Ocean's refrain

I was recently commissioned by a friend to write a new stanza to the old hymn "How Great Thou Art." She loves the hymn, but wished that there were a stanza about the ocean. Here's what I came up with:

When I look out and see the ocean’s rolling,
Over the sand, O Lord it’s you I see;
You wave your hands, the waves are gently flowing
Pushing the shells onto the sandy beach

"Then Sings my Soul. . ."

I had to hum the song to myself to make sure the words fit the melody. I doubt if it will ever be added to the hymnal, but I like it nonetheless.

Beach Walking- My newest assigned poem

I would have presented this poem at rhetoric declamations today, but I was sick (am sick). Therefore, I shall present it to you.

"Beach Walking"

I am walking across the Ft. Pickens buried road
With a kayak slung . . . DANG! on my shoulders
And a crab just took claw and it grabbed
My big foot so you must please forgive me.
I am lucky that no cars are going by me,
cause I dropped that big bulky friggin’ bark
And it landed right CRAP! on my other foot.
So I hobble fast across this barren beach.

It's obviously not a great poem or anything, but I am rather proud of the meter. It is anapestic, which means that it has three beats per foot going "unstressed, unstressed, stressed." The meter itself is almost like taking two steps and encountering something painful. I wouldn't want to use it in a relaxed poem, but it works well in this situation.

Chaining down the muse

I still haven't mastered the art of producing poetry on demand. Yeah, go ahead and tell me to produce a couplet. No problem. I'll produce something that is totally stupid, but is still totally a couplet. To the skeptics "You see this? Is anyone here prepared to argue that this is not in fact two lines that rhyme? I rest my case."

Couplets aren't that hard. You can mass-produce those little buggers. But you definitely can't tell me to produce a sonnet. Of course, sonnets don't come about naturally anyway. I've never been just sitting on my bed (my preferred poetry workstation) casually writing a poem and suddenly realize that, lo and behold, I've been writing a sonnet. "Well I'll be a monkey's uncle. Hey check this out - it's a sonnet! What should I call it?"

I am a self-motivated person. Which basically means that when I don't want to do something, I don't do it. What I need to do is realize that I really, deep down want to write a sonnet. There is nothing in the world I wish for more, than to write 14 lines -three quatrains and a couplet - in iambic pentameter using the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg.

Oh well, the couplet will be easy.

P.S. Couplets can be hard if you do them right

I am Young

I've had these thoughts running through my head for a couple weeks now, and I actually scribbled a little of the last part on the back of my lordship notes. Anyhow, no further adoing. 

Youth

I wonder what it is like to be old and white-whiskered,

For as yet I am young, and wisdom 

Laughs merrily at me from afar as I chase her, 

Ever-stumbling. 

My life is but new-started, 

My days are few, fresh, and hope-full. 

Yet my nights are heavy with thoughts and people and 

Times remembered. 

What will it be to remember even more?

And then my friends not gone away but  

Gone, their laughter forgotten from the world, 

Their song silenced. 

Nevermore, quoth the raven, and nevermore will 

The things I remember exist again, and time 

Will come when no one remembers 

Except me. 

For in remembrance a person lives, somehow, 

And the only true death in this world, as 

The Greek said, was being finally and utterly 

Forgotten. 

The song of our youth will be silenced soon 

Nevermore to be sung again, 

Nor shall there be any who remember the 

Glory of its joy. 

Joy we feel in life, in the blood that 

Pounds in our veins, joy in love, hoped 

And yet unseen. Joy in life yet unlived, joy in  

Joys yet untasted.

And behind it all we wonder, sadly. 

When will it end, when our friends will go, 

When our love will be parted, when our joys are all 

Remembered?

Of a time, I sit and think. 

And when I do, I think mostly tragic thoughts

For life is so here, so present, so much around and in me 

I can’t imagine less before than behind.

Laughing is enough sometimes when thinking of life’s vanity, 

Yet tears seem more appropriate when I 

Think about life, and about death, and how much of 

Each is in each. 

Life is full of death, ours and others and 

Ours in others, and death, we know, is naught 

But renewed, reinvigorated, reborn life 

Age after age. 

And so we cannot but sing, laugh, dance, and drink, 

We cannot but joy in Christ. For we remember, 

Though not with our eyes, when He was us and died, 

When we were Christ (though not yet) and lived. 

Let us feast like lunatics, rejoice like imbeciles, 

Dance like madmen, and love idiotically all the days of our vanity. 

For we are drunk on the wine of life – 

We are young. 

My sister's poetry

My sister, Hannah, is now taking the poetry class I took when I was a junior in high school, except now she's taking it from Joshua Gibbs whereas I took from Justin Hughes. They were asked to write a short poem on any subject that interests them. Hannah is a violinist and she really loves music in general. She was having trouble figuring out what specifically to write about so I suggested that she write a poem about Symphony Conductors (something I had thought about putting to poetry sometime; but of course she beat me to it). Here's what she wrote:

Hannah Noland
Mr. Gibbs
Poetry


The Ascension


The night he performed, I was there
Sensing the stillness, the vibrations, the lyrical power.
A creation – words, as it were,
Spoken directly to my soul.

A child’s first climb up a tree -
Love, terror, joy, pleasure compounded,
Listening, waiting, the triumphant ascension.
The climax, awaited, rejoiced.

Four quick strokes of his baton,
An imitation of God.

It's not finished, it still needs to be edited by her peers and such; but it looks like a "finished" poem to me. I thought it was very good. I'm pretty proud of my sister. . .