MAYA ANGELOU 1928-2014

WHEN GREAT TREES FALL

When great trees fall,

rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down

in tall grasses,

and even elephants

lumber after safety.

When great trees fall

in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.

Our eyes, briefly,

see with

a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words

unsaid,

promised walks

never taken.

Great souls die and

our reality, bound to

them, takes leave of us.

Our souls,

dependent upon their

nurture,

now shrink, wizened.

Our minds, formed

and informed by their

radiance

fall away.

We are not so much maddened

as reduced to the unutterable ignorance

of dark, cold

caves.

And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly. Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed.

-o=0=o-

Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter's deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire.

Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself.

The leaves as they spark into wild colour just before they die are the world's oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.

from Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way

by Shauna Niequist

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GWENDOLIN BROOKS 1917-2000

THE CRAZY WOMAN

I shall not sing a May song.

A May song should be gay.

I'll wait until November

And sing a song of grey.

I'll wait until November

That is the time for me.

I'll go out in the frosty dark

And sing most terribly.

And all the little people

Will stare at me and say,

"That is the Crazy Woman

Who would not sing in May."

This Americn poet and teacher was the first black person to win a Pulitzer Prize. She was appointed Poet Laureate for Illinois in 1968, a post she held till her death.

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RAYMOND A. FOSS b.1960

NATURE WALK

Out back, behind the yard

in the brush and scrub at the edge

a world unfolds for those willing

to stop and look, crunch and tread

where squirrel and ant, snake and fox

hunt and work, amongst the deadfall

Wonder of nature in the back, beyond

the cut lawn and past the leaf litter

a bend of a branch held by ivy

a curl of birch bark

a spider’s leg showing below the

lip of a fungus on an old trunk

patterns in the ground, beneath the

newness of spring in the woods

before the full greening of the

new shoots and leaves

in between time in early April

in New Hampshire

-o=0=o-

JAMES ELROY FLECKER 1884-1915

-o0o-

THE GOLDEN ROAD TO SAMARKAND

HASSAN - Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells,

 When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,

And softly through the silence beat the bells

 Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

ISHAK - We travel not for trafficking alone;

 By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:

For lust of knowing what should not be known

 We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

MASTER OF THE CARAVAN - Open the gate, O watchman of the night!

THE WATCHMAN -  Ho, travellers, I open. For what land

Leave you the dim-moon city of delight?

MERCHANTS (with a shout) - We take the Golden Road to Samarkand!

(The Caravan passes through the gate)

THE WATCHMAN (consoling the women) - What would ye, ladies? It was ever thus.

 Men are unwise and curiously planned.

A WOMAN - They have their dreams, and do not think of us.

VOICES OF THE CARAVAN (in the distance singing) - 

 We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

James Elroy Flecker was an English poet, novelist and playwright. On his death at the age of thirty, he was described as "unquestionably the greatest premature loss that English literature has suffered since the death of Keats".

-o=0=o-

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 1770-1850

-o0o-

THE SOLITARY REAPER

Behold her, single in the field,

Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;

Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

And sings a melancholy strain;

O listen! for the Vale profound

Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt

More welcome notes to weary bands

Of travellers in some shady haunt,

Among Arabian sands:

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard

In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,

Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings? -

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things,

And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,

Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending;

I saw her singing at her work,

And o'er the sickle bending; -

I listened, motionless and still;

And, as I mounted up the hill,

The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no more. 

This famous English poet along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their Lyrical Ballads in 1798.

-o=0=o-

SHEL SILVERSTEIN 1930-99

WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS 

There is a place where the sidewalk ends

And before the street begins,

And there the grass grows soft and white,

And there the sun burns crimson bright,

And there the moon-bird rests from his flight

To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

And the dark street winds and bends.

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

The place where the sidewalk ends.

Sheldon Allan "Shel" Silverstein was an American poet, singer-songwriter, cartoonist, screen-writer and author of children's books.

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