"orchard" poems
In the orchard and rose garden
I long to see your face.
In the taste of Sweetness
I long to kiss your lips.
In the shadows of passion
I long for your love.
Oh! Supreme Lover!
Let me leave aside my worries.
The flowers are blooming
with the exultation of your Spirit.
By Allah!
I long to escape the prison of my ego
and lose myself
in the mountains and the desert.
These sad and lonely people tire me.
I long to revel in the drunken frenzy of your love
and feel the strength of Rustam in my hands.
I’m sick of mortal kings.
I long to see your light.
With lamps in hand
the sheiks and mullahs roam
the dark alleys of these towns
not finding what they seek.
You are the Essence of the Essence,
The intoxication of Love.
I long to sing your praises
but stand mute
with the agony of wishing in my heart.
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From where I lingered in a lull in march
outside the sugar-house one night for choice,
I called the fireman with a careful voice
And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch:
‘O fireman, give the fire another stoke,
And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke.’
I thought a few might tangle, as they did,
Among bare maple boughs, and in the rare
Hill atmosphere not cease to glow,
And so be added to the moon up there.
The moon, though slight, was moon enough to show
On every tree a bucket with a lid,
And on black ground a bear-skin rug of snow.
The sparks made no attempt to be the moon.
They were content to figure in the trees
As Leo, Orion, and the Pleiades.
And that was what the boughs were full of soon.
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Little sea,
Cast me in waters most surrounding
And ring me in kaleidoscope of reef,
Gently waving me home, promising
Deep underwater lands.
Little star,
Guide me in my mission of light,
Turn me toward the green valleys,
The blood streams, the noble orchard
And fruitions of dream.
Aug 1, 2012
Aug 1, 2012 at 3:16 PM UTC
I am homesick.
I miss that golden crisp apple smell. It reminds me of the times we where in the orchard as kids playing a game of hide and seek among the trees.
I ache for the lavender sunsets there. I loved the times where we would run two miles just to make it to the big oak tree in time to climb to the top and watch the milky purple lights.
I dream of the fields of sunflowers every now and then. I was happiest when we ran through them, holding hands, thinking we will forever be this young.
But most of all, I miss you. These memories of home wouldn’t have been the same without you, and I thank you for that.
But now I’m homesick.
I’m homesick of a place i’m not even sure exists anymore.
B.K.
Oct 9, 2018
Oct 9, 2018 at 2:25 PM UTC
Dandelions are the most independent flower.
They grow where they want.
No one plants them.
They’re free.
They’re infinite.
I felt infinite picking them in the apple orchard with you.
We were free.
We were infinite.
I couldn't handle my smile watching you,
Rip them out of the earth by the handfuls.
Your face was covered in sunshine and pollen.
It might have been the pollen that resembled sunlight.
Regardless,
You emitted the sun in a way I've never seen before.
I refuse to accept that dandelions are weeds,
Because I want to be a dandelion with you.
May 14, 2015
May 14, 2015 at 11:17 PM UTC
Doctor Larch peers out the window,
Pulling aside brocaded curtains to hide
The grief that he will not show,
The rending emptiness he feels inside.
As his son Homer rides past the sunset,
Not knowing where he goes
But aspiring to see the wide world,
The ocean at Mount Desert,
Seeing wonder in the expanse
And worlds inside a circle of glass.
He has taken with him his heart,
A dark picture of frailty.
He finds unexpected work in an orchard,
Leisurely harvesting round, garnet jewels.
The nomads, dark and wary,
Ask him to read about death and stars.
There are rules for the workers.
And Homer finds that they apply
To no one, neither nomads or
Curious young men.
He sees in the errant father
The reflection of his own,
The man who made him good.
“You are my work of art”
He wrote.
Like an artist with his painting,
Who resists giving it away,
So Doctor Larch holds on to him
Hoping his adolescence ends
And he returns.
Finding peace at the last.
The lack of rules bring about a sea change,
Allowing forbidden love and pain.
