Category: Poetry

The Time of Planting
 
The early sun rose slowly
The earth turned my eyes,
Turned to the early sun.
 
Once upon a day,
the sky was blue and gray;
Grey in the east, and blue.
Someone is watching you.
 
Someone? Is it?
Can you be who you are in this day?
 
The sun rose slowly
and the day turned upwards early
to meet the time of planting.
 
The time of planting.
The horse by the river, panting
in short quick breaths with the snow.
 
Colin Fine
1983

I am too weary
since my trouble
is more than I can bear.
You are
bigger than me,
quite,
higher than I.
I am so weary,
for now
I can talk
of my disappointment
and carry
through the night
their wings and
prayers.
I can hear the doubt
the murmur.
And though
noise and schedules
are the frame
progress that
motor.
Now I can whisper,
I am grateful
mostly like others
since ever we
ought to be.

© Marc Beaudin
Published in the Westview Review, 1998, Burlington, VT

The gentle wind blows upon my sail,
pushed along by this low wind.
The ship sails slowly
then, increasing, fallen upon my arms
that I must use as barriers
before these breaking waves,
Oh, my poor cows.

The south! “Oh my god,” said the mink.
“What time is it?”
And then ran off after …

I lie at rest
where some do fail.
Can time repent of all its slaves
and not grow passionately stale?
You ask for a penny for some gum:
These birds I hear at early dawn
are still a voice, a broken vail.

I buy a thread for the sail,
and save a pen, the pen I found
We look at owls.

So now I call you up to say
I lie at rest among all these pleasures.
Be merry, be merciful!

Is this sitting of a person high?
No, but only seemed to make
a sister’s sigh more precious
in the sheaves we glean.

Things thought through,
go with hope, a feeling of substance give
So, with the earth all freely part.

To think of mornings shared.
To think of soap and labor shared,
Of all that we can say and say.
“And so, what time is it?” Colin asked.
“Only time to think of you,” she replied.
“Time to think of Marge and so many quiet days.”

So now I have time for sailing:
Time to love and time to think.
I lie at rest. Be merciful. Be merry!

Colin Fine
April 13, 1983

(c) Marc D. Beaudin

The bitter shocks they enter;
the ships of far way:
That sail into parted mountains,
those ships of far away.

That do not see the seasons,
the regulars of the café;
The minds of men who race
to lie where earthquakes play.

The sun shines here in daytime:
the men whose minds race
See nothing in the sunshine,
they see no end, in place.

The bitter shocks they enter:
They wear lines at dawn.
They sail from quiet mountains,
Changing the rook for pawn:

The piles lie here at dockside
and wear their lines of god:
The old men only play checkers:
the old men play only checkers.

Colin Fine
June 1984

(c) Marc D. Beaudin

Bursting with a new excitement
Something like a 12 year old
With a new bicycle.

Running over with love
A new rowboat on a sea
Of swells, turns and gulls.

Fishing for a cloud
When Sun comes sliding outside
Its edge, pouring light.

Warmth and shadow
And fireside chatting,
Partly gazing out of doors.

(c) Marc Beaudin
1977