index

Learn about area writers, poets, writing groups, and events here in our new section for local writers.

The Utica Poetry Society
http://www.facebook.com/uticapoetssociety

The Utica Poet's Society was given space to share poetry of their own and others at the Tramontane in Utica. Guests are invited to read their own work or share favorites from contemporary or past poets. It's an open forum with a sign up list. The floor opens from 7pm on Thursdays at the Tramontane located at 1105 Lincoln Avenue in Utica (315) 732-8257

The Utica Writers CLub
Utica Writers Club meets the fourth Wednesday of every month at the Kirkland Town Library, located at 55 1/2 College Street in Clinton. The meeting begins at 6pm and runs until 8:45pm. The meetings are conducted in a round table style and are free and open to the public.

January 1, 2012

The Year

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?
The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.
We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.
We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.
We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that's the burden of a year.

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)

December 25, 2011
A Poem for Christmas

A Christmas Carol

Poet - Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)
Book- The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti (1904)

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter,
long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain:
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what can I give Him,
Give my heart.

The First Snow-Fall
by James Russell Lowell

The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock
Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood;
How the flakes were folding it gently,
As did robins the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel,
Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?"
And I told of the good All-father
Who cares for us here below.

Again I looked at the snow-fall,
And thought of the leaden sky
That arched o'er our first great sorrow,
When that mound was heaped so high.

And again to the child I whispered,
"The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall!"

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;
And she, kissing back, could not know
That my kiss was given to her sister,
Folded close under deepening snow.

December 11, 2011

The Oak Tree Stands Naked
by Susan Collea

The oak tree stands naked.
It's form appears black
against the deepening gray sky.

The tree seems to shiver
whenever the bitter winds
gust against it's body.

I'm sure the oak is mourning
the loss of it's cloak of beauty,
now scattered in every direction.

As the oak stands barren and exposed,
I suspect it looks longingly
at the rows of evergreens across the way.

Jealous of the verdant greenery
that they wear like soft armor,
protecting them against the elements.

Then December comes
and the field across the way
begins to hum with activity.

Carloads of strangers arrive.
Bundled up and laughing,
they weave in and out of the rows.

The evergreens fall like soldiers,
never knowing what hit them
as they are dragged across the snow.

Soon they will just be carcasses,
stripped of their temporary adornments
and left at the side of the road.

The oak tree stands naked and grateful.
It's form appears black
against the deepening gray sky.

December 4, 2011
Here is a short, but sweet, childhood favorite with a message that is as significant today as it was when it was first written.

Happy Thought

The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
from A Child's Garden of Verses

Snow-Flakes

Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression.
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in it's cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

February 5, 2012

        Hope is a thing with feathers
        That perches in the soul,
        And sings the tune without the words,
        And never stops at all,

        And sweetest in the gale is heard;
        A sore must be the storm
        That could abash the little bird
        That kept so many warm.

        I've heard it in the chilliest land
        And on the strangest sea;
        Yet, never, in extremity,
        It asked a crumb of me.

        Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)