He ventures out once more into the vacuum
Of conscience set free,
He devises his own rules about the womb
And how to help those in agony
But eventually…
With all the rules now open,
There is nothing left for him to do.
So he boards the migrant truck
Just as the pilot returns, broken.
He watches the struggle with a wheelchair
Sees his lover watch him with her yellow hair
Knows her future, years of sacrifice.
And he admits at last
That he has a purpose,
The train to St. Cloud huffs slowly away,
With Homer standing in the wet snow.
There is the old asylum,
The orphanage and home on the hill,
Almost black, with the sunset behind,
Homer begins the long climb.
He approaches slowly.
But then, a burst of laughter
And children from the door
Flock around him, dancing, shrieking,
Some holding him like an errant dog,
Who must be told to stay.
“Will you stay?” they ask.
“I think so,” he smiles in irony.
He is home at the last.
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 10:58 AM UTC
if ever there were
gods or goddesses of desert
of the drylands
of parched earth some call home
they would be surprised to learn
of the miracle of
this Spring deluge
unfurling forth
from deep within
the crusty dermis
of this sublunar territory:
hydrangea and ***** apple flower,
intermingling their hues
of mauve and lilacs,
as well as the color of sky
blooms of the succulents
popping open
in celebratory dance
in wild fuschia
sunray butter:
a dazzling botanic trance
hollyhocks of magenta,
veils of bougainvellia, too
sweetpea clusters
curling in the trellis
weaving heavy-scented magic
through and through
a private orchard of lemon tree, and apple
olive and pistachio grove
One would not guess
the endless giving
of this desert treasure trove
And I feel like a goddess
of mythology softly spun
like Demeter, or Ceres
ancient Egyptian Renenutet
my hands spread out
in the licks of gentle sun
for as spring pours forth its honey
all through this barren land
I , too reawake
and flush out all the infected,
dust-scratched sand
I welcome in
the waters of abundance,
of love, of light under stars
let new energy wash out
old poisons
my radiance spilling far
Reaching out unto the Universe,
cradling this heart
I cup the buds of blooms,
of nectar
to inseminate my dark
allowing me
to release the past
and seed within me, lit
the atoms
of new
start
unfolding bit
by tender
bit
Apr 22, 2017
Apr 22, 2017 at 10:05 AM UTC
Do not carry your remembrance.
Leave it, alone, in my breast,
tremor of a white cherry tree
in the torment of January.
There divides me from the dead
a wall of difficult dreams.
I give the pain of a fresh lily
for a heart of chalk.
All night long, in the orchard
my eyes, like two dogs.
All night long, quinces
of poison, flowing.
Sometimes the wind
is a tulip of fear,
a sick tulip,
daybreak of winter.
A wall of difficult dreams
divides me from the dead.
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74
A Lady red—amid the Hill
Her annual secret keeps!
A Lady white, within the Field
In placid Lily sleeps!
The tidy Breezes, with their Brooms—
Sweep vale—and hill—and tree!
Prithee, My pretty Housewives!
Who may expected be?
The Neighbors do not yet suspect!
The Woods exchange a smile!
Orchard, and Buttercup, and Bird—
In such a little while!
And yet, how still the Landscape stands!
How nonchalant the Hedge!
As if the “Resurrection”
Were nothing very strange!
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Our last connection with the mythic.
My mother remembers the day as a girl
she jumped across a little spruce
that now overtops the sandstone house
where still she lives; her face delights
at the thought of her years translated
into wood so tall, into so mighty
a peer of the birds and the wind.
Too, the old farmer still stout of step
treads through the orchard he has outlasted
but for some hollow-trunked much-lopped
apples and Bartlett pears. The dogwood
planted to mark my birth flowers each April,
a soundless explosion. We tell its story
time after time: the drizzling day,
the fragile sapling that had to be staked.
At the back of our acre here, my wife and I,
freshly moved in, freshly together,
transplanted two hemlocks that guarded our door
gloomily, green gnomes a meter high.
