We Still Need Poetry, not Poetry Thursday

Faith
~Arthur Caswell Parker

There is a faith that weakly dies
When overcast by clouds of doubt,
That like a blazing wisp of straw
A vagrant breeze will flicker out.


Be mine the faith whose living flame
Shall pierce the clouds and banish night,
Whose glow the hurricanes increase
To match the gleams of heaven’s night.


This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on November 30, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

not Poetry Thursday, for the love of sunrise

The Dawn’s Awake!
~Otto Leland Bohanan

The Dawn’s awake! 
   A flash of smoldering flame and fire
Ignites the East. Then, higher, higher, 
   O’er all the sky so gray, forlorn, 
The torch of gold is borne. 

The Dawn’s awake! 
  The dawn of a thousand dreams and thrills. 
And music singing in the hills 
   A pæen of eternal spring 
Voices the new awakening. 

The Dawn’s awake! 
     Whispers of pent-up harmonies, 
With the mingled fragrance of the trees; 
     Faint snaches of half-forgotten song—
Fathers! Torn and numb,—
   The boon of light we craved, awaited long, 
Has come, has come! 

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 2, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Because we need beauty... extra poetry this week...

In April
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Again the woods are odorous, the lark 
Lifts on upsoaring wings the heaven gray
That hung above the tree-tops, veiled and dark, 
Where branches bare disclosed the empty day. 

After long rainy afternoons an hour 
Comes with its shafts of golden light and flings 
Them at the windows in a radiant shower, 
And rain drops beat the panes like timorous wings. 

Then all is still. The stones are crooned to sleep
By the soft sound of rain that slowly dies; 
And cradled in the branches, hidden deep
In each bright bud, a slumbering silence lies.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 5, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

Not so small victories

homage to my hips
By Lucille Clifton
these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,  
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!

Lucille Clifton, “homage to my hips” from Good Woman. Copyright © 1987 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Source: Good Woman (BOA Editions Ltd., 1987)
Borrowed from Poetry Foundation

Today I mark 12 weeks of re-learning to eat healthy (and love the body I am in at any weight).

My not so small victory is that I have lost 20 lbs.

I am trying to change my relationship with food ... not just that I want to eat healthier foods. I want to use food as nourishment. I want to taste my food. I want the meals that I eat to feel satisfying.

I realized not so long ago (in relationship to my time on earth), maybe ten years ago, that I was an emotional eater. I realized it while I was on a meditation retreat. Going deep into myself caused me great anxiety, and I discovered that I tried to take refuge in food. Shoveling is what I called it.

What I didn't understand at the time was that coping with anxiety was not the only time I was compelled to shovel food.  [Subsequently I shoveled when sad, angry, grieving.]

I also did not connect shoveling with feeling deeply unsatisfied. I didn't note how I could not taste the food as I shoveled.

I thought the not tasting and not feeling satisfied had to do with how fast I eat.

I don't know if I will ever master mindful eating, especially as it pertains to slowing down the eating process.

But I can now say that after eating not just healthy but really good tasting food for the last 12 weeks (mostly thanks to my amazing housemates), I notice when I feel unsatisfied and when I don't taste the food.

It has nothing to do with what I am eating and everything to do with my emotional state.

I am getting much better at noticing my emotions; and my discomfort at having to deal with so many emotions.  Noticing the food I eat, tasting the flavor, feeling satisfied and nourished, is one way that I have accomplished this.

I am still working on how to more effectively feel my emotions. That is to say, how to allow my emotions to move through me without trying to stifle them by numbing.

I am learning to notice the desire to be satisfied and how food does not bring the salve my coping mechanism had led me to believe it would.

This not so insignificant victory of shedding unnecessary weight is a leap forward on loving myself, feeding my body and soul, and treating myself in the ways that will keep me on this road to self love.

Rallying for Their Lives

[sometimes I put something in the draft folder and forget...]
I attended the March for Our Lives rally in Princeton this weekend.

Here are some of the pictures from the crowd.

I was late. After rising too early for a weekend, I had to go visit the vampires in anticipation of my yearly physical. I walked to and from the lab, racking up 3 miles before 9:30am. I was so tired, once home, I crawled back into bed to rest.

I was late. But I arrived in time to hear the last of the students giving their statements and rallying calls.

I wish I had heard them all.

They are our future ... and if these students represent the best of their generation, I am impressed.

I am hopeful.

I am grateful.

We need hope in our future right now, we need it more than anything else.

