Poetry in Motion... (Sloshing Motion)

Cocktail Night has COME AND GONE! And we drank quite a few REALLY lovely poems in the process.

This first one was is called 'Frances in Lavender', written by Helen David (my most talented momma!)

This is a WONDERFUL pantoun that also turned out to be a wonderful cocktail-- pretty to look at and with a subtle, flowery kick. Very fragrant!

Frances in Lavender

 

Upon a cloud of lavender she floats

High on heels, aloof and unengaged

Sheltering her Betty Davis eyes

Beneath the wide brim of her lavender hat.

 

High on heels, aloof and unengaged

Avoiding smiles and nods of fellow passengers

Beneath the wide brim of her lavender hat

Violet eyes slide sideways to capture mine.

 

Avoiding smiles and nods of fellow passengers

She stands with stately chip on middle-aged shoulders

Violet eyes slide sideways to capture mine

In challenge to my youthful, curious stare.

 

She stands with stately chip on middle-aged shoulders

Peering o’re lavender walls in stern reproach

In challenge to my youthful curious stare

Why does this middle-aged woman fascinate so?

 

Peering o’re lavender walls in stern reproach

Cool lavender eyes gaze sadly in remembrance

Why does this middle-aged woman fascinate so?

T’would take another forty years to know.

 

Cool lavender eyes gaze sadly in remembrance

Blissful youth once known lived out too quickly

T’would take another 40 years to know

How does the river of youth bleed from a soul.

 

Blissful youth once known lived out too quickly

Young Frances peers beyond those aging walls

And reaches for a face, a memory fading, while

Upon a cloud of lavender she floats.

Frances in Lavender

splash of black vodka (makes it lavender-colored)

2 ounces normal vodka

top with tonic

add ice cubes

The Next drink was taken from a poem a wrote a few years ago-- another pantoun. It's named after a house on Turtleback Road in Marston's Mills Cape Cod, one of the many family homes I lived in, filled with happy memories:

Turtleback

Mint and fizzy like an old-fashioned cocktail

A museum of memories reaching far back

Fanned out and breezy as a swallow’s tail

Potholed and textured, our stories, like brail

Are crooked and crumbling as a chimney stack

Mint and fizzy like an old-fashioned cocktail

Passed on by the cricket and the nightingale

From hearth to treetop to some old almanac

Fanned out and breezy as a swallow’s tail

Our tales, wound tight, like a nautilus or snail

Hidden in a nutshell or a seashell, or a spice rack

Mint and fizzy like an old-fashioned cocktail

Foggy photos of faces, some sunburned, some pale

Not framed in gold plaster and likely to crack

Fanned out and breezy as a swallow’s tail

Remembered, rekindled, our stories, our trail

As rounded and toasted as a turtle’s back

Mint and fizzy like an old-fashioned cocktail

Fanned out and breezy as a swallow’s tail

  

Turtleback
Crush mint leaves in a cocktail shaker

Add ice

2 ounces of gin

1 ounce dry vermouth

1 ounce mojito syrup

Use martini glass

Fill to the rim with seltzer

Add a squeeze of lime

Garnish with a mint leave

The next one is a poem called 'Scrabble' I wrote at a writer's retreat, years ago. The pressure is always on at those kinds of workshops, but I was pleased with the product. 

Scrabble

Children are building a sandcastle with a pink pail

Don’t they know it will be gone before they’ve added the turrets?

Didn’t they see the paw prints of the dog disappear?

And the yellow Frisbee drifting away on the tide?

 I’m playing Scrabble on the sand, in the sun

The pitcher of sangria is already empty

Not even the cubes of apple of the slices of peach are left

And there’s not enough room on the board to spell ‘temporary’.

I’m wondering, worrying about when this will end

The sun’s already slipping behind a row of houses

The moat around the sandcastle has flooded

Now there’s not enough room on the board to spell ‘later’.

Push away the moon

Splash away the tide

Sing a sunny song

I wanted to spell ‘soon’

But I couldn’t decide

Now I’ve waited too long

Will the sunlight, the Scrabble game, or the sandcastle die first?

