Star Sight Gathering
Artwork and Bardic Poetry Book by Joseph S. Plum
Welcome:
Greetings and welcome to American Bardic Poet.
“who will listen for you at sunset?”
The poet’s third book of poetry is titled, Star Sight Gathering, and features a graphic design on the cover of a vision the poet had in a dream.
How to translate the dreaming mind into the waking mind?
This was the fundamental question we asked when putting together this book. I even managed to convince the poet to include a dream story - about how he says new poems in dreams - and then wakes up with the poem intact in his memory.
The dream story included is about the poem, “in unison,” which is one of Dad’s fable poems - like “painter of deserts” - that carries a metaphor through to make a statement about society. The poet describes how an old man drew this poem out from his mouth while dreaming.
Life is mysterious.
Good journey,
(The poet’s daughter.)
in unison
silver-haired the lion
lays down with the sheep
not being tired or hungry
with no desire to eat
when he opens his mouth
it’s simply to teach
but the lambs hear only a roar
and quickly retreat
to the safety of a flock
where every creature will agree
that to baa
is the one proper way to preach
to baa or to roar
neither one is complete
where every man is half-lion
and two-thirds sheep
and the only thoughtful sound
in unison that both can reach
comes when we dream we awake
while still asleep
from the voice of a memory
who stands on its own two feet
by taking from every lesson
the impulse to receive
and giving in return a feeling
in which reason can believe
so that ourselves and our future
can be forever freed
from the struggle of a heart
afraid to bleed
for fear of the lion
who has come
to lay down
with the sheep.
Read about the poet and the bees here.
Read my post regarding the punctuation and editing of the poems here.
Read the poem, “The Sun Has Traveled Well” here.
🙏🏼 Thank you for gathering here. May it be a blessing. 🙏🏼
About the Poet
Joseph S. Plum is a poet in the bardic tradition. He lives off-grid in rural Iowa and composes his unique chant-like oral poetry for fascinated audiences around the world. Joe has over 16 hours of oral poetry memorized in his head. He pulls from this collection of rhyming lines to compose poems according to the energy of the audience listening. Joe does all of this without writing the poems down on paper or holding any notes.
Joe’s daughter, Emily Lupita, typed up his poems over the years and launched Dreaming Deer Press to publish his work. He now has nine poetry books for sale on Amazon that can be purchased on his about page or by clicking here or searching “Joseph S. Plum” books.
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