Poetry Friday: I Love Gardens

I live near one of the most beautiful gardens in the Southeast, Callaway Gardens. When I was a kid, we called it Ida Cason's, i.e. Ida Cason Callaway for whom it's named. We went to the lake with the largest man made beach to picnic and swim. When my children were small, we went for beach days, bike rides and hiking through the acres and acres of woods. Two of my children got themselves engaged there. I was nearby the gardens recently for an appointment and decided it was time I had a season pass again. I had forgotten just how much I love this place. There is such peace to be found in a garden.

The swing in one of my favorite spots.

Inside the Sibley Horticultural Center

One of the stained glass season windows. This one is summer. 

This is the garden: colors come and go
e.e. cummings

This is the garden: colors come and go,
Frail azures fluttering from night’s outer wing,
Strong silent greens serenely lingering,
Absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden: pursed lips do blow
Upon cool flutes within wide glooms, and sing
Of harps celestial to the quivering string,
Invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

This is the garden. Time shall surely reap

Read the rest here.

Tabatha Yeats hosts the roundup today at The Opposite of Indifference.

Poetry Friday Poems for Social Justice

Indivisible: Poems for Social Justice is a fine collection of poems for high school students, edited by Gail Bush and Randy Meyer and published by Norwood House, a small independent educational publisher.  A poetic journey through 20th century poems moves the reader down a road "leading toward action for social change."

Our library specialist at Delaney, the company I work for as a sales rep to schools, chose this book as one of the best of the fall collection for the library market.

Poets represent the diversity of American culture and include Tupac Shakur, Wendell Berry, Kenneth Rexroth, Dorothy Parker, Langston Hughes, Ishmael Reed, Assotto Saint, Fawaz Turki, Natasha Trethaway, Gary Soto, Mary Oliver, and many more.

While reading through the poems, I discovered a poem by Lee Herrick that drew me in. I had not read Lee's work before. At his website you can find other poems from this wonderful poet.

jap

by Lee Herrick

windshield to windshield
we are parked
like matadors,
pumping gas at the am pm.
It is a normal afternoon in the valley
like all afternoons in the valley,
split between modern duty
and the desire for something better.

We are in the same world.
I pull in and
face you, but
my sunglasses shield my almond
eyes, and what you don't realize
is that I see you
in your red anger,
your believed anonymity
your life boiling you to this ugly place,
where, in the pain of inarticulacy,
your vomit words,
like swords,
hurled at me:

god    damn     jap

I look down at my chest
my almond eyes open wide
breath sputtering
blood dripping.
I pull it from just beside my heart
and I still stand.

This is where racism begins
in the throat
at the station
in the heart of valley afternoons.

I hold your bloody words,
walking to you slowly
with sword in hand.

Read the rest here.

Stop and visit with Laura at Author Amok for roundup.