One died, gray as sagebrush next spring.
The other lives on and some day will dominate
this view no longer mine, its great
lazy feathery hemlock limbs down-drooping,
its tent-shaped caverns resinous and deep.
Then may I return, an old man, a trespasser,
and remember and marvel to see
our small deed, that hurried day,
so amplified, like a story through layers of air
told over and over, spreading.
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I like my women like I like my flowers,
down to Earth, and she’s rooted to the concept.
From her orchard, orchids cry out that she’s
a beauty. A beauty as bold as baby’s breath
but she’s not soft-spoken. It’s written in her
blue-eyed, irises that she’s a stargazer
with a heart made of marigolds, laced together
by Queen Anne. She sprouted out of that cracked
cement with tulips curled to the cosmos, greeting
morning glories with a stellar smile, that I fell for
like a shooting star. She’s a bloomed-beauty that’s
bound to this Earth, and well, I’d pick her up any day.
© Matthew Harlovic
Mar 24, 2014
Mar 24, 2014 at 12:09 AM UTC
LONG ago I learned how to sleep,
In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing it away,
In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and listened or never listened at all,
In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the wind into whistling, "Who, who are you?"
I slept with my head in an elbow on a summer afternoon and there I took a sleep lesson.
There I went away saying: I know why they sleep, I know how they trap the tricky winds.
Long ago I learned how to listen to the singing wind and how to forget and how to hear the deep whine,
Slapping and lapsing under the day blue and the night stars:
Who, who are you?
Who can ever forget
listening to the wind go by
counting its money
and throwing it away?
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I’ve watched you now a full half hour
Self-poised upon that yellow flower;
And, little Butterfly! indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless!—not frozen seas
More motionless!—and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!
This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
My trees they are, my Sister’s flowers:
Here rest your wings when they are weary,
Here lodge as in a sanctuary!
Come often to us, fear no wrong;
Sit near us on the bough!
We’ll talk of sunshine and of song,
And summer days, when we were young;
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.
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In the evenings
the deer would emerge
from the edge of the woods
stepping over the tumbledown stones
of walls left untended-
they'd leave tracks through the snow
in a wandering line that led to the last apple tree
in the field by Orchard Street.
I remember that now,
staring at this antler I've found
in the clearing between the cactus
and sun bleached stones.
The lines of the antler
flow into the fractures of my palm-
two thousand miles from snow,
and two thousand miles from
the blue evening glow
of a shivering world
glazed over by twilight…
And the deer-
magnificent, pawing the snow
searching for apples that had fallen below-
emboldened by the frozen sweetness of autumn.
They were graceful even in flight-
when cars with chains
jingling and crunching the ice
rounded the corner
down Orchard Street.
Today I've tracked over two thousand miles
in my own wandering line-
the lines of the antler
flow through the tangles and hollows of time.
Sometimes I stand in a clearing,
sometimes hidden by trees,
sometimes I scratch below the surface,
and I run- but, less gracefully...
There are walls I've left untended
and some I've crafted too well-
it is through forgotten tumbledown walls
that memories come-
I thank grace
it was into this clearing they fell.
Tom Spencer © 2017
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 6:55 PM UTC
575
“Heaven” has different Signs—to me—
Sometimes, I think that Noon
Is but a symbol of the Place—
And when again, at Dawn,
A mighty look runs round the World
And settles in the Hills—
An Awe if it should be like that
Upon the Ignorance steals—
The Orchard, when the Sun is on—
The Triumph of the Birds
When they together Victory make—
Some Carnivals of Clouds—
The Rapture of a finished Day—
Returning to the West—
All these—remind us of the place
That Men call “paradise”—
Itself be fairer—we suppose—
But how Ourself, shall be
Adorned, for a Superior Grace—
Not yet, our eyes can see—
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Bloom towards the orchard garden
Sweetest delicacy of the century
I found you,
Precious.
