Affectionate pastiche of Monet misty morning magnified
The blot of color
silhouettes reveal beauties unnoticed on colored days
Sweet morning flavor reminiscent of Bach at his most classical
Thoughts sing unbidden in idle tranquil tracks
The harmonious delight of gray the rich smell of winter’s litter
The pulse, the soul, the grace of winter’s exhibits at neap tide -
Happy reminiscences of Never Enough
-
Poem Written by Brenda L. McCartney
Walk… don’t walk… a digital play
Mystical forces, magical energies at cross roads
Palpable sensations in a sacred space
Caught in a Mediterranean trance
Restraint beneath the stillness of weathered bark
The rare glance of an old angel –
The Saint that slipped past God
Into the silver bliss into the unknown where we cannot go
Which we cannot mention
-
Poem Written by Brenda L. McCartney
Alive and breathing
He touches me with his soul
Holds me in his eyes
Deposits in my memory
Quietly thinking as his sovereign influence evokes at will
The feel of enchantment, sensorial inputs dominates
His ability to listen locks… rife with meaning
The colony of its witness: dark, light is legendry
Yet his mind is clear to thrive…he exists in the woodland of time
Its magnificent walnut bark ponders, vibrates, resounds, amplifies reality
Carries me back to a place I know so well… serenity mixed with stupor
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Poem Written by Brenda L. McCartney
Photographed by Mitzi
Inner monologue
Enigmatic interplay
silhouette…luminosity
Thrilling silence…
Time moves inexorably forward
Thoughts of people come and go
Smiles, sighs, passionate emotions
Yet memories persist – enliven imaginations
Gallant rendezvous
Feelings are mutual in dawn’s first light
In a watercolor display
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Poem Written by Brenda L. McCartney
Image Taken from Reapting Islands
At the beginning of the year I felt compelled to pencil in my diary the birthday of one of our Caribbean icons. Why, perhaps because of some psychological, sociological or symbolic significance?
Today I give thanks for the expression of his individuality. I embrace his passion, his narrative poetry, and his imagistic style. He writes with such intensity and clarity that even after years of writing them his poems still seems eternally fresh.
With my urgent need to express how I feel on his eighty second birthday (82nd) words fail me. So to use the words of Wordsworth, another iconic poet who died (in 1850) many years before Walcott was born; Walcott’s poetry is a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
Derek Walcott’s works have all the hallmarks of great poetry having achieved such literary success; Nobel Prize for literature in 1992, and the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2011. He is an excellent example of what one can achieve as a poet. I am forever enriched by his knowledge. As a Caribbean poet Walcott’s spirit is intertwined in my literary experience as there will always be an allegiance to and gratitude for him.
Happy Birthday Honorable Derek Walcott.
(In St Lucia Derek Walcott’s country of birth his birthday January 23 is a national event.)
Excerpt taken from White Egrets by Derek Walcott appended:
Be happy now at Cap, for the simplest joy-
For a line of white egrets prompting the last word,
For the sea’s recitation re-entering my head
With questions it erases, canceling the demonic voice
By which I have recently been possessed; unheard,
It whispers the way the fiend does to a madman
Who gibbers to his bloody hands that he was seized
The way the sea swivels in the conch’s ear, like the roar
Of applause that precedes the actor with increased
Doubt to the pitch of paralyzed horror
That his prime is past. If it is true
That my gift has withered, that there’s little left of it,
If this man is right then there’s nothing else to do
But abandon poetry like a woman because you love it
And would not see her hurt, least of all by me;
So walk to the cliff’s edge and soar above it,
The jealousy, the spite, the nastiness, with the grace
Of a frigate over Barrel of Beef, its rock;
Be grateful that you wrote well in this place,
Let the torn poems sail from you like a flock
Of white egrets in a long last sigh of release.
The benediction of the old vaunt an infinite symbolic richness
The new breathes and I feel – “A swollen note of gratitude”
We toast to the melody of life, the pleasures of now
Yesterday dangles, enchants in painterly splendor
Almost in a celebratory play
Life’s lyricism dazzle in coloratura flights
Delightful twists much at our heart
Graceful moments danced – pleasant, calm, correct
We pause …as if plucked from a crown – thankful
Tomorrow we will be happy…we will learn how deep we can love
We will learn to be happy
Living Red like some flower – budding awaiting the bloom of something new.
-
Written by Brenda L. McCartney
Image - Drew Michaels
Awakened in fall’s foliage
Tapping energetically
Light comes to simply things
My agile mind radiant
The promise of abundance
Pressing…
I am stretched, I can stretch
Rollicking, roaring with laughter,
Seeds ready to sprout again
In genial sunnyness
Some whisper not until spring
Aroused … I say in winter.
-
Written by Brenda L. McCartney
The thought of your birthday stirs me - awake
“Without apprehension or apology”
I write in the Advent of Rituals
In harmony, comfort, genuine delight
Celebrate your halting of time
In your sacred season
-
Written by Brenda L. McCartney
Natures rasping harmonies in
Mass of green, brown…
wind- riffled creeks
held by silvery-tangled firewood
… Points of awakening in plots of flakes
-
Linked moments hand-picked for nurturing
Ice splintered limbs tore through tree’s sap
Warm tones of stones in frost delight
Livelihood lovingly trails in flurry sights
-
Propulsive energy surged, stings
Joy rises, churned, strung tight
Winter in full trestle in old quarry thoughts
Harness afar in sun-shot sensation
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Poem Written by Brenda L. McCartney
Silent barren battlefields
A cherished emblem worn
Tenderness of poppies…
In Flanders’s Field adorn
-
Our gratitude awakens
Bells ring, the prayers are read
Reverent remembrance
For ‘The Glorious Dead’
-
Mozart’s requiem peals now
Poignant timpani sigh
Cenotaph of Lutyen
The Ancient mourn reprise
-
Potent barren battlefields
Amongst the guns echo
Emblems of dawn’s stillness
Reminiscent sunset glow
-
Poem Written by Brenda L. McCartney
© 2011 McCartney House
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