Tag: Poetry

A Question An Answer

Timothy Price34 Comments

Eleanor at You Lil Dickens posted Ask Yourself with the question “Why is Poetry important to you?” I answered:

Poetry expresses many things we cannot layout as plain thoughts, words or deeds. Poetry allows us to mask reality in mysterious verse, soften hard realities, drive home points that need to be made. We can expose our deepest secrets, friendly or foul, in abstruse rhymes and mysterious lines left to the reader to unfold, and decode. Poetry is an avenue to express our feelings about life and death, love and rejection, freedom and oppression, faithfulness and unfaithfulness, sexuality and abstinence, belief and unbelief, good and evil. Through poetry we can express all the symptoms, right and wrong, of being human.

Chuck, The Reluctant Poet, asked me to post it here.

Antithesis

Timothy Price62 Comments

We can bloom in our corner

No one to tell us what to do
No one to tell us what not to do
No one to tell us where to be
No one to tell us where not to be
No one to tell us how to look
No one to tell us how not to look
No on to tell us how to think
No on to tell us how not to think
No one to tell us anything
No one not to tell us anything

We can dream of what we want to do
We can dream of what we don’t want to do
We can dream of what we want to be
We can dream of what we don’t want to be
We can dream of how we want to look
We can dream of how we don’t want to look
We can dream of how we want to think
We can dream of how we don’t want to think
We can dream of anything
We can not dream of anything

We can ponder what we want to do
We can ponder what we don’t want to do
We can ponder what we want to be
We can ponder what we don’t want to be
We can ponder how we want to look
We can ponder how we don’t want to look
We can ponder how we want to think
We can ponder how we don’t want to think
We can ponder anything
We can not ponder anything

We are beautiful blooming in our corner

Explosion

Timothy Price69 Comments

Thunderheads explode
Under clear blue skies
Taunting sunset’s
Cast of colors
Streaming light
Reds, yellows
Blur to orange
Turquoise dances
In the wings
Reflections rippled
Flowing waters
Stilled
Violent thunder
Silenced
Tranquil scene
Exploding beauty
Falling darkness
Soon to cover
All that once had light

Pink

Timothy Price54 Comments

Metaphor of sunset
Drowned by driving rain
Soft edges
Into black
Shine

Sharp petals
Edge together
Pink held
tight

Sunrise lauds
Grip loosened
edges hold
Light

Sunbeam streaks naked light
Dawn’s gray panned to gold
Flashed bright
Rays unfold
Pink

Little Drops of Rain

Timothy Price11 Comments

LittleDropsOfRain

I spent most of the day putting together my presentation on Troubadour poetry and music for French 385: Travels in Provence. It rained most of the day, and during a break in the weather I went out and photographed the storm passing over the Sandias. On my way out to the river, I noticed there were still a few drops of rain the wind had not blown off a rose bush — it reminded me of Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You”, which has a verse that begins “Little drops of rain…”  I had been reading medieval poetry all day and started thinking that “Thank You” could be modern Troubadour poetry.

Troubadours originally wrote their poetry in Occitan, the language of Provence, France, also called Provançal. I don’t understand Occitan, so I’ve been reading the poetry translated into English by William and Frances Paden in their book Troubadour Poems from the South of France. Women Troubadours where called trobairitz, and the most famous trobairitz is La Comtessa de Dia. After reading many troubadour poems, La Comtessa de Dia is one of my favorites.  Here is one of her poems named Estat ai en greu cossirier / I have been in heavy grief circa 1169:

I have been in heavy grief
for a knight who once was mine,
And I want it to be forever known
That I loved him too much,
I see now that I’m betrayed
For not giving him my love
Bemused, I lie in bed awake;
Bemused, I dress and pass the day.

If only I could hold him
Naked in my arms one night!
He would feel ecstatic
Were I to be his pillow.
Since I desire him more
Than Floris did Blanchefleur,
I give him my heart and my love,
My wit, my eyes, for as long as I live.

Splendid lover, charming and good,
When shall I hold you in my power?
If only I could lie with you one night
And give you a loving kiss!
Know that I’d like
To hold you as my husband,
As long as you’d promise
To do what I desired.

Here are the lyrics to Robert Plan’s Thank You, 1969:

If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you.
When mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me.

Kind woman, I give you my all, Kind woman, nothing more.

Little drops of rain whisper of the pain, tears of loves lost in the days gone by.
My love is strong, with you there is no wrong,
together we shall go until we die. My, my, my.
An inspiration is what you are to me, inspiration, look… see.

And so today, my world it smiles, your hand in mine, we walk the miles,
Thanks to you it will be done, for you to me are the only one.
Happiness, no more be sad, happiness….I’m glad.
If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you.
When mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me.

SadAmerica

SandiasCloads1-26-13

TheCraneCloud

OrangeCloudsDucks