Tag: poet

First Frost

First Frost

by Ryanne ♥ 1 Comment

The Scottish people may not have been big fans, but this Arizona girl found the first frost enchanting. (Until she almost slipped on ice during her run, that is.)

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“First Frost”

His kiss was cold, pinking my pale face
As he sucked my breath away in steaming plumes;
But smooth and crystalline as spider’s lace,
Beneath my feet, he gently decks my way—
A bridal train toward some white winter’s groom
Summoned by the late-light of new day.

As sheets of mirrors crack beneath my weight
And break apart that swiftly-slipping dream—
Though frozen-fast, not solid as it seemed—
My chilled hands grasp at shrinking shards and hold
Them up as though through them to glimpse again
(Ignoring as my fingers burn with cold)
That frost-transfigured globe contained within.

The Philanthropist

The Philanthropist

by Ryanne ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

He began the fall in wealth,
His arms hanging heavy with green, new-money
Made in spring.
It was the cash that grows on trees:
Easily spent and easily made,
Budded by summer and
Minted by the gold-standard sun.

Investing at Autumn’s asking,
He lays a few leavings in her chill-bone hands
But scatters the rest in splendour
As on her bridal path.
He takes care to appear choosy,
Particular and piecemeal as
A widow with her mite,
Though he is secretly as prodigal as his creator—
As wistful as a lover,
Plucking a piece at a time from his boughs
And sending it off,
Hopeful as a love letter,
Yellow as a first rose,
And dancing in girlish spirals
on its way down.

Down, down, down to the banks.
A copper here.
A penny there.
Soon he will rest.
Soon he will lay down his last life
And wait half-dead in winter’s retirement.
But for now,
As a bird feathers her nest,
He lines the road with dew-damp gold,
Lavishing heaven’s riches on earth
For a few more weeks, if not
For Eternity.

Hallow Hill

Hallow Hill

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The hill was ghostly. Even before finding an old sign revealing its history as an early Christian burial site, I could sense the tension between life and death in the air that chilled my face. It was a place pulsing with potential, yet quiet and lonely as a sleeping giant. Insignificance and eternity confronted me as I felt at once my own smallness amidst the swirling mist and the faint-but-discernable presence of those sleeping beneath the grass and dirt.

And so, here is a poem.

On Hallow Hill the lichen grows
On trees far, far too young to know
That ‘neath their root-laced, grassy shroud
There lies in loneliness a crowd.

O’erhead crows caw continuous gloom
As doves pray peace for th’unseen tomb.
Such sombre birds of ghostly air,
The only pilgrims passing there—

There where the earth, a swollen bride,
Still nurses those that testified:
Expecting, under dust and leaves,
The birth toward which her babes believed.

Listen! She lulls with willow song:
“Though ages pass, it shan’t be long!”
It shan’t be long ’til these hills cry
As Light tears through their cloud-hung sky.

So tune to joy, you mournful dove!
As bones reknit themselves in love
To stretch, to stand—to kneel—toward
The One who wakes them by His Word.

Two Bluebirds

Two Bluebirds

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I’ve been rereading Ray Bradbury’s (…may he rest in peace…so sayeth we all…) Fahrenheit 451. Actually, I’m listening to it on Audible; there is a performance of it by Tim Robbins which literally makes me weep. It’s THAT good.

Anyway, as I revisit this all-too-prophetic story of a society so frightened by what is uncomfortable, challenging, or even beautiful, I am convicted. My earlier post “Dystopian Reality” goes into more detail, but as I revisit this book, I am more and more convinced that we ought to read dystopian literature with the same care with which we read history.

Most of us are familiar with the following quote by (most likely) George Santayana:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

However, we ought also to bear in mind this:

“Those who do consider dystopian literature seriously are doomed to find these stories more fact than fiction, more future than fantasy.”

Okay…admittedly, I am quoting myself here and it isn’t even a good quote at that. Regardless, I believe Bradbury would back me up in my claim.

