eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781481760331 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 06/27/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 434 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
Read an Excerpt
A PASSION FOR POETRY
By Maril Ozanne Garrison
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2013 Maril Ozanne GarrisonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4817-6032-4
CHAPTER 1
MICHIGAN, MY WONDERLAND
"She is home ..."
These same trees and I have been together for 47 years. Every day, all things are the same, yet all things are new. There are subtle changes every day, and no sunrise, sunset, spring, summer, fall or winter has ever been the same. At no time have I ever understood or learned everything there is to know about any of these.
She is home. Her air is fresh, her sun bright, her sky blue, her water clear, her pines fragrant, her winter brisk, her fall pungent and colorful, and her nights bring quiet rest.
MORNING
1. NONE THAT SEE HER
Morning sun sifts through the trees,
As shadows dance among the leaves;
Alive and growing, morning comes ...
Wind energizes pulsing drums!
She is life and she is true,
Refreshing all with morning dew;
All that love her know her name,
And none that see her leave the same.
2. NIGHT AND DAY HAVE MET AND KISSED
The morning sky lies like a new hair band,
Persimmon pink, about horizon's low
Intrusion with the hue of golden sand;
And every brand-new day's horizons grow ...
They're washed and worn by white-blue, cloud-like
Waves, while making way for sunlight's entrance bright;
A watery highway, ever shimmering, paves
And fades the sunrise hues like dew drops' flight ...
They wash away the heavy midnight mist
Where old night, cold night, and day have met and kissed.
3. MORNING RISES TO HER KNEES
Sunlight filters through the trees,
As morning rises to her knees.
4. BY MY WINDOW
In the morning, still of morning, peach and grey the clouds above;
Trees are sleeping in the stillness, day is fitted like a glove.
Light-capped clouds are moving eastward, moving toward the sun
of light;
Tree limbs reaching upward, light-ward, reaching toward the
morning bright.
I am sitting by my window in the early, golden glow;
Very briefly I am sitting ... list is long and I must go.
5. GOLDEN DAWN AWAKING EAST
Golden dawn, awaking east—bold, enormous, strong!
Growing, gaining, building bright—a rising sunburst song!
6. UNHURRIED MORNING, ENDLESS SEAMS
In the quiet, calm of morning,
In the demulcent a warning,
But my mind still wanders highways.
Content—volant—it muses, takes
Each side road offered, while it shakes
The thoughts of all impending days.
On holiday, my thoughts may wander
Down by ocean waves that thunder!
Up the endless, warm sand beaches,
Giving thanks in early prayer
For waves, crevasses, mountains bare...
For wisdom found in all their reaches.
Unhurried morning—endless seams—
When morning lies so close to dreams,
And time is measured by the sun;
Then, when shortened shadows lay
To mark the entrance of the day ...
Enchanted morning's almost done.
7. MORNING THAT JOINS SKY WITH LAND
Come, brightened morning, and come, early dew;
Come, favored sunshine, O come make the hue—
The color of morning—a black, orange and grey.
Come, bring the blue sky and light clouds that lay
Upon crystal mountains—horizon's broad band;
Come, be the morning that joins sky with land.
8. MORNINGS MINE IN MICHIGAN
I've morninged in the desert hills, I've morninged by the sea;
Still mornings here in Michigan are fresh and pure and free.
The desert air was dry and harsh, the mountain air was thin;
The unrelenting ocean air pressed 'gainst my drawing skin.
The Kansas morning echoed with its blackened cricket song;
The mornings in Missouri spread out heavy, damp and long.
The mornings in the prairies were no different than the night—
One light, one dark, both stretching out in dryness out of sight.
The cattle and the antelope that graze on rolling plain
See morning after morning bring no hint or thought of rain.
I've traveled far from state to state and felt their mornings free,
But none smell clean like Michigan's buoyant distillery.
The mornings here in Michigan are cool, and moist and full
With billows white against a blue as strengthened blowings pull
The trees in bended, graceful arcs. Their leaves impatiently
Are blown about by gusty winds that freshen air and lea.
A northern land with cooling lakes, and rich, sweet scent of pine;
I'll always love my Michigan, and own her mornings mine.
9. DAY IS FITTED LIKE A GLOVE
In the morning, still of morning, peach and grey the clouds above;
Trees are sleeping in the stillness—day is fitted like a glove.
10. ETHEREAL SHADES
Every sun-up is on time, a clock that never gains;
The golden leaves on cherry trees are bronzed as morning reigns.
The early morning misty light lays brilliant on the gate;
The sun in queue begins to wake, refusing to be late.
At first it is a dusky bronze when world is yet asleep—
A promise of the Eastern sky the sun has vowed to keep.
Ethereal shades still cling to night ... tall trunks, dark silhouettes;
Then fire bursts! Sun owns the sky—she blazes, beams and sets.
11. WITHOUT A SONG TO SING
The sun is out, the wind's about,
There's life in every feel or touch or smell;
There're changes small in nature's wall
We won't believe until we leave our shell.
And when it's gone, so still at dawn,
We look out twice to see if anything
At all is there—no sun, no air,
No voice belongs without a song to sing.
Come, Wind, come zephyr ... come wind winging,
Give the innocent the voice of singing.
