{"id":1977,"date":"2021-10-30T18:25:28","date_gmt":"2021-10-30T17:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/?page_id=1977"},"modified":"2022-01-09T09:27:50","modified_gmt":"2022-01-09T09:27:50","slug":"poems-from-a-friend","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/november-2021\/poems-from-a-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"Poems from a Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Juliet Henderson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michael Taylor, is a translator, writer (some of you may have heard of his book \u00a0Rembrandt\u2019s Nose), and poet. He is also an old friend who kindly shares monthly collections of his poems. His work always reveals to me the deeper spirit and essence in just about every aspect of our and others\u2019 lives. This October collection is no exception, and I am moved to share it with Friends.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

SUMMER\u2019S END, by Michael Taylor<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

BUTTERFLIES
\n<\/strong>To be airborne, to be light, to lift, to glide
\nabove flowers and be one with the wind
\nthe sun sleeping between trees.
\nTo be nowhere and everywhere at once
\nforever free
\nas though air could shift like dreams.<\/p>\n

To slip like music from instrument
\nto instrument, to be nothing
\nand everything in one breath.
\nTo be those exhalations of summer
\nquivering on wings as frail as thought.
\nTo be anything really but this self
\nplodding from place to place.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

CLOUDS
\n<\/strong>You\u2019d think they had been tossed in a game
\nor idle experiment
\nwith shadow and light, veils behind veils
\nor walls piled on walls.
\nSome lead nowhere.
\nOthers are cities lost in sand.
\nSome are as huge
\nas the palaces of demented kings
\nbut in another minute
\nit\u2019s as if they had never existed.<\/p>\n

Light always wins. Light
\nsweeps above, between, below
\nthe shifting romances
\nthey\u2019re always building.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

SWALLOWS
\n<\/strong>They have gone. The west wind
\nhas cleared the sky of them.
\nI didn\u2019t even see them assemble on wires.
\nThey\u2019ve gone.
\nThe air is strangely still.
\nThe silence is the silence of their not being there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ROCK
\n<\/strong>Inside rocks it\u2019s dark. They crop up in fields or fall from cliffs or tumble down slopes. You pick them up or stumble upon them. Impermeable to light, they open to air. You follow their windings where rivers churn, animals take shelter, men once hunted. They are mostly irregular. Even when shaped by the sea, their ovals and ellipses are imperfect. Except for sheets of alabaster, they do not let day through. They are like darkness made hard. But a starless moonless impenetrable darkness. This is something you cannot truly understand. If you were inside one of them you couldn\u2019t discern it\u2019s color.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

RAIN
\n<\/strong>One by one the raindrops fall in the dust.
\nThen by twos and threes, then in a sudden rush.
\n\u201cAt last,\u201d you think, imagining
\nwhat it feels like to be the earth.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

BEES
\n<\/strong>The forest sings. You\u2019d think
\nit would be still on an evening like this.
\nBut hundreds of wings
\nhum among the high leaves.
\nEven down here
\nearth and moss and ferns
\nmurmur among the long shadows
\nand sunbeams.
\nWhether heard or unheard
\nthe forest sings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

LEAVES
\n<\/strong>Summer\u2019s torn. Scraps of warmth scatter
\nthis way and that under trees
\nThey\u2019re bronze and yellow and orange and red
\nyet you would live forever in the green
\nthey leave behind and seem to defy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

STARS
\n<\/strong>They will not fly away. They shone
\nbefore I was born
\nand will shine long after I die.
\nSerfs and kings saw them.
\nThey shone for emperors
\nand philosophers, for Ovid
\nby the Black Sea and Homer\u2019s heroes
\nbeneath the walls of Troy
\nand the nameless masters
\nwho breathed life into bison
\non dark walls.<\/p>\n

When all the animals have gone
\nand there will be no one to miss
\nthem they will still shine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photos by SL Granum<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n
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Back to November 2021 Newsletter Main Page<\/a><\/p>\n

Forty-Three<\/em> Newsletter \u2022 Number 511 \u2022 November 2021
\n<\/strong>Oxford Friends Meeting
\n43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW<\/p>\n

newsletter@oxfordquakers.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Juliet Henderson Michael Taylor, is a translator, writer (some of you may have heard of his book \u00a0Rembrandt\u2019s Nose), and poet. He is also an old friend who kindly shares monthly collections of his poems. His work always reveals to me the deeper spirit and essence in just about every aspect of our and others\u2019 … Continue reading Poems from a Friend<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"parent":1934,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1977","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1977"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2083,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1977\/revisions\/2083"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}