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06-29-2024, 04:22 AM
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Join Date: Jun 2014
Location: Ellan Vannin
Posts: 3,480
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Clockwise
When we had saints, and saints had days,
this was St. Bart’s.
High-pitched hay went slowly home
on groaning carts.
It is a sweet spot
in the calendar:
out of summer’s pockets,
winter’s provender.
Cormorants – or is it shags –
finial the rocks.
In the meadows, grasshoppers
are knitting socks.
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06-29-2024, 07:20 AM
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Halcott, New York
Posts: 9,943
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I love this one, David.
The prominence of the rhymes delights me, and the unexpected turns that thought takes as a result.
Plus how it begins almost prosaically and then veers and soon steers into rhyme and rhythm.
And the title is great as well.
It's a perfect poem, one to memorize.
Thumbs up!
Nemo
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06-29-2024, 08:21 AM
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Join Date: Aug 2016
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 4,385
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.
It seems altogether appropriate to simply say, "What Nemo said."
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06-29-2024, 08:50 AM
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: North Carolina
Posts: 6,478
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I like it as well. Nemo does say why it works.
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06-29-2024, 10:20 AM
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Join Date: May 2016
Location: Staffordshire, England
Posts: 4,554
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I also think this is lovely, David. I love the first line. It sums up all the affection my heathen heart still has for the Church — that ritualistic marking of time. In fact everything in the poem, from the carts to the insects and birds, is slowly marking time.
I only wonder if the cormorant line is too loud an echo of the one that lays his eggs inside a paper bag.
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06-29-2024, 10:49 AM
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Join Date: Apr 2022
Location: St. Petersburg, Russia
Posts: 2,004
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All I can do is join in the chorus of praise, David. I too love the first line—and just about every one that follows. I wanted to fault S2L1 for being too short, but thought better of it: it works for me.
I do keep trying to read GRASS-hop-PER, but that’s my chanting habit and won’t likely fluster anyone but me.
I was never all that chummy with grasshoppers, and it’s been decades since I’ve seen one, so I’m curious: what do they do that resembles knitting socks?
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06-29-2024, 10:59 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Posts: 8,513
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Carl Copeland
I was never all that chummy with grasshoppers, and it’s been decades since I’ve seen one, so I’m curious: what do they do that resembles knitting socks?
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Carl, it's also probably been decades since you've heard knitting needles sliding over each other, and sometimes clicking, something lke this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grasshoppers.ogg
I love it, David!
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06-29-2024, 11:12 AM
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Join Date: Mar 2024
Location: Anchorage, AK
Posts: 457
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Hi, David—
Now that I’m old, I have the ability to reminisce nostalgically, choosing bright, vivid memories like photos in an album that warm me with their happy glow. You have a gift for writing poems about moments like that—this one, the one about the wren-pole, and the one about the ferry to Liverpool come to mind. I love all of them.
Glenn
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06-29-2024, 11:32 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Northern New Jersey
Posts: 9,002
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Hi David,
I like the rhyme as well, but I really like the imagery. Cormorants are magnificent birds (I'm happy to learn they are in some places called shags!), and I love "finial". The birds and the carted hay resolving to grasshoppers knitting socks is really nice. It all pushes up to a nursery rhyme, but doesn't cross the line. It puts the mechanism to great use. I am also partial to saint poems that mention the calendar assignment. Residual Catholic boy thing.
Rick
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06-29-2024, 11:35 AM
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Join Date: Apr 2022
Location: St. Petersburg, Russia
Posts: 2,004
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Julie Steiner
Carl, it's also probably been decades since you've heard knitting needles sliding over each other
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Must be well over a century, Julie. I remember the chirping of crickets and katydids, but was never too clear about the sound of grasshoppers. Thanks!
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