Moistures & Excitements

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Canadian poet, education, Elaine Stirling, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, sonnet, Walt Whitman

unidentified boys’school Date: circa 1905 Source: postcard

True poets do not care that they are read,
the dead ones even less so for they see
the cold rigidity of young hearts bled
of spontaneity. Poor Miss McCree
with ruler tapping meter dares not share
her dreams, mad fuelled by Donne, of Principal
Trelawney. Moistures and excitements, where
are they to hide, cursed, shamed, inimical
to education’s thrust? Alas, a lass
who craves, a lad whose chemistry betrays
him, they’ll not quiver reading Leaves of Grass
but gnash on facts, bound tight like whalebone stays.
While students parse sweet Emily’s refrain,
her slanted lines dash wild against the pane.

© Elaine Stirling, 2020

Viral Ides

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Canadian poet, coronavirus, COVID-19, Elaine Stirling, Ides of March, seasonal poetry, sonnet

Ides, strange ides today, we crowd as one, bugged,
we march in step, in place, nowhere to go,
can’t cross the seas, a need to be unplugged
and yet to know, I fear the sneeze, the blow.
How many weeks, you say, before the weak
can self-identify? How far is wise,
for when I think of you and thoughts turn bleak,
have I not compromised my own demise?
Immunity’s a pitchy thing, a shade
that darts, a ninja one cannot deploy
mid-storm, and yet, might there not be some made
and ready balm inside me to enjoy?
May sweet simplicity befriend us through
these weeks we learn to be instead of do.

© Elaine Stirling, 2020

Sending wishes of good health to all!

A Sonnet for Sir Terry

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Canadian poet, coronavirus, Discworld, Elaine Stirling, homage to Terry Pratchett, Sir Terry Pratchett, sonnet

What, oh what, would you make of us today
satirically, Sir Terry, this spinning
disc of whirling thoughts? Do you grandly play
among the stars or do you creep, grinning,
with the spectre we fear so much to touch?
All this advice, inadvertent adverts
very soon will not amount to much, such
fun to elbow bump, though grumps still pervert
at every mimsy turn the joys of life.
Four pachyderms atop a turtle shell.
As science, faith, and politics suffice
to stir the worst and best, I cannot tell
nor must I, thankfully, explain the WHO,
the what or whyfor. Sans wi-fi will do.

Stay healthy, friends!

Image creator unknown: Happy to attribute if anyone could help out.

Good Day for a Flow Tale

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#onesyllablewords, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, poetry for fun, sonnet

I love the sound of the sea, so one day
my friend and me set out on a small boat
from the brook near his house. I heard him say
I think this is the way, if we can float

and not look back, just go, dare I say flow,
to where the slow speeds up a bit, we might
come to a bend or fork, I do not know
for sure, but who does? This may well prove us right—

—or wrong. Life, as they say, can be a song
you sing out loud or just a ton of work.
My friend was not the type to think for long
on thoughts he did not like. He was no shirk.

The shark that took him flipped our boat, then spat
him out. We swam to shore, and that was that!

~~~

One of my favourite improv games is to play a scene or tell a story in words of only one syllable. This is a sonnet written in the same spirit.

© Elaine Stirling, 2018

Infinity Pool

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, sonnet

There’s a pool in the sea in the middle
of my ocean, punch line to a riddle
writ from turbulent emotion where I
contemplate with mer-folk the Great Big Why.

Playing fool, I might take up a fiddle
with the notion that my tara-diddle
wit will soothe like aloe lotion, or try
battering opinions like a deep fish fry.

From there, of course, I fly from the griddle
to the coals where every eager kid’ll
go until she questions: for this I die?
Nope! Joy is here, not in the by and by.

Better to bask in this infinity;
we’ve salt enough to sink no enemy.

© Elaine Stirling, 2018

Sonnet to the Autumnal Sun

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, fall equinox, poems of the equinox, seasonal verse, sonnet

railway train bridge winding cliff track

All laud this equinox to Helios,
locomotive engineer whose aeons
of impeccable attention to Earth’s
fine clientele from least to uppermost
has wavered not a jot. His sacred bonds
to cargo in the form of death and birth
hold tight, & yet he’s quick to loose for those
intrepid riders who can see beyond
outdated schedules and rails not worth
pursuing. Cheer him for the way he coasts
into the station of your dawn. Begone,
insipid darkness, to your lower berths!
The greater Sol and I triangulate
to lay new tracks through joy, we luminate.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016
Photographer unknown

Wells

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, sonnet

I have lost my map to the well of deep
thoughts. I’m caught up in shallows and crosshairs
reacting to bobbers in barrels where
one wrong emotion or word indiscreet
upsets the precarious balance. Nowhere
in views or remarks of the day can I
track what in dreams leads me straight through the eye
of the storm to the seed. Forget despair
and the voices that choke, outraged by lies
in their fervent belief that keen focus
on desperate acts will stir magnanimous
change. Cast out, flocks of native kindness fly
in search of fields where levity holds camp.
Here, wells of hope replenish through the damp.

~~~

Image of Senegal village well is from Wikimedia Commons.

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

The Best We Can Do For Now

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, sonnet

Listening for your boots of Spanish leather,
heels worn from years of compas and despair.
I know your beat, your broken harmonies;
they whip like shredded silk, thorn-studded hair
shirts. You’ve reworked martyrdom to cold tease,
partner in a hopeless dance of never.
Last night, aroused by rustling myrtle trees,
I thought I heard you sigh…no? Whenever
such illusions rise, I turn to fairer
game. Your footfall I will hear whenever
I let beauty be in tangled fields of tare
and learn to see past fractured tiles to frieze.
One day, you’ll take those spurs down from the wall;
a final chase, then vanish to us all.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

The One We Hated’s Dead

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, sonnet

Yes, he is dead. The news broke out today.
What killed him spared no thought for all he did
and hoped to do. My unrelenting gaze
demanding he repent and feel dismay
must scurry now, a rat who’s lost her head.
Could I have kinder viewed his cock-eyed ways?

The greater tragedy may be he died
and I can feel no sadness, nor sweep clean
my joy. When will I learn all enmity
is waste, a pox of boiling gall inside
a vessel—mine!—disintegrating lean
and vibrant strength of mind? Insanity!

So now you ford the stream we all must cross.
You wish us well. Life carries on, no loss…

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Milking Sour, Milking Sweet

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Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, sonnet

I have soured on the taste of not enough,
curdled, clabbered, clotted on the knotty
view that discontent with every issue
non-aligned with my enlightened brain stuff
brings stupendous, bold new clarity.
Do spare the violins. Pass the tissue.

We’ve all been churned, known days both buttery
and sweet, but culture’s seeds grow in the now.
They draw no savour from remembered taste.
A finer state, perhaps, awaits the me
awake to fermentations that allow
uprisings to boil over, without haste.

I walk along, content, the bank of dreams
where all that settles lifts the richest cream.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016