A Single Lit Match

This is a poem written by my friend Leslie R Hennick - a very talented man. It’s a very meaningful poem, reflective of what we all went through at some point in our lives. I hope you will all enjoy it. “A SINGLE LIT MATCH”

When chaos reigns in our hearts
It dulls even the sharpest of minds
Shredding our confidence apart
Like great levees eroded over time

Failure feels predictable and certain
Catastrophic collapse is on its way
Swearing that it’s your final curtain
You have reached the end of your days

Yet outcomes are never preordained
Something can always change the tide
Living hearts are never completely drained
So don’t pack it in before the end of the ride

It takes the faith of one single thought
And the effort of one single scratch
Because even the deepest and darkest of caves
Are brightened by a single lit match

Leslie R Hennick copyright 01/2018 all rights reserved.

Treasured Soul

Glorious is your soul, filled with riches untold;

But none of this wealth can be bought or sold.

The diamonds you hold are all within your heart;

Precious are your gifts; divinely created art.

All this beauty resides behind your beautiful eyes.

Endless love to till the heavenly skies.

Your treasure is one that’s meant to be shared;

Give it freely with complete loving care.

- Robert Clancy

I Did Not Die

A short poem 

I Did Not Die

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened rain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush.

Of quiet birds in circled flight,
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
- Mary Elizabeth Frye

How The Flowers Felt

A beautiful short poem.

The rain to the wind said,

You push and I’ll pelt.’

They so smote the garden bed,

That the flowers actually knelt,

And lay lodged – though not dead.

I know how the flowers felt.

- Robert Frost

Poems

A couple of short poems

Day is over, night has come.

Today is gone, what’s done is done.

Embrace your dreams through the night.

Tomorrow comes with a whole new light!

- Unknown

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

- Leonard Cohen

‘The Chaos’ by Gerard Nolst Trenité (1870 – 1946)

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

‘The Chaos’ by Gerard Nolst Trenite (1870 – 1946)

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhymes with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough?

Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.

My advice is give it up!

Dust If You Must

Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better

To paint a picture or write a letter

Bake a cake or plant a seed

Ponder the difference b etween want and need

Dust if you must, but there’s not much time,

With rivers to swim and mountains to climb

Music to hear and books to read

Friends to cherish and life to lead

Dust if you must, but the world’s out there

With the sun in your eyes, the wind in your hair

A flutter of snow, a shower of rain

Tis day will not come around again

Dust if you must, but bear in mind

Old age will come and it’s not kind

And when you go – and go you must

You, yourself, will make more dust

Of Poets, Poems and Poetry

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically. - Diane Ackerman

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth – the true poet is very near the oracle. - Edwin Hubble Chapin

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. - Edgar Allan Poe

A Thousand Cults, A Thousand Creeds

A thousand cults, a thousand creeds,

Is one a rose and the rest all weeds?

Or is each one suited to meet one’s needs?

Is your own so great that the rest seem small?

Then keep it, and live it.

That’s all!

- Edward Cooke

How Did It Get So Late So Soon?

How did it get so late so soon?

Its night before its afternoon.

December is here before its June.

My goodness how the time has flown.

How did it get so late so soon?

 - Theodor Geisel

A Short Poem

Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,

A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,

He passes from life to his rest in the grave.

 - Lord Byron

A Short Poem

Serene, I fold my hands and wait,

Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;

I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,

For lo! my own shall come to me.

- John Burroughs

A Poem

Time is swift, it races by;
Opportunities are born and die ...
Still you wait and will not try;
A bird with wings who dares not rise and fly.

- Alan Alexander Milne

Pleasure And Sorrow

I walked a mile with Pleasure,
She chatted all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne'er word said she
But, oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me!

- Robert Browning Hamilton

If ...

If all good people were clever
And clever people were good
The world would be nice than ever,
We thought that it possible could.

But somehow it’s seldom or never,
The two hit it off as it should
The good are so harsh to the clever
The clever so rude to the good.

- Elizabeth Wordsworth

And Thus The Days Go By

I love this poem. Short, simple and concise. It describes life in a few words. Simply brilliant and beautiful.

We live and work and dream,

Each has his little scheme,

Sometimes we laugh;

Sometimes we cry.

And thus the days go by.

- Unknown

Imperfect World, Happy Balance

I copied this (with permission, of course) from ‘Sorry, no heaven’, one of the blogs I am following.

I feel blessed

and in a state of perpetual grace

not because only good things happen 

but because all things happen, 

and we are breathing.

Sad things happen, 

and there are accidents 

and evil people 

and suffering. 

These are our teachers

and these are the realities of the world

that have to be embraced for good or bad,

for better or worse, 

in sickness and in health 

the sacred marriage vows 

between man and his imperfect universe.

- Ruth Ostrow

Selected from ‘Chatter Poems’ 

Be Grateful

Be grateful for the kindly friends that walk along your way;
Be grateful for the skies of blue that smile from day to day;
Be grateful for the health you own, the work you find to do,
For round about you there are men less fortunate than you.

Be grateful for the growing trees, the roses soon to bloom,
The tenderness of kindly hearts that shared your days of gloom;
Be grateful for the morning dew, the grass beneath your feet,
The soft caresses of your babes and all their laughter sweet.

Acquire the grateful habit, learn to see how blest you are,
How much there is to gladden life, how little life to mar!
And what if rain shall fall today and you with grief are sad;
Be grateful that you can recall the joys that you have had.

- Edgar Albert Guest

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- by Robert Frost

You Tell On Yourself

You tell on yourself by the friends you seek, 

By the very manner in which you speak, 

By the way you employ your leisure time, 

By the use you make of dollar and dime. 

You tell what you are by the things you wear, 

By the spirit in which your burdens bear, 

By the kind of things at which you laugh, 

By the records you play on your phonograph. 

You tell what you are by the way you walk, 

By the things of which you delight to talk, 

By the manner in which you bear defeat, 

By so simple a thing as how you eat. 

By the books you choose from a well-filled shelf – 

In these ways, and more, you tell on yourself. 

So really there's not a grain of sense 

In trying to keep up a false pretense. 

- Author Unknown