Jan 24, 2013
Jan 24, 2013 at 9:41 PM UTC
103
I have a King, who does not speak—
So—wondering—thro’ the hours meek
I trudge the day away—
Half glad when it is night, and sleep,
If, haply, thro’ a dream, to peep
In parlors, shut by day.
And if I do—when morning comes—
It is as if a hundred drums
Did round my pillow roll,
And shouts fill all my Childish sky,
And Bells keep saying “Victory”
From steeples in my soul!
And if I don’t—the little Bird
Within the Orchard, is not heard,
And I omit to pray
“Father, thy will be done” today
For my will goes the other way,
And it were perjury!
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lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.
shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner.
taken by tears like
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.
a hanky is in order your lord your
worship.
the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail---
wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones.
and everywhere is
nowhere---
the dream is as bad as
flapjacks and flat tires:
why do we go on
with our minds and
pockets full of
dust
like a bad boy just out of
school---
you tell
me,
you who were a hero in some
revolution
you who teach children
you who drink with calmness
you who own large homes
and walk in gardens
you who have killed a man and own a
beautiful wife
you tell me
why I am on fire like old dry
garbage.
we might surely have some interesting
correspondence.
it will keep the mailman busy.
and the butterflies and ants and bridges and
cemeteries
the rocket-makers and dogs and garage mechanics
will still go on a
while
until we run out of stamps
and/or
ideas.
don't be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on
doors.
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Favorite word: “nymphet”, but no!
Halcyon, a kind of drug, you know.
Searching through the pages’ mist
And imagined deeds
Of poets’ needs…
I found my favourite word,
As asked,
Neither sacred nor profane
That describes the Venetian rain
In my beloved’s eyes
And the Florentine sun upon her hair:
“Auburn, russet, mythopoeic”.
Oh, it is not fair,
To liken an object
Of my lust and love
To anything as mortal as autumn air!
Nor “October’s orchard Haze”;
She had her own
Inscrutable, premeditated ways!
Rather let me say that she was perfect,
Though her eyes, pale and myopic,
Her shuffling gait and
Graceless limbs, to them Grace lends
Fey charm, the power to mend
My suffering and
Delusions of a poet’s end
As anything but pathetic,
(Her mother’s fondness for vague emetics)
And I left softly hanging,
On a girl’s new taste,
A tang of russet apples on her face,
But no, not that, the sum
Of my love, My Lo!
Then her bleak demise, partly by my hand
That none of you brutes could understand;
The pure love,
So sadly consummated,
Between a lover
And the one she hated
Yet loved once with inexplicable delight,
On one stolen, frightened night…
In which the two of us agreed
To satisfy a simple, yet maniacal need,
And then depart…
But I could not,
You see;
She was my life,
My love, my heart.
Humbert Humbert 1950
Sharon Talbot ca. 2005
Sep 9, 2017
Sep 9, 2017 at 11:11 AM UTC
Karma?
I don't adhere to it
But I do believe
We reap what we sow
One cannot expect to have peace
When one has sown nothing but discord
Anymore than one can expect a golden crop of corn
When the planter has actually sown beans
And roots of bitterness will sure grow deep and destructive
When not thoroughly torn out of the ground
For a thriving garden must be rid of invading seedlings
Of anything that does not foster, but fights its growth
To reap an abundant harvest
Sometimes, it is starting all over from scratch
For we've all been guilty of poor gardening
Have failed as farmers to one degree or another
You wanted succulent peaches
But you got shriveled prunes
You wanted wheat
But you got weeds
To produce a healthy garden
The fruit of forgiveness must grow as freely
As wildflowers in a field
Row upon row of compassion and love
An orchard of plenty for the desperate in need
Is the most rewarding harvest to reap
It will quench the terrible thirst
And satisfy the yearning soul
Aug 26, 2012
Aug 26, 2012 at 7:39 PM UTC
Oh, come again to Astolat!
I will not ask you to be kind.
