poems for March 21-2

backyard song, Diane Seuss; a song in the front yard by Gwendolyn Brooks; Backyards  by Nikki Donadio; What we are and  Metonymy As An Approach To A Real World by William Bronk; Life While-You-Wait by Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska

O Pen:  will start with Symborska, Plato, or Why on Earth

Fun session looking at Diane Seuss' "golden shovel" where she seems to look to Gwendolyn Brooks as her Mama ...
tell me about appearances and desires...
The Bronk and Szymborska got us going on a good philosophical romp.
Paul added his own summary of Plato:
John offered a different way of reading

The Ideal, formed of light

Not content with self

Came to Earth

Seeking excitement

Within bad matter

With no longer a prospect

For eternity

Wisdom crippled

Harmony asunder

Beauty badly altered

Good in shadows

All betrayed

By Naked Truth

Revealing that 

Which is its covering

They are all now mute, Plato,

Insufferable poets,

Mere flakes of shale

Scraps of stony silence.

**

poem by Michael Czarnecki, which comes from his newly released book, YOU.

there is an inner self
mostly hidden from others
mostly hidden from our own self
which occasionally surfaces
allows for little glimpses
then retreats back in

I want my inner self
to connect with your inner self
not just fragmentary glimpses
but real seeing, knowing, feeling
beyond surface illusion

when can we start

To view the cover of the book, read another poem or to order:http://foothillspublishing.com/2018/czarnecki.html

John's idea of reading  What We Are  by William Bronk. 

John read this column as the priest…                                   the group read this column as the                                                                                                                congregation's response

What we are? We say we want to become                            

what we are or what we have an intent to be.

                                                                                    We read the possibilities, or try.      

We get to some.                                                          We think we know how to read.

We recognize a word, here and there,                       

a syllable: male, it says perhaps,

or female, talent - look what you could do -

or love, it says, love is what we mean.

                                                                                    Being at any cost:

… in the end, the cost

is terrible but so is the lure to us.

                                                                                    We see it move and shine and swallow it. 

We say we are and this is what we are

as to say we should be and this is what to be

and this is how.                                                           But, oh, it isn't so.