those who died for carnal earth

Provided it was in a just war.
Blessed are those who died for a plot of ground.
Blessed are those who died a solemn death.

Blessed are those who died in great battles.

Stretched out on the ground in the face of God.

Blessed are those who died on a final high place,

Amid all the pomp of grandiose funerals.

Blessed are those who died for carnal cities.

For they are the body of the city of God.

Blessed are those who died for their hearth and their fire,

And the lowly honors of their father’s house.

For such is the image and such the beginning

The body and shadow of the house of God.

Blessed are those who died in that embrace,

In honor’s clasp and earth’s avowal.

For honor’s clasp is the beginning

And the first draught of eternal avowal.

Blessed are those who died in this crushing down,

In the accomplishment of this earthly vow.

Blessed are those who died, for they have returned

Into primeval clay and primeval earth.

Blessed are those who died in a just war.

Blessed is the wheat that is ripe and the wheat that is gathered in sheaves.

 

 

 

A Poison Tree

William Blake

 

was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

 

And I watered it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

 

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright.

And my foe beheld it shine.

And he knew that it was mine,

 

And into my garden stole

When the night had veiled the pole;

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

 

 

Risk

Anaïs Nin

 

And then the day came,

when the risk

to remain tight

in a bud

was more painful

than the risk

it took

to Blossom.

 

 

Chinese Poet in Barcelona

Roberto Bolaño

 

A Chinese poet thinks around

a word without ever touching it,

without ever seeing it, without

ever representing it.

Behind the poet are mountains

yellow and dry swept by

the wind,

occasional rain,

cheap restaurants,

white clouds dispersing.

 

 

Cutting the Sun

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

After Francesco Clemente’s Indian Miniature #16

 

The sun-face looms over me, gigantic-hot, smelling

of iron. Its rays striated,

rasp-red and muscled as the tongues

of iguanas. They are trying to lick away

my name. But I

am not afraid. I hold in my hands

(where did I get them)

enormous blue scissors that are

just the color of sky. I bring

the blades together, like

a song. The rays fall around me

curling a bit, like dried carrot peel. A far sound

in the air—fire

or rain? And when I’ve cut

all the way to the center of the sun

I see

flowers, flowers, flowers.

 

 

An Old Story

Tracy K. Smith

 

We were made to understand it would be

Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge,

Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind.

 

Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful

Dream. The worst of us having taken over

And broken the rest utterly down.

 

A long age

Passed. When at last we knew how little

Would survive us—how little we had mended

 

Or built that was not now lost—something

Large and old awoke. And then our singing

Brought on a different manner of weather.

 

Then animals long believed gone crept down

From trees. We took new stock of one another.

We wept to be reminded of such color.

 

 

Taedium Vitae

Oscar Wilde

 

To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear

This paltry age’s gaudy livery’s,

To let each base hand filch my treasury,

To mesh my soul within a woman’s hair,

And be mere Fortune’s lackeyed groom,–I swear

I love it not! these things are less to me

Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,

Less than the thistle-down of summer air

Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof

Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life

Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof

Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in,

Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife

Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.

 

 

 

 

Sleep

Jorge Luis Borges

 

If sleep is a truce, as is sometimes said,

A pure time for the mind to rest and heal,

Why, when they suddenly wake you, do you feel

That they have stolen everything you had?

Why is it so sad to be awake at dawn?

It strips us of a gift so strange, so deep,

It can be remembered only in half-sleep,

Moments of drowsiness that gild and adorn

The waking mind with dreams, which may well be

But broken images of the night’s treasure,

A timeless world that has no name or measure

And breaks up in the mirrors of the day.

Who will you be tonight, in the dark thrall

Of sleep, when you have slipped across its wall?

 

 

 

Crow Song

Margaret Atwood

 

In the arid sun, over the field

where the corn has rotted and then

dried up, you flock and squabble.

Not much here for you, my people,

but there would be

if

if

 

In my austere black uniform

I raised the banner

which decreed Hope

and which did not succeed

and which is not allowed.

Now I must confront the angel

who says Win,

who tells me to wave any banner

that you will follow

 

for you ignore me, my

baffled people, you have been through

too many theories

too many stray bullets

your eyes are gravel, skeptical,

 

in this hard field

you pay attention only

to the rhetoric of seed

fruit stomach elbow.

 

You have too many leaders

you have too may wars,

all of them pompous and small,

you resist only when you feel

like dressing up,

you forget the sane corpses …