Poetry Friday

“Writing a poem is discovering.” ~Robert Frost

Not only is writing a poem discovering, but so is reading a poem, as I discovered!

I am not a horse person. It’s not to say I don’t like horses. I do. But I don’t ride them, dream of them or even think of them. So I’m not exactly sure why I picked up a poetry book filled with horse poems. Maybe it was the cover. There’s a shadow of a horse with a woman riding it and the shadowed fields make me want to jump into the picture and forget about all my cares and woes.

What I learned from picking up My Kingdom for a Horse, An Anthology of Poems About Horses, Edited by Betty Ann Schwartz, Illustrated by Alix Berenzy, is that it doesn’t always matter what the topic is, it’s the beauty of the written word that draws me to love poetry. Especially, such simple yet powerful word pictures. I had many favourites and there were poems by authors such as, Robert Frost, Christina Rossetti, Jack Prelutsky, Ruth Feder and many more including one by William Shakespeare.

Two poems which spoke to me and eased the stress out of my shoulders (which reading poetry out loud tends to do) were:

White Horse by Moonlight

Santo feeds
while the moon
comes up
curved like the bowl
of a silver spoon,
buries his nose
in silver
weeds.
Santo
the color
of moon.

~Tony Johnston, all rights reserved

Retired to Pasture

The meadow moist with morning dew
Is calling me to canter through
Its oak lined paths of pasture grass.
The brook beside it, as I pass,
Invites me down to quench my thirst.
To think that I had once been cursed
To trot upon the city streets
With honking cars in sweltering heat!
Refreshed am I as wind blown wheat.

~by Anita Wintz, all rights reserved

The Poetry Friday round up is at The Simple and the Ordinary