These rainy days have made me pensive. I love a good rain storm, especially one that includes thunder and lightning. I have a memory that I was almost struck by lightning as a young child (though according to my parents, it didn’t actually happen). In this memory, I am standing on the beach with my grandfather during a classic summer storm. I can picture the sky and its “daytime of the night” visage; I can hear the ocean waves rolling the rocks along the shore; I can smell the sea air as the wind blows its damp spray across my face; and, I can feel my grandfather’s bear-like presence beside me. True or false this memory is embedded in my psyche, where countless years later, I often find myself standing at the screen door during violent storms.
First Storm and Thereafter
What I first notice within
this rough scene fixed
in memory is the rare,
quality of its lightning, as if
those bolts were clipped
from a comic book, pasted
on low cloud, or fashioned
with cardboard, daubed
with gilt then hung overhead
on wire and fine hooks.
What I hear most clearly
within that thunder now
is its grief—a moan, a long
lament echoing, an ache.
And the rain? Raucous enough,
pounding, but oddly musical, and, well,
eager to entertain, solicitous.
No storm since has been framed
with such matter-of-fact
artifice, nor to such comic
effect. No, the thousand-plus
storms since then have turned
increasingly artless,
arbitrary, bearing—every
one of them—a numbing burst.
And today, from the west a gust and a filling pressure
pulsing in the throat—offering
little or nothing to make light of.
Source: Poetry (April 2011).
So the poem begs the question, how does something stay "fresh" and not become artless or arbitrary? And is he really talking about storms? I think this is the reason I love poetry as much as I do. We, as readers, are left to read these words and weave them into the cloth of our own lives and give them new meaning; one that is all our own. And so, another poem!
First Love
John Clare
I ne’er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet,
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete.
My face turned pale as deadly pale,
My legs refused to walk away,
And when she looked, what could I ail?
My life and all seemed turned to clay.
And then my blood rushed to my face
And took my eyesight quite away,
The trees and bushes round the place
Seemed midnight at noonday.
I could not see a single thing,
Words from my eyes did start—
They spoke as chords do from the string,
And blood burnt round my heart.
Are flowers the winter’s choice?
Is love’s bed always snow?
She seemed to hear my silent voice,
I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before.
My heart has left its dwelling-place
And can return no more.
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