Practicing Poetry: Monsters

Monday, December 20, 2010

Monsters

The rocking chair is
lulling a worried doll to sleep.
Shadows are monsters.
The girl sings a lullaby
that her mother had sung to her.

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Twilight on the Beach

The crimson glory of the setting sun

Hath lain a moment on the ocean's breast,
Till twilight shadows, gathering one by one,
Bring us the tidings, day is gone to rest.

Far out upon the waters, like a veil,
The mists of evening rise and stretch away
Between the horizon and the distant sail,
And earth and sea are clothed in sombre gray.

The tide comes higher up the smooth, wide beach,
Singing the song it has for ages sung;
Recedes, and carries far beyond our reach
The freight my idle hands have seaward flung.

Over the white-capped waves the seagulls soar
With heavy-flapping wing and restless cry,
As darkness spreads its deeper mantle o'er
The changing shadows of the twilight sky.

No voice but mine to mingle with the sound
Of ocean's melody--as one by one
The stars light up the vast concave around,
And live the glory that is never done.

Still higher creeps the tide with subtle power,
And still the waves advance with sullen roar;
But with the last faint gleam of twilight hour
I turn me homeward from the lonely shore.

By Mary Dow Brine (1816-1913)

The Writer by Richard Wilbur

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

Practicing Poetry

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Monday, December 20, 2010

Monsters

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