“. . . .the day the sun lets go . . . !”

  “To think to know the country and not know

    The hillside on the day the sun lets go 

    Ten thousand lizards out of snow!”  Robert Frost, A Hillside Thaw

Although I admit to sometimes dreaming about warm, sunny places during our long Northern winters, I would not chose to trade my home locale with anyone—anywhere, anytime (except for an occasional week or two in New Mexico).

I truly wonder if friends who live in warm places ever experience springtime euphoria—that crazy, headlong, potentially mindless and blithery joy known as SPRING FEVER, when poetry floods one’s soul!  Perhaps that euphoria is common in four season climates around the world.  Certainly in the USA, where April has been designated as NATIONAL POETRY MONTH!

Anticipating April, while loving every remaining moment of tumultuous Wisconsin March, here are some snatches of poems from kindred souls—in addition to the above lines from one of my most beloved kindred spirit poets, Robert Frost.  Also I’ll plug in some of my watercolor renderings.  The marriage of a poem and a painting is called Ekphrasis.

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“The Skies can’t keep their secret!

They tell it to the Hills –

The hills just tell the Orchards –

And they – the Daffodils!”  Emily Dickinson, #191

“I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore . . . .” 

William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innesfree

“Now as I was young and easy under the apple bough

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green . . . .”

Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill

“O April, full of breath, have pity on us!

Pale where the winter like a stone has been lifted away, we

        emerge like yellow grass.

Be for a moment quiet, buffet us not, have pity on us,

Till the green come back into the vein, till the giddiness pass.” 

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Northern April

These are only a whisper of the many poems and poets whom I read again and again—immersed in the introspections, nuances, innuendoes, and life metaphors gleaned from a sensitivity to the turning of the year.  I believe that sensitivity is shared by most poetic four-season souls!

Margaret L. Been, Spring 2015

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HE is RISEN!

Thanks to the countless friends who have prayed for Rosemary.  She is coming along, better each day—praise God!  MB

In celebration of our Risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, here is one of my all time favorite poems—also preempting April which is National Poetry Month!  🙂

Pied Beauty 

 

Glory be to God for dappled things –

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                Praise him.

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844–1889

 

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Have a blessed RESURRECTION DAY!!!

 

Margaret L. Been, 2013

 

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Good-bye February!!!

It wouldn’t be very nice to say “Good Riddance” to the month that brings Groudhog Day and Valentine’s Day, and lots of cozy indoor days for reading, knitting, and painting—but at age 79 we tend to say exactly what we think.  And that’s what I think.  I’ve enjoyed February, but I’m not sobbing over her demise!  And I’m glad it’s not Leap Year or we’d have an extra day of February.

A few nights ago, when the full moon rose in the east over our front yard park it occurred to me that the next full moon would coincide approximately with the vernal equinox.  I don’t have to express what this means to us Northerners, and none of my prose renderings could even begin to do the job.  But perhaps a little poem might work.

March Sun . . .

. . . knows a tricky way of turning corners

slipping into curtained rooms through cracks,

crawling under eaves and glinting dust

on wintered dreams.

© Margaret Longenecker Been

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂  Hello MARCH!

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April 1st, and it’s National Poetry Month . . . no foolin’

The Colour of Terrible Crystal

(referring to the firmament above Ezekiel’s chariot vision, recalled by the visual of a sunset)

Topaz, beryl, peridot

steeped in royal purple

dipped in blood . . . .

We are not Ezekiel by the Chebar,

yet exiled for a time

on this fallen planet we call “home”

we dream through half-remembered mist

while four-faced chariots surge Heavenward—

each face four within a face and tandem wings,

incandescent chariots with eye-encrusted rims

and omnipresent wheels.

Land riveted,

we could lose our half-remembered dream

but for the brilliance of terrible crystal

radiating westward twilight-wise,

rushing, surging, beckoning . . .

Topaz, beryl, peridot

steeped in royal purple,

dipped in blood.

© Margaret Longenecker Been

Note:  After Easter, I hope to begin adding to the Paintings and Poems page on this site — adding my paintings and additional poems by (not only me but) poets whose work I love. 

My painting passion has taken a sharp right turn toward the abstract in recent months, and I’ve many new renderings that I want to share with you.  Enjoy the ride on Paintings and Poems.   🙂

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Glimpses of Heaven

How to Long for Heaven?

How to long for Heaven

When Earth is moist with Spring

And in the swamp

The peepers’ anthems ring?

What Rapture

Without that rapture of returning geese,

And season on season

Without surcease?

My Lord is here,

Visible in Sun and rain,

Audible in growing wind

Across the plain.

Margaret Longenecker Been, ©1973

POET’S NOTE:  I do long for Heaven, every time I read a newspaper or watch the news on TV—or hear of human suffering around the world.  Many times a week I pray, “Thy Kingdom come” and “Come, Lord Jesus”.

Yet God is His creative mercy and grace gives us glimpses of Heaven on a daily basis.  All we need to do is look at the sky, and we are lifted to another, richer dimension.  And when winter suddenly turns to spring, the message of Resurrection is overwhelmingly clear!  Our Lord is here!  His visible return is simply  a matter of time.  MLB

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Fragments of March . . .

 

Resurrection hymns

resound on melting lake . . .

The Canadas are back

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Heaven is ringing

with songs of northbound geese

breaking up the winter

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Heartless euphoria . . .

soon we’ll dash out blithering

Oh, Oh, Spring!

 

Margaret Longenecker Been, ©2006

Published in BRUSH STROKES, Word Paintings by Margaret Longenecker Been, Elk River Books, Phillips, Wisconsin

 

 

 

 

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Resurrection!

 I Long to Venture in the Wood

 I long to venture in the wood

where warblers glorify our Lord

and see what violets might show

of life from death

while springing from decaying

forest floor, and find

a cleansing stream to kneel beside

and cool my face

where cowslip congregations dwell

in ever-flowing grace.

©Margaret Longenecker Been

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The Mystique of the Swans

The first time I heard the swans in our northern bay, I thought I was hearing Canada geese with COPD.  The swans frequently hang out in the midst of an entourage of Canadas—but swans bark in a louder register, with a rusty twinge that reduces me to a pile of goose bumps whenever I hear it.  Like the keening of coyotes in the night, swan music has its own mystique.

Joe took the above photo through his telescope; hence the darkness around the ring of light.  These are the whistling swans.  They pause in our bay every spring, en route to the far north—and sometimes again for a few days on their southward journey in fall.  

The swans never fail to touch me profoundly, with their wild beauty.  Thanks to Hans Christian Andersen’s UGLY DUCKLING, swans are forever imprinted in my soul.  Here is an ode to a mute swan, which I wrote a few years ago.  Different from the noisy swans in our bay, the mute swan carries unique metaphorical implications for me. 

Mute Swan

Voiceless, relegated to the torments

of a heartless wind, storms assail – – –

rain pelts and turns to ice while you,

you cannot speak or breathe a protest

as wind’s anger wreaks the pain

of cruel ice upon your neck, curved in grace,

or spews a deafening spate

of condemnation in your face.

Bend low.  The waters darken. 

Tomorrow your ravished image will be caught

in corrugations of a winter lake,

and wings renewed will take you skyward,

Sunward, ’til you seize your voice

and scream your triumph over wind

defeated, conquered, stripped forever

of its heartless power to break.

Margaret Longenecker Been—All Rights Reserved

(Mute Swan was published in A TIME UNDER HEAVEN . . . seasonal reflections and poems . . . by Margaret Longenecker Been, 2005)

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