The smoke that thunders

Plateau forests
Of ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir,

Cypresses that creep
Far into the water.

Under the sun that never sets
Below the smoke that thunders.

From Rough Guide Ultimate Adventures, September 2008, referring to the Grand Canyon, the Atchafalaya Basin and the Arctic Victoria Falls. By Harriet.

But Not All of the Time

Any case
in which people pursue
a single great experience or accomplishment
that occurs infrequently
or perhaps not at all –

a Holy grail,
an impossible dream,
a brilliant model,
a great white whale –

is a case of
a positively skewed distribution
in which they may be
predicted to be

unhappy
most of the time.

From Social Comparison Processes: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives (1977) edited by J.M. Suls and R. L. Miller, pp. 149-186. Submitted by Kate L.

Live your dash

On your tombstone
you’ve got your birth date

and the day of your decease —
and you’ve got your dash.

Live your dash.
Hold still and watch the birds.

Like the hummingbirds —
why are there so many of them?

From the London Evening Standard’s review of Herzog’s Into the Abyss. By Rishi Dastidar.

The Name of the Father

The first time I came home
with a hangover – I was 21
or 22 – I was in the kitchen
making a cup of tea. In those days
all I drank was Guinness – my dad
leant over to me and said:
‘Do you drink spirits?’ I said:
‘No, I don’t.’ He said:
‘Don’t.’ That’s stayed with me
all my life. I don’t drink spirits
at all. It was profound because
my father was a man of
very few words but,
when he did speak,
it was emphatic.

Liam Neeson, interviewed in the Metro, 27 January 2012. By Marika Rose.

In the Air

I will not make you a slave, you
will live in my 200-story castle where unicorn
servants will feed
you doughnuts off their horns. I will
personally make you
a throne that is half platnum
and half solid gold and jewel encrested.

Thankyou again for teaching us
about meteroligy, you’re
more awesome than a monkey
wearing a tuxedo
made out of bacon
riding a cyborg unicorn
with a lightsaber for the horn
on the tip of a space shuttle
closing in on Mars,
while ingulfed in flames.

A thank you note from a 9-year-old to a weatherman who visited his school, via the Metro, 15 March 2012. By Marika Rose.

Saying true things

I’m in love with you
and I’m not in the business
of denying myself
the simple pleasure of
saying
true
things
I’m in love with you
and I know that
love is just a shout
into the void
and that
oblivion is inevitable
and that
we’re all doomed
and that
there will come a day when
all our labor has been
returned
to
dust
and I know the sun
will swallow the only earth
we’ll ever have
and
I’m in love with you.

From The Fault in Our Stars. By Megan.

The moderate Finnish sauna

You should not slap
your neighbours without asking
their permission first.

The sauna is dear to me, almost sacred.
My father was born in one,
and his dying wish was to bathe
in a sauna one last time.

Summer is the best time to go.
Strike a match, hear
the crackling of dry birch wood
as it is engulfed by the greedy flames,
then sit down on the steps
to ponder the ways of the world
and wait for the sauna to warm up.

Your body sighs with relief when the first
ladleful of water hits the sizzling stove.
The experience is topped off with a dive
into a pure, clear lake.
What else does a human being need?

Both senryu and main poem are from a piece about saunas by Olli Rehn, European Commissioner in charge of the Eurozone crisis.

Simon and Ruth

At first, Ruth was a bit put off
by the fact that Simon turned up in a car
with every imaginable gadget:
I wasn’t used to flash cars, she says.

Then, on a day out to the beach,
Simon messed up Ruth’s kite.
He got all the lines tangled
so I didn’t use it again, says Ruth,

who had, however, noticed
that Simon was very polite.

From the Announcements, Marriages and Engagements section of The Times, 18 February 2012. By Thom.