Tell the children no more castles or chalk pavement pictures

There’s just enough room on the board to spell ‘now’.

Dump the letters in the box and let’s make some new words.

Push away the moon

Splash away the tide

Sing a lullaby

Check the beach for letters

Or a message in a bottle

I need new words

It always ends too soon

When the beach was wide

Like in the afternoon

I didn’t notice the sky

I know I can do better

I need new words

Scrabble

Prepare a pitcher (quart) of red wine with shopped-up fruits and 2 ounces or port & ice cubes)

Leave at least a few hours to chill

Take a tall glass

Add 2 ounces of white rum

Fill the rest of the glass with sangria

This next poem came as a great surprise to me! From an anonymous source no less. And it is a lovely masterpiece of a sonnet!

Crystalline

The warmth of touch seeps deep inside
to melt the frost on soul divine
To show what things within reside
A love with which the soul does shine
but if thy care does not prove true
and thy gaze wander far
the coat of ice shall grow anew
the tender soul shall scar
But scars do fade and ice does thaw
fortresses do fall.
For all things live, this is law
and it does govern all.
A heart turned to ice, if left too long
shall never in life, to another belong.

Crystalline
Fill a tumbler with crushed ice

Add one shot gin

Add a dash of Angostura bitters

Top with seltzer water

And lastly, a poem called 'Kites of the Poem'. This is a sestina I wrote, and was able to recite onstage at a concert by Canadian artist, Ferron. The sestina form is so, so challenging, but also such a hugely awarding exercise when it works out:

The Kites of the Poet

There’s a crowded road that leads to the edge of the city

If you follow it steep, it will end on a hill.

And there time stands still. Except for the man

Who must wheel his barrow where the streets are too narrow

The painters frown when they smell his fish. And the tolling bell

Makes them think of gargoyles and pirates, royals and poets.

Amongst the still-wet canvasses, you will find one poet.

He believes he lost his soul when he came to the city

Sees it drifting like a stray kite beyond the church bell.

There are few things that please him, two things he favors on that hill.

The flock of easels where the streets are most narrow

And the watercolor scenes of Siam by a mustached man.

Paris is too grey and blue for the mustached man.

He mixes cyan and turquoise while reciting poetry.

Few know he dines with the man with the barrow.

They meet and eat fish heads on the Champs Elysées, at the Vie de Cité.

‘An old grey man in a blue chapeau’ he says as they stroll down the hill,

‘That’s what Paris is to me… and the iron noise of the bells’.

In another square, you’ll see a strap of leather. Harness bells

Hanging on the door of a dusty bookseller. And that man,

Monsieur St. Onge, eats oranges, and stares at the hill.

He cranes his Willowy frame, straining to see shapes of painters and poets.

He bought some pastels near a loud carousel in his part of the city.

Now sketching, he’s crouched, like a gargoyle, leaning over his barrow.

A woman in a feathered hat flits past the old book barrow.

She knows she will be late when she hears the clanging of the bells.

Her rendezvous is all the way across the city-

The first time in years she will sit down with a strange man.

At night, she sings in a cabaret on the Rue de Thé. And he’s a painter.

She met him Wednesday painting wrens way up on the hill.

The people up there live in quiet despair way up on the hill

Crowded into cafés and milling through streets that are too narrow.

The painted feels plagued by the blasé gaze of the poet.

The poet feels bored by the spires and the bells.

The fish barrow rolls as the cathedral bell tolls. And the man

With the mustache dreams in turquoise of another city.

The café, the croissant, the steep hill, and the men

Of the city. With paintbrush, notebook, fish head, and barrow

All ache for what the bells can tell, and chase to the heights the drifting kites of the poet. 

The Kites of the Poet

Using a flute glass

1/2 ounce rose liqueur

1/2 once cointreau

Top up with Brut or champagne

And voila! 

Thanks to everyone who braved a foray into poetry this week! But because the event has come and gone doesn't mean you should stop writing! I'll be doing another poetry night again fairly soon!