[RCL]

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness. . .


Still Breathing

To still think words

still on the page
though still are breath
unseen or read

still latent breath
read silently
when lips are still

when said aloud
or recorded
are still still—

still blows my mind!

[Matthew Minor]

I know one person that,
in the face of this title,
recalls the first bag of dope;
Thank god it's not me.

[RCL]

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

Wishing I could experience the same much more often!

[Adrian Fry]

The vertigo of standing,
Planless, at the start of my career,
My future a shimmering dazzle of the possible,
My present, the town before me
An egg for the cracking.
Hold that moment of wild indecision
Not for long. But hard.

[Jim Moonan]

Adrian, Wonderful! Euphoric!

[Jim Moonan]

Ralph, same here. Shivers up the back of the neck. It's almost all I search for in poetry -- at the very least it has to be present in order for something to come from a poem and into me. Euphoria, if that be the right word, is always in the company of beauty.

[Graham King]

Originally Posted by RCL

Awakening Winds

Sucked dry by drought, my stand of trees
shrieks like maenads crazed with wine
when Santa Ana winds assault.
Their sires and whipping saplings moan
and frenzied limbs pound on my home
for three anarchic days of dance
that cease when twisting crowns bow down.
Inspired by Bacchic spins and tunes,
some trees burst buds to snowy blooms.

I love strong winds and trees that move in them!
I did not understand 'sires'...

Ah, you used the word 'maenad'! ... I enjoy it, it's uncommon.
I always want to ask... is
AMANDA DE CADENET
A DECADENT MAENAD?

[Gail White]

By sheer euphoria-inducing good luck, I have an old poem that just fits here.

SUDDEN EUPHORIA OF A MIDDLE-AGED SOUTHERNER

Youth gone and beauty never having come
nor money either, where’s it springing from,
this sudden joy? Fine weather and the slope
of green lawn to the bayou, snow-white shape
of heron fishing on the bank, it part
of it. The rest is books and art,
good health, two cats, a marriage going strong
for twenty years, a friendship just as long,
plus writing and the love of what I write.

Summing up joys, I savor my delight:
this is as close as I will ever get
to the mystic’s peak of holy self-forget-
fulness, the warrior in his savage bliss,
the lover’s ecstasy. I’ll call it this:
a sense of living in a world well-planned.
Is this contentment? Yes. Well I’ll be damned.

[Roger Slater]

Here
by Grace Paley

Here I am in the garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face

how did this happen
well that’s who I wanted to be

at last a woman
in the old style sitting
stout thighs apart under
a big skirt grandchild sliding
on off my lap a pleasant
summer perspiration

that’s my old man across the yard
he’s talking to the meter reader
he’s telling him the world’s sad story
how electricity is oil or uranium
and so forth I tell my grandson
run over to your grandpa ask him
to sit beside me for a minute ... I
am suddenly exhausted by my desire
to kiss his sweet explaining lips

[Jim Moonan]

Gail, Roger -- such rich poems of euphoria! Both are mining the same rare contentment that comes through aging gracefully.

Gail, the ever-so-light touch of southern charm in your poem is sumptuous. The convergence of the contentment you speak of -- both the gratefulness of simple things and the acceptance of one's place in the world -- produces euphoria of the highest degree, I think.

Roger, Here is where I want to find myself one fine day - sans heavy breasts and big skirt
But oh, the place she calls "here" is paradise, however fleeting. The final lines are breathtaking.