Good Fences?

 When I went down to Deltaville in March, I was shocked to see a privacy fence stretching between 2 properties.  Shocked even more by the sign located at both ends of the fence.  I have a lot to say about it, but I'll leave it in Robert Frost's capable hands.

 Really? I swear, next time I'm down there, I will have a photo of me standing next to this sign 
with my index finger extended almost touching this fence. I might even chant, "I'm not touching you!"

 The Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
                                ~Robert Frost

Platonic Love

I knew it the first of the summer,
I knew it the same at the end,
That you and your love were plighted,
But couldn’t you be my friend?
Couldn’t we sit in the twilight,
Couldn’t we walk on the shore
With only a pleasant friendship
To bind us, and nothing more?
There was not a word of folly
Spoken between us two,
Though we lingered oft in the garden
Till the roses were wet with dew.
We touched on a thousand subjects—
The moon and the worlds above,—
And our talk was tinctured with science,
And everything else, save love.
A wholly Platonic friendship
You said I had proven to you
Could bind a man and a woman
The whole long season through,
With never a thought of flirting,
Though both were in their youth
What would you have said, my lady,
If you had known the truth!
What would you have done, I wonder,
Had I gone on my knees to you
And told you my passionate story,
There in the dusk and the dew?
My burning, burdensome story,
Hidden and hushed so long—
My story of hopeless loving—
Say, would you have thought it wrong?
But I fought with my heart and conquered,
I hid my wound from sight;
You were going away in the morning,
And I said a calm good-night.
But now when I sit in the twilight,
Or when I walk by the sea
That friendship, quite Platonic,
Comes surging over me.
And a passionate longing fills me
For the roses, the dusk, the dew;
For the beautiful summer vanished,
For the moonlight walks—and you.
                       ~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Monday Meditation

A Drinking Song 

Wine comes in at the mouth   
And love comes in at the eye;   
That’s all we shall know for truth   
Before we grow old and die.   
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

~W.B. Yeats 

Poetry: Because I've Got Nothing Else

 

Destitution

There's a stray dog barking.

Searching for a home,

He belongs to no one.

His lone wail his only companion.

Searching for a home,

Like the other wild ones.

His lone wail his only companion.

I know what it is to cry alone in the night.

Like the other wild ones, 

I seek shelter from the rain.

I know what it is to cry alone in the night

To feel the pains of need bite harder than hunger.

I seek shelter from the rain.

I belong to no one.

I feel the pains of need bite harder than hunger.

There's a stray dog barking.

~Jamie L. Jackson

For those interested in the poetry sort of thing, this poetry form is a pantoum.  I'm typically not a form poem aficionado only because I struggle with making things fit (I'm more of a free verse kinda person- when I write-which I haven't in about 10 years).  But the pantoum is easy enough and can really have a meaningful punch if done right.  Not one of my better ones by far, but unfortunately, I am revisiting similar emotions that prompted me to write this all those years ago.  

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Some Poetry Cuz I'm Slackin

Abraham

I was 6 when my angelfish Abraham died.
Grandmother let me bury him

in her flower bed under the Impatiens
in a coffin made of clear plastic
Dixie cups taped together.
I didn't understand the concept
of sacred ground
or rest in peace
so I dug Abraham up occasionally
to make sure he was there.

Grandmother noticed the disturbed earth,
and explained about hallowed ground.
I stopped digging him up, but I looked for his coffin every spring
while we planted.

When I decided the man I loved
and I
needed to live
separate lives,
I left.
Driving away,
I looked at him in the rear view
saw him standing on the porch through a dirt-filmed window,
like looking at Abraham.
As I drove I prayed I had outgrown the need
to dig up dead things
to make sure they're still there.

                                   ~Jamie L. Jackson (a long time ago)

More Poetry

So now that I have discovered how easy it is to come up with a blog post if I just throw a poem on here... well look out because I'm too lazy busy sometimes to think of something brilliant to write.  So I pulled out something I wrote many years ago.  It does have to do with Deltaville as that is the "setting" of the poem so to speak.  Oh, and the definition of psithurism is the sound of the wind whispering through the trees (found that in the Balderdash game... love that game)

                                  Psithurisms

                    On nights when the pines talked

                    We shared whispered secrets

                    Behind heavy olive drapes.

                    "I think we should go swimming

                    off the pier," you'd say.

                     "Hey let's scare the neighbors with our cap guns,"

                     I'd offer.

                     Each summer we whispered

                     Staring up at the ceiling of the ancient trailer.

                     At 13 we discovered boys.

                     "Randon held my hand while roller skating,"

                     you offered like a confession to a priest.

                     "Was his hand sweaty?"

                     I wanted to know.

                     At 16 I was alone in the living room.

                     Our great-uncle dying in the house next door.

                      "Do you believe in God?" I whispered

                      to no one but the ceiling.

                      At 20 I was getting a divorce

                      Faced with raising a child alone.

                      It was the first year

                      I wasn't able to go to the trailer.

                      At 22 I visited the new house standing

                      where our old trailer used to be.

                      I stood outside with familiar pines

                      Staring up into the blind eye of God

                      Like the eye of a storm

                      silent with no wind.

                      The pines quiet like you and I

                       -- cousins grown too old for whispers.

We're still close, just not like we were when we were little...

Deltaville's Poet

Who knew Deltaville had its very own poet back in the day?  J. Bailey Cornelius was his name.  He was born in Deltaville in March of 1862 and in 1920 wrote a book of poems entitled Spare Moments.  Here is a selection:

Home Ties

Here's to the shores of Jackson's Creek

Where I first saw the light of day.

With its bright and sparkling waters

That unites it with the Bay.

Where we hear the seagull screaming,

And the waves roar, ring with mirth.

I wonder could I give it up

For another spot on earth.

Where we see the white winged vessels

Darting, glancing-a pretty sight;

The white and shining beaches

Stand out boldly to left and right,

And the broad Chesapeake that wash them

With its pale green waters and surf,

It would break my heart to exchange it

For another spot on earth.

Here's where friends and kindred

And the wild fowl come and go;

I take my summer evening rest

Where the cool southeaster blows;

With sand diamond studded beaches,

And the breakers dance with mirth,

Shall I ever have to leave it

For another spot on earth?

Oh, for a thousand years right here,

With friends that come and go,

And view the sunbeam sparkles

On the tide that ebbs and flows,

And hear the gladsome laughter

Mingled with the roaring surf;

Lord, I pray thee let me live,

My last day, here, on earth.

Mr. Cornelius hit it on the head.  Wish I could get my hands on a copy of that book of poems!  Perhaps I will blog one of my own poems on here...