Beauty

Requiem for September (or/ November Is Upon Us) Withering leaves Dying grasses Autumn is here Time Passes Gray skies Chilly days Brisk nights Life’s fabric frays Weary bodies Wracked with age Time to turn Another page Readying for winter Dreaming of spring Eternally hopeful What it will bring We are...

By Joseph Charles MacKenzie, for the Society of Classical Poets Born in 1939 Samuel Gilliland attended the ancient Dreghorn School in an old mining village on the right bank of the river Irvine, said village having passed from the De Morville’s, Lord High Constables of Scotland, to Roland, Lord of...

  Cagney's Last Curtain Call Words shape my lips, words that I shall borrow, Pre-dawn, the sun, yet to fully arise, Caresses land edged by a bustling sea; Joy’s tears form, for I may weep tomorrow, I watch lighthouse lights blink and realise They are beacons guiding boats to the...

Youths for Prophets, Without Sin As youths for prophets steer a course, Towards our futures of remorse, We forge a dauntless faith believed, Inspired by deeds not yet bereaved, And age which slows, and grows to show, Wisdom's what we really sow. _________________________ Sweet forsaken pagan dreams, Of adolescent thoughts...

  'Twas so much more on that morn before fall that we all came to mourn as it fell As the shadows that touched had borne, by its clutch, a scorn we remembered so well From the sky rained a fiery metal as flowers and petals were mired with soot...

Urban Butterfly What business have you here, In acrid air, to strain Through jagged glass and steel On a cracked asphalt plain. Faint, shady memory Of vernal vales of green – Wind-tossed, long-lost, you fly Among this tortured scene, Whose weight could pulverize Your grace with heartless ease; And yet...

The Sea My sleeping spirit wakes As the town’s vespers Climb the stairless sky And the sea whispers. The rushing waves crash On the craggy Shores of consciousness And the sea whispers. Like an ancient song Or some sailor's dirge Which the pale waves hum As the seas surge. Through...

Cicada and Mantis You are known to us by your choral song, The clicks and buzzes of an insect throng. Hidden in darkness, a collective hum Consumes attention like a temple gong. You are not known to capture an eardrum. Rather, you’re thought to be praying by some; Bent fore-legs...

  The bark came off the trunks before the leaves had dropped— the freeze sped up, the shade enlarged, the birdsong stopped. No forest hiss survived, no human sound, no sigh— it was to be the dullest place below the sky. From dens and hides small eyes kept watching out...

  Poet's Note: "Back when I was eighteen years old, things were sort of grim with the Vietnam War and my draft status up in the air. I had just graduated from high school the week before and was considering what my future might hold. The word 'Despair' popped into my...

Poetry before Writing “Greece down through the fifth century has aptly been described as a ‘song culture’.” ~ Michael Schmidt in The First Poets, 10, quoting Leslie Kurke, “The Strangeness of ‘Song Culture’:  archaic Greek poetry” In ancient Greece the mainlands and the isles Held deeply in their peoples’ fireside souls The...

  Let us raise statues to the Prince of Peace: __Cain’s monuments are powerless to bind __Our hearts in summer’s sheaf, or to remind The world of our first fall through sin’s caprice. Our monuments recall the gods of Greece __Whose lifeless looks their marble temples lined: __Blank, frigid idols...

Poetry, as we have discussed in earlier parts of this article series, depends upon the Muses and accessing the deeper self or soul within each person; this is not an easy thing to do. In the 18th century Lord Chesterfield commented on how an individual could be anything they chose...

Proem In rhyming, timing is everything. Rhymes in wrong places make awkward spaces. A rhyme in rhyming knows more than prose. Rhymes are the rings you hear in the mind’s ear. Nature’s rhymes are free: As you shall see, My rhyme’s beginnings are paid in endings.   Excerpts from “Bones...

Higher Purpose Is there any higher purpose As they walk with faces down? Are they sure of destination As they shuffle through the town; With eyes grown unaccustomed To a world beyond their screens; Affixed to apps unsocial, Missing people, places, scenes? If call could make connection Back to Life...

Passing of the Seasons When snow has melted, chill has gone, and winter turns to spring, The tender buds grow on the branches where the robins sing. The earth once brown is green again, blessed by the April rain, And flowers shy peek out the ground to meet the sun...

Nesting Season Little sleep. The night heat did not relent. You startle me up as day breaks over the tent to show me the sea-turtle tracks you found through the bluestems behind the campground. I hardly rub my eyes when you unzip the mosquito mesh with insistence, gripped by the...

. He viewed the world with perfect form But upside down, not as the norm He lifted those who’d been down - trod And doing so, he followed God . . Alec Ream is a writer living in Virginia. His poetic work and creative fiction have been widely published. A...

  I used to find it hard to lose at chess. I'd watch in disbelief the check and mate, think through the game and curse to find too late— I'd bought disaster with the bishop's press. In school, a "C" would cause the same malaise that sick regret: "I should...

