Ex Libris NC (aka Lynn Roundtree)'s Avatar

Ex Libris NC (aka Lynn Roundtree)

@exlibrisnc

Posts about poetry, history, antiquarian books, spirituality, and wordplay. Louisiana native, longtime North Carolina resident.

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31.01.2025
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Latest posts by Ex Libris NC (aka Lynn Roundtree) @exlibrisnc

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William Blake, "To the Evening Star"

Thou fair-haired angel of the evening,
Now, whilst the sun remains on the mountains, light
Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!

#Poetry #Poems #Venus #Planets

allpoetry.com/To-the-Eveni...

04.12.2025 13:08 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Czeslaw Milosz, "At a Certain Age"

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind
Was too busy visiting one sea after another.
We did not succeed in interesting the animals...

#Poetry #Poems #Confession

www.newyorker.com/magazine/199...

03.12.2025 12:30 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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E. E. Cummings, "little tree"

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

#Poems #Poetry #Christmas

poets.org/poem/little-...

02.12.2025 11:30 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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The vineyard country, russet, reddish, carmine-brown in this season.
A blue outline of hills above a fertile valley.
It’s warm as long as the sun does not set, in the shade cold returns.
A strong sauna and then swimming in a pool surrounded by trees...

poetrying.wordpress.com/2019/02/18/d... #Poems

01.12.2025 12:45 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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How did someone come at last to the word for patience
and know that it was the right word or patience
the sounds had come such a distance from the will to give pain
which that person kept like a word for patience...

#Patience #Poetry #Poems

www.theparisreview.org/poetry/1270/...

30.11.2025 13:26 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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The loved ones we call the dead
depart from us and for a while
are absent. And then as if
called back by our love, they come
near us again. They enter our dreams.
We feel they have been near us
when we have not thought of them.
They are simply here, simply waiting..

www.instagram.com/p/DRjiPeBiE-u/

29.11.2025 01:04 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Joy Harjo, "Perhaps the World Ends Here"

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

#Thanksgiving #Poetry #Poems

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49622/...

26.11.2025 13:08 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills & thrums
or the silence after lightning before it says
its names - and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed
apologies. You were aimed from birth:
you will never be alone

voetica.com/poem/6732 #Poetry #Poems

25.11.2025 16:05 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Your yet-to-be-dismantled elms are few,
and by the time you read this may be gone.
In my own childhood we had one or two
that framed the lawn before the hurricane
trees that were far too noble to survive
a time like ours, too slender or sublime.

www.theparisreview.org/poetry/3238/... #Poetry #Poems

23.11.2025 16:31 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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William Blake, "To the Evening Star"

Thou fair-haired angel of the evening,
Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light
Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!
Smile on our loves...

#Poetry #Poems #Venus #Blake

allpoetry.com/To-the-Eveni...

21.11.2025 12:02 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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It has been carefully painted
with the outlines of tools
to show us which belongs where,
auger and drawknife,
claw hammer and crosscut saw,
like the outlines of hands on the walls
of ancient caves in France,
painted with soot mixed with spit
ten thousand years ago

www.staging.voetica.com/poem/10695

20.11.2025 11:24 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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"A Jar of Buttons"

This is a core sample
from the floor of the Sea of Mending,

a cylinder packed with shells
that over many years

sank through fathoms of shirts β€”
pearl buttons, blue buttons β€”

and settled together
beneath waves of perseverance...

voetica.com/poem/10487 #Poetry #Poems #Sewing

19.11.2025 11:33 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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"November 18," by Ted Kooser

Walking by flashlight
at six in the morning,
my circle of light on the gravel
swinging side by side,
coyote, racoon, field mouse, sparrow,
each watching from darkness
this man with the moon on a leash.

#Poetry #Poems

davidkanigan.com/2014/09/20/a...

18.11.2025 12:05 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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The porch swing hangs fixed in a morning sun
that bleaches its gray slats, its flowered cushion
whose flowers have faded, like those of summer
and a small brown spider has hung out her web
on a line between porch post and chain
so that no one may swing without breaking it.

poets.org/poet/ted-koo...

