Some poems

Recently I saw a movie where poetry was read and surprisingly, myself not being a poet writer or reader normally, I wanted to read some. Today I found a book filled with poems on love. I have read a few and liked a few so I thought I’d jot them down with my loose thoughts, hoping they will connect up somehow.
Rupert Brooke writes about love and how that one must be able to love the plain and practical things – one must fall in love with simple things first. And his poem ‘The great lover’ has some of Brooke’s great loves:
White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, ringed with blue lines;
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
So here is mine: Sarah, the great lover.
I actually love white china, the homely smell of baking completing itself in the oven, a dark room lit only with candles, new clothes, more new clothes, a meal with friends whether out or at home, a nicely brewed coffee, background jazz music, singing anytime harmonising to whatever, encouraging the potential in another and living with no regret. I could go on: eating cheesecake, making things my mum and gran used to make – sultana cake and ginger gems in particular, walking with a friend to kill two birds with one walk, sharing Jesus with someone. I won’t go on but I could.
FLICKER is another poem – traditional American. Check it out:
The flicker of the campfire, the wind in the pines
The starts in the heavens, the moon that shines
A place where people gather to meet friends of all kinds
A place where old man trouble is always left behind
So give me the light of a campfire, warm and bright
And give me some friends to sing with, I’ll be here all night
Love is where you find I; I’ve found mine right here;
Just you and me and the campfire and songs we love to hear
So give me the light of a campfire, warm and bright
And give me some friends to sing with, I’ll be here all night
Love is where you find it; I’ve found mine right here
Just you and me and the campfire and songs we love to hear.
Someone asked me one day what I loved. I couldn’t answer until recently. I’d been too busy to do the things that I liked, therefore forgetting what was actually at the core of my being. I’m thinking more along those lines now.
This is the last poem I’m quoting today, as it challenges me that beyond the last horrible turn of my life, I should not give up on love. I don’t have a hard heart towards it, yet I want to live deeply with love as my core:
TO LOVE
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.
If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one,
Not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with
Round with hobbies and little luxuries;
Avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
But in that casket – safe dark, motionless, airless – it will change.
It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

C S Lewis