George and the Dragon In the Yorkshire dialect “Nah, sithee,” said Granny, “Just set thee dahn ‘ere, An’ I’ll tell thee a tale old and true, Of ‘ow good Saint George slew a dragon one day An’ all dressed in a metal suit too. It were like this…” she said...

The Journal It sat upon his bedside table, closed, And waiting to keep record of each day: The silent pages still and unexposed, A diary to come, his dossier. He saw it every evening as he bent To turn the lamp off, then to lie at rest, Remembering her face,...

Meadows of Corn It seems but bland to every passing eye, These regal meadows dressed in ripened corn; They dance and few can such effects deny, The brows of greener grass their touch adorn. As dismal scenes of urban life have choked Our ageing glimpses hour by hour sans shame;...

  To Solitude Come, Solitude, my first and truest friend! Long hours of careless converse burden me, And I have need of hospitality Such as art thou alone meet with to lend. What synthesis my past encounters blend, What sweetness in the cup of memory Or bitter bile, I taste...

  Windmill Song Alone it shudders on a hill, Defiant in the wind. A strong south gale could topple it, A hard rain do it in. Too many years its silver blades Whirled in the morning breeze While spinning far across the plains A song it spun with ease. Those...

On Visiting the Tea Garden in Middletown, New York I. A harried daddy with two kids in tow, Maneuvering through city streets and cars, I look around quite nervously for crows Whose filthy bombs my head before had marred. I dashed in through the front door of the place, A...

A Villanelle To breathe the beaming silence of the sky I long, when dawn’s chill wakes my eyes, and see The oft-unseen yet boundless peace on high. When slumber’s velvety dim moments die, Pale crowds rush back and forth, although unfree To breathe the beaming silence of the sky; For...

  Untitled All older statues want to come alive, Those Greek and Roman ones, and Christian, too. Their skeletons and veins and muscles strive To break through marble skin.  They want their blue Eyes once again to see the world of living flesh. They want to sweat in love and...

A Lifetime Day drifts into evening Evening into night All around me darkness With only stars for light Dawn awakes the morning The morning burst into day The cycle never ceasing Black to white to gray The rhythms of each moment The seasons of each year Time goes on forever...

Upon the release of the Society’s How to Write Classical Poetry   When feeling some compulsion to compose, One wonders which of many forms to choose, Then tends to favor what one really knows, Where there is little left to gain or lose. But one may wait to see how process...

For Elizabeth On the Poet’s Eleventh Wedding Anniversary   Though you behold me silent in this room, Know that I walk in fields of fresh-cut hay; Though I be still, my thoughts like roses bloom And run with clouds across the vault of day. The west wind summons me beyond...

The important events in the life of Gaius Valerius Catullus (84-54 B.C.) are recounted through the poems he has left. The particular poem below was written on his return from Asia Minor, where he had attempted at a public career by following Memmius, the patron of the poet Lucretius, into...

Inside the Dragon’s Teeth Maui, Hawaii From inside, you get a new perspective ___Of the tourist spot known as Dragon’s Teeth. The people who write about such things give ___This place, which lies on the ocean beneath A golf course and ritzy hotel, a dull, ___Scientific description: “Lava flow, Met...

It has long been observed that whilst the ego is useful in making daily and ordinary decisions in our life, it is less effective when it comes to more important issues; it is by nature competitive, and it tends to subordinate the greater good for more immediate gains and self-gratification....

  When, late in May, Memorial Day ____Inaugurates the season Of summer sun and summer fun ____(Much welcomed, with good reason), Then nature’s crowned with sight and sound: ____The sky is bright and clear, The flowers’ blooms and birds’ bright plumes ____Proclaim that summer’s here. The birds cheer on the...

Unshaken Faith Forward Alliterative verse dedicated to Falun Gong practitioners who have faced persecution in China since July 20, 1999   The ground was broken, crusty, cracked for miles and miles, and ever on, and in the distance, black clouds called out death and doom, from Hell they hailed. The...

LVII. On a Bodegón of Zurbarán From carbon darkness, splendor! Light comes forth. A painter knew the warm fidelity Of lemons pointing east and west and north, And praised the Thornless Rose’s purity. Two silver patens, oranges enthroned, A crown of blossoms and ascending leaves, The rounded basket, finest that...

  At last, the sunset’s knell forebodes the ceasing day— The merchants in their silken garments trudge their way Along, with Turkish camels and Koranic tunes. Diurnal light retreats from dromedary’s dunes, And Bedouins arrive, commencing ev’ning hours And drive their caravans across Saharan bow’rs Where fading clouds announce the...

  And What Of Art? It used to be that there was a division Between the arts, and each had segments, too. A poem was just a poem, required revision, A painter mixed his colors – blue was blue, And didn’t need some trash, or added gravel To make it...

Dante’s Inferno, Canto I (Poem by Dante Alighieri / translation by J. Simon Harris in terza rima) In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself again in a dark forest, for I had lost the pathway straight and right. Ah how hard it is to describe,...

  A wind blew through the almond trees. The blossoms shook, the petals floated down Past where I sat on the cliffs above the sea. The waves reminded me a bit of the mounds Of snow I’d left behind, if only for a week. The locals though were wrapped in...