And you may go when you will go,
And I will stay behind.
I will not say how dear you are,
Or ask you if you hold me dear,
Or trouble you with things for you
The way I did last year.
So still the orchard, Lancelot,
So very still the lake shall be,
You could not guess—though you should guess—
What is become of me.
So wide shall be the garden-walk,
The garden-seat so very wide,
You needs must think—if you should think—
The lily maid had died.
Save that, a little way away,
I’d watch you for a little while,
To see you speak, the way you speak,
And smile,—if you should smile.
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316
The Wind didn’t come from the Orchard—today—
Further than that—
Nor stop to play with the Hay—
Nor joggle a Hat—
He’s a transitive fellow—very—
Rely on that—
If He leave a Bur at the door
We know He has climbed a Fir—
But the Fir is Where—Declare—
Were you ever there?
If He brings Odors of Clovers—
And that is His business—not Ours—
Then He has been with the Mowers—
Whetting away the Hours
To sweet pauses of Hay—
His Way—of a June Day—
If He fling Sand, and Pebble—
Little Boys Hats—and Stubble—
With an occasional Steeple—
And a hoarse “Get out of the way, I say,”
Who’d be the fool to stay?
Would you—Say—
Would you be the fool to stay?
5.2k
a future promise
a hard on like bundled gym socks
in stuffed blue jeans
a future threat
a shriveled phallus wrinkled obsolete
she remembered fondly
being beaten drum chatter
and seized like slow roasted
fall off the bone pulled pork
****** raggedy Ann
catapulted beyond Euboean heavens
ravaging scrotums Gordian ******
with her wild fiendish mouth
drinking a river of
haloed golden showers
spit and ****
in a runaway hot house of glistening pink
buttery spires
engorging her macerated orifices
half eaten radish
chocking on hordes
of big do do *****
a ****** face; cross eyed
Babylon abalone
bashed Ashly mashed
begging for
a face full of swinging *****
like caped chandeliers
trotting faint giggles
in a constellation
of ruptured arteries
and thick sparked ****
on her knees
milk glitter faced
scared with happiness
she counted one smiling bruise at a time
her badge of calamities
black and blue silhouettes
grinning invitations like party favors
without a crease of shame
her skin rapturous
spackled patchworks
bled like torrential fountains summer tide
while every body had fizzy red ice phlebotomies
and steamed through her drooling tumble pie
lust ***** totem
house of winding labyrinths
honey pumped transfusion
flush on blush
opera of tangled limbs
red pulse wedding flowers
slick ***** palace
blood tongued orchard
caressing knotted mooned
**** spill
Jan 14, 2019
Jan 14, 2019 at 2:22 PM UTC
324
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church—
I keep it, staying at Home—
With a Bobolink for a Chorister—
And an Orchard, for a Dome—
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice—
I just wear my Wings—
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton—sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman—
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last—
I’m going, all along.
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Draped in fresh-knitted pearls
we traipsed
into saccharine peach orchard
The summer heat loped about our dew-kissed ******
****** - appropriated from dawn spent on neatly shorn plantation grass
Ambling into the knotted palatial arbor
we sat each in our own tree crux
behinds nestled upon ashen bark
Juice dripping in our grip
down our cast nets of flesh
sprawled about the branches
inset with gravity-defying liquescent orbs
dusted in translucent mink
painted with smears of
citrine, coral, amber, and ichorous
clinging to brass stem
The rondures secede to mandible
taut between palms pull and polished ivories
- torn-
Fluent in dulcet discourse
We cloak ourselves in provocative juice tatting
Until such time that our congealing garments
were found mapping the bark's topography
A saccharine map to the breath of soil
Bloodstone ants found our map
and had begun traversing - portent
to seize our treasure
We surrendered our jewelled cages
and took flight
to the sun-drunken lake to bathe
and swim
until heavy lids kissed moistly
heavily supped on the draught
sleep - beckoned transience
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:48 PM UTC