16.11.2025 13:54 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Hugh MacDiarmid, "Island Funeral"

The procession winds like a little snake
Between the walls of irregular gray stones
Piled carelessly on one another.
Sometimes, on this winding track,
The leaders are doubled back
Quite near us...

#Poetry #Poems #Art #Funeral #WyethNC

www.jstor.org/stable/3848266

15.11.2025 13:45 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

poets.org/poem/morning...

14.11.2025 12:07 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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"People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc., to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them β€” that does not occur to them." (Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Culture and Value")

#Poetry #Poems #Arts #Music #Humanities #Science

13.11.2025 13:19 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Mary Oliver, "Mysteries, Yes"

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising...

#Poetry #Poems

onbeing.org/blog/choosin...

12.11.2025 01:53 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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"The Homecoming" (1945), by N. C. Wyeth

#Veterans #VeteransDay #Art #Pennsylvania

11.11.2025 17:27 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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John Berryman, "Eleven Addresses to the Lord (No. 3)"

Sole watchman of the flying stars, guard me
against my flicker of impulse lust: teach me
to see them as sisters & daughters. Sustain
my grand endeavours: husbandship & crafting...

#Poetry #Poems #Prayer

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48948/...

11.11.2025 12:50 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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"The Way It Is"

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.

#Poetry #Poems onbeing.org/blog/a-threa...

10.11.2025 13:23 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."-- Paul Dirac

#Poetry #Poems #Science #Physics #Quanta

home.cern/science/phys...

09.11.2025 23:59 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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"At the Equinox"

The tide ebbs and reveals orange and purple sea stars.
I have no theory of radiance
but after rain evaporates
off pine needles, the needles glisten.
In the courtyard, we spot the rising shell of a moon
and at the equinox bathe in its gleam.

#Poetry #Poems poets.org/poet/arthur-...

09.11.2025 12:42 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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"Prayer for Words"

Here is the wind bending the reeds westward,
The patchwork of morning on gray moraine:
Had I words I could tell of origin,
Of God’s hands bloody with birth at first light,
Of my thin squeals in the heat of his breath...

#Poetry #Poems #Words #Momaday

poets.org/poem/prayer-...

07.11.2025 13:01 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Each crisp autumn
there are fewer leaves, more clarity
light cycles of the haymound
odors of late roses
rivers rushing where we
once meandered
content in the casual chaos of each
season, plotting no espionage
because we did not know
the world as terror then.

poets.org/poet/rose-st... #Poetry #Poems

06.11.2025 12:53 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Stripped
you're beginning to float free
up through the smoke of brushfires
and incinerators
the unleafed branches won't hold you
nor the radar aerials

You're what the autumn knew would happen
after the last collapse
of primary color...

#Poetry #Poems #Autumn

www.best-poems.net/adrienne_ric...

06.11.2025 00:32 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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"Song of the Worms"

We have been underground too long,
we have done our work,
we are many and one,
we remember when we were human.

We have lived among roots and stones,
we have sung but no one has listened,
we come into the open air
at night only to love...

#Poetry #Poems #Worms margaretatwood.ca

05.11.2025 17:27 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Margaret Atwood, "The Moment"

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this...

#Poetry #Poems #Awareness

poetryarchive.org/poem/moment/

04.11.2025 12:04 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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"Home," by Bruce Weigl

I didn't know I was grateful
for such late-autumn
bent-up cornfields

yellow in the after-harvest
sun before the
cold plow turns it all over

into never.
I didn't know
I would enter this music...

#Poetry #Poems #Autumn #Fall #Harvest

poets.org/poem/home

03.11.2025 12:52 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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"Grace," by Wendell Berry

The woods is shining this morning.
Red, gold and green, the leaves
lie on the ground, or fall,
or hang full of light in the air still.
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
the place it has been coming to forever...

#Poetry #Poems #Autumn

voetica.com/poem/7518

02.11.2025 13:38 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0