12. AS STILL AS STILL
Not so many mornings are as still as one today,
A maple leaf is hanging down—a badge full-faced this way;
The refrigerator's quiet, just the ringing in my ears,
The sun is hardly rising in the east where it appears.
When morning seems asleep and still, as still as midnight hush,
I think I must go tiptoed soft with never need to rush.
13. EMBRACE THE MORNING
In the morning, dimness pulls your virgin eyes,
Your sight to window walls half-lit, still tinted by
The blue of what was midnight bold—that cold,
Dark canopy so deep, a nighttime, twinkling sky.
I love the morning, slow and easy ... day
Rides hard and fast; too soon it's gone and work is done.
How clockless is the midnight; strong and true
Its treasures, yet ... we wait for want of sun.
We embrace the morning hours... day's
In such a hurry, I can't think 'til paneful walls
Again are tinted midnight blue when dusky
Evening comes to turn the page before night falls.
14. MICHIGAN MORNING
Michigan morning, a Michigan wood;
I listened, I lingered, I studied, I stood.
Breezes refreshing, the air crisp and clear;
Hushed whispers of pine trees float down to my ear.
No troubles assail, no problems accost;
I'm free as a blue jay, as pure as the frost.
Soothe each anxious moment that washes the shoal;
O, Michigan morning, remain in my soul.
15. O COME, BRIGHT MORNING
O come, bright morning! Come to free this child whose hope is
nearly gone;
I chance must risk the loss of all to gain a fairer, cloudless dawn.
Spring is nearing ... birds of morning voice their optimistic views;
Sunshine blazing ... clouds are glazing low horizon avenues.
O, could I share their season's hope, expecting spring-like miracles;
I'm trapped by winter ... caught in despair's long and tightening
tentacles.
16. A NAIL DRIVEN AND NECESSARY
How still the morning, house is quiet, how still a world e'er comes
the day;
There is a peaceful contemplation as the mind prepares to weigh
Matters simple, matters weighty that will fill the hours of light.
A nail driven, and necessary is the morning calm and bright.
17. MORNING WAITS
The morning shadows, long and white, stretch out across the
lawn—
The drying lawn where colored leaves are strewn by autumn's
yawn.
The morning sun with radiant beam erases frost away;
There is no breeze, the morning waits the coming of the day.
18. GET UP!
The morning comes creeping so softly on cat paw ...
It comes now to waken the day;
That ticking you hear? Not a clock—it's a claw
Tapping your shoulder to say ... GET UP!
19. MORNING'S PROMISE
The night sky's clear—a bluer clear—
The stars are bright and hover near;
The wind is strong—an even strong-And
snow falls new upon the long
Tree rows that lines the yard around.
The steady blast—relentless hound
Of winter—echoes through the wood;
And morning's promise? All is good.
20. ONCE UPON A DREAM
How chiffon the sky is waking, apricot and licorice cream;
A sky delicious in the making, it comes once upon a dream.
DAY
21. DAY IS PEACE
The brooding winds have scraped the drifts
In whitened, leveled, gelid planes;
The attic rats are harried by
The patter of the copper vanes.
The shutter bolts are tried and wearied,
Snow is whisked from cedar shakes
That parry night with loosened rattle—
Night now girt with moiling flakes.
The stars are dimmed by silvern dots,
The moon rides low on crystal sleighs;
The flattened meadow's powder base
Is whipped into a dervish haze.
Wraith-like specters raise their voices—
Unleashed howlings, wild and free;
Things fixed are found envenerate
To halt this ghostly jamboree.
Morning beams spotlight the rubble
Left by rebel-rousing sprites:
Tree limbs, shakes and scattered oak leaves
Held in drifts of frozen rites.
Fence posts rise as charnel minions,
Caked in ice, austere and still—
Resolute, unflinching bruisers
Standing watch on ravined hill.
The winter storm again is silenced,
Again the light bids night to cease;
Again, again, the war is ended ...
Again, again, the day is peace.
22. RISING SHADES OF NIGHT
The black pine lace with needle shapes
Lays soft against the moon-tone skies;
Where tinges of a morning orange
Are streaked with flimsy mare's tail sighs.
The pine trees lay like tiers of lace
Upon new morning, grey-white dawns;
The eastern clouds rise up to soar
Above receding western tawns.
A maple lace with scalloped edge
Lays close against the lightening hue;
Then suddenly a magic brush
Paints skies with dawn's clear, perfect blue!
While canvas skies drink up the wine
Of every cloud and sun-red ray—
A paced and metamorphic change—
'Neath rising shades of night is day.
23. AND THAT'S HOW DAY WAS SPUN
The morning seems it's lost in thought ... it lets me take my ease;
The sky has pushed the snooze alarm ... there's hardly any breeze.
The clouds, a patchwork counterpane, where sky has laid its head;
And morning is so comatose, it might as well be dead!
A distant blue jay screams commands, while robins, wrens and
sparrows
Chirp in volleys in the stillness, filling summer fens.
It's as if all time stood still, and in amazement we
Can scarce believe the nothingness, this morning that we see.
Quick! Chill awakes the morning, and while Chill is on the run,
It steals the counterpane of clouds ... and that's how day was spun.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A PASSION FOR POETRY by Maril Ozanne Garrison. Copyright © 2013 Maril Ozanne Garrison. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.