Poetry Picnic Week 14: What I'm Thankful for in My Life

Welcome to Jingle Poetry at The Gooseberry Garden Poetry Picnic Week 14. We’ve enjoyed

your participation last week and look forward to reading this week’s entries.

This week, we will cover the idea of thankfulness and its many facets in one’s life. 

I, Kay Salady, welcome you to the 14th Poetry Picnic today!

I’ve chosen three poems centered on thankfulness as examples for you and certainly hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I have.  I look forward to reading your entries!

Ode to a Chestnut on the Ground by Pablo Neruda

From bristly foliage
you fell
complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany,
as perfect
as a violin newly
born of the treetops,
that falling
offers its sealed-in gifts,
the hidden sweetness
that grew in secret
amid birds and leaves,
a model of form,
kin to wood and flour,
an oval instrument
that holds within it
intact delight, an edible rose.
In the heights you abandoned
the sea-urchin burr
that parted its spines
in the light of the chestnut tree;
through that slit
you glimpsed the world,
birds

bursting with syllables,
starry
dew
below,
the heads of boys
and girls,
grasses stirring restlessly,
smoke rising, rising.
You made your decision,
chestnut, and leaped to earth,
burnished and ready,
firm and smooth
as the small breasts
of the islands of America.
You fell,
you struck
the ground,
but
nothing happened,
the grass
still stirred, the old
chestnut sighed with the mouths
of a forest of trees,
a red leaf of autumn fell,
resolutely, the hours marched on
across the earth.
Because you are
only
a seed,
chestnut tree, autumn, earth,
water, heights, silence
prepared the germ,
the floury density,
the maternal eyelids
that buried will again
open toward the heights
the simple majesty of foliage,
the dark damp plan
of new roots,
the ancient but new dimensions
of another chestnut tree in the earth.

After Apple-Picking by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
the scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
and held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
upon my way to sleep before it fell,
and I could tell
what form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
and every fleck of russet showing dear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
it keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
the rumbling sound
of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
of apple-picking: I am overtired
of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
as of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
this sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

On Fields O’er Which the Reaper’s Hand has Passed by Henry David Thoreau

On fields o’er which the reapers hand has pass’d

Lit by the harvest moon and autumn sun,

My thoughts like stubble floating in the wind

And of such fineness as October airs,

There after harvest could I glean my life

A richer harvest reaping without toil,

And weaving gorgeous fancies at my will

In subtler webs than finest summer haze.

Methods of Submission to Our Poetry Picnic:

Share your work using InLinkz below, and leave a comment in case it is your first time! It would be great if you could link back to us on your blog.

Weekly poetry collection starts on Sunday, at 2pm (CDT), and will stay open till Wednesday, 8pm (CDT), 78 hours for you to share your poetry with us.

Theme for Next Week:

For Week 15, we will have theme ”November, Winter, Change,and  Hope!”!

Jingle Poetry at The Gooseberry Garden  

Appreciates Your Continued Support, 
Please Feel FREE to share, encourage, and get inspired! Random poems are welcome too!

H-A-P-P-Y P-O-E-T-R-Y P-I-C-N-I-C!