But the real reason I’ve gathered you all here today is to share the following poem, inspired by Clarisse McClellan of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: 

The bluebird blinking from my palm, its nest,
Is hollow in its o’er-bright, beeping song
And though its shallow verses are not long—
If only it would lay its voice to rest!

For I saw another bird today take wing;
It caught my eye and I dared not stroll past,
For true moments of beauty rarely last
And yet inspire me all the more to sing.

The first bird blares and yet draws not a breath
As it cries out for me to tend its feed
While yet the other bird has no such need
Though it— alive — is capable of death.

These two are of no familial feather:
One takes to flight, the other to its tether.

Poems and a Creek and Such (revisiting an old spot of time)

Poems and a Creek and Such (revisiting an old spot of time)

by Ryanne

When I was a freshman in college, I had the not-uncommon experience of feeling 150682234% overwhelmed. It was honestly a feat of grace and strength that I stuck it out, but by the second semester, how happy I was that I did!

As that terrified, homesick 18-year-old, I went on a choir retreat and nearly had a complete breakdown which resulted in the composition of what I consider my first “real” poem. Now, I am not quite as proud of it and see its many faults, but here is the link to it just the same: Poems and Trees and Such

This past semester (my second-to-last as an undergraduate) has been a whirlwind, but it has also been characterized by a level of calm which I never thought I’d achieve as a freshman. Naturally, when I revisited the site of my first poem (written in that state of anxiety), I wrote more poetry in an outpouring of gratitude, mixed with a certain melancholy that the time has flown by faster than I ever imagined possible.

In the craziness of this semester, though, I forgot this scribbling and only just rediscovered it as I leafed (pun, as always, intended) through my journal. So, now that I have a bit of breathing space, I’ll share it:

This stream I knew is dry now
and its rocks are all laid bare.
It buzzes, stinging, where once it washed
with water and with tears.

The rattling, skeleton tree limbs
stretch but don’t quite reach
across the dusty canyon bed
or seasons since we first did meet–
I and this crumbling, crackling creak.

But still the lone lorn pools reflect
in their barren, dirty sheen,
the ghost of the girl gone and grown
who now returns to where she’d been.

I see myself in retrograde:
this fount is as I was.
I was first the barren stream,
the jagged soul with aching limbs,
and he, the babbling merry thing.

Then it was green and I was young,
but worn in ways I am not now.
I came to cry, but now to sing,
for here first from my heart did spring
a gush of poetry.

And, in being made so free
by nature then to nurture words
and, drinking of living water,
to be rewritten by the Word.

And now, although I have come back,
content as I was not then,
I find I cannot return that
happy favor to this friend.

My cup o’erflows and I’ve grown strong;
now I’m the one bubbling in song.
My ghost meets me in the creek-bed’s death
and, thankful, I draw in freshened breath;
Although we have now traded place,
I bless this stream and its gentle grace.

To Travel: A Sonnet

To Travel: A Sonnet

by Ryanne ♥ 1 Comment

I was a stranger here yet better known
Away from all I thought myself to be—
Away from all routines that made me, me,
I found myself in being severed grown.

Away from all the people I loved best
I found myself in newer company—
I found my soul in this older country
Away from where in strivings I would rest.

I came in laughter ready to enjoy
Yet leave a somewhat sadder, wiser heart—
Yet leave more whole for being torn apart,
I return dyed a deeper shade of joy.

Away I went to see the world’s wide wealth,
I return now, a world within myself.

After a Discussion of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” – a poetic reflection

After a Discussion of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” – a poetic reflection

by Ryanne ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

A stillness falls and dimly-lit,
A bell tolls distantly,
As in this life we numbly sit
For what we cannot see.

The words of grief we hear afresh,
A melody its gloss,
As we seek out our souls ‘neath flesh
Remembered in deep loss.

This room is filled with love-lost ghosts
Of our most private pasts.
We speak but not what we feel most
And calm, though longing lasts.

A heavy hope here drags us high
That “good must come from pain!”
But leave us yet to wonder “Why?”
And slow, revive again.

Still we eat and still we drink,
Though bland without our friend.
Yet passing through, as in a cloud,
We find life in our End.