[after the rally, folks dropped their signs in front of the Panera, site of a shooting just the week before. The restaurant was closed "for remodeling" at the time. The signs were all gone the next morning, but I think this was an awesome impromptu message.]

Poetry Thursday, Women's History Month

Barter
 ~Sara Teasdale

Life has loveliness to sell,
   All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
   Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder in a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
   Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
   Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
   Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
   Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstacy
Give all you have been, or could be.

Poetry Thursday

Scaffolding
~Seamus Heaney, 1939 - 2013

Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.


For a while, I collected Nobel Laureates in literature ... ok, not collected the actual people or even their books, but their public appearances. It is something for which I will be forever indebted to Princeton. Mr. Heaney is one of them. Magical. And this poem is gorgeous.

Poetry Thursday

The Word
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Oh, a word is a gem, or a stone, or a song,
   Or a flame, or a two-edged sword;
Or a rose in bloom, or a sweet perfume,
   Or a drop of gall is a word.

You may choose your word like a connoisseur,
   And polish it up with art,
But the word that sways, and stirs, and stays,
   Is the word that comes from the heart.

You may work on your word a thousand weeks,
   But it will not glow like one
That all unsought, leaps forth white hot,
   When the fountains of feeling run.

Poetry Thursday

These Poems
~June Jordan

These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?

These words
they are stones in the water
running away

These skeletal lines
they are desperate arms for my longing and love.

I am a stranger
learning to worship the strangers
around me

whoever you are
whoever I may become.

Poetry Thursday, the journey

Rise up nimbly and
go on your strange journey
to the ocean of meanings....
Leave and don’t look away
from the sun as you go,
in whose light
you’re sometimes crescent,
sometimes full.
~Rumi.

Poetry Thursday, on gratitude

At times our own light goes out 

and is rekindled by a spark 

from another person. 

Each of us has cause to think 

with deep gratitude of those 

who have lighted the flame 

within us.

~ Albert Schweitzer

not Poetry Thursday, extra, for the trees

Epistemology
 ~Catherine Barnett
 
Mostly I’d like to feel a little less, know a little more.
Knots are on the top of my list of what I want to know.
Who was it who taught me to burn the end of the cord
to keep it from fraying?
Not the man who called my life a debacle,
a word whose sound I love.
In a debacle things are unleashed.
Roots of words are like knots I think when I read the dictionary.
I read other books, sure. Recently I learned how trees communicate,
the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing.
They don’t use words, but they can be said to love.
They might lean in one direction to leave a little extra light for another
          tree.
And I admire the way they grow right through fences, nothing
stops them, it’s called inosculation: to unite by openings, to connect
or join so as to become or make continuous, from osculare,
to provide with a mouth, from osculum, little mouth.
Sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouth
and speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches.

I have been watching the trees turn for the past few months. Every once in a while, I don't just admire from a far, but I collect. Sometimes I pick up perfect specimens and other times I pick by color or variation. Mostly I have been capturing in photo rather than collecting. But I had the idea that I would put them in my thanksgiving cards.

Some of them have now gotten so brittle, but I think I will include them anyway.

Why should leaves be perfect or retain their color or not get brittle?

I feel like there has a been a war against the leaves raging for the last week. Aggressive leaf collecting, herding, blowing. They don't rake. They ride lawn blowers. Leaf blowers. Leaf. Blowers. Seriously? 


I am lazy about yard work, it is true. But I also think if nature decided to blow the leaves off the trees that there might be a secret plan. I think the leaves should stay on the ground like a blanket. As the cold settles in, the leaves huddle together, covering the roots, keeping their trees safe.

That's what I think.

And, yes, I do name everything. Every. Thing. Every. Thing. 

Poetry Thursday, it is all about love

Love is cure. 
Love is power. 
Love is the magic 
of changes. 
Love is the mirror 
of divine beauty.
~ Rumi

Poetry Thursday

Things I Will Tell My Children About Destiny 

~Cynthia Manick

                          You remind them

             of weighted tumbleweeds,

hen-egg brown. Don’t let

                           them take the rag-

             time beneath your skin.

        It stirs earth’s curvature

and a choir

of frogs

when you enter

             or leave a room. Don’t

             leave a swallow of juice

                    or milk in the fridge.

A body grieved

is a whole new body.

             Give your shadow a name

                          big as a star, see

              yourself out loud.

Pick wild irises                          the best gifts

              roll under a ribcage, leave

              open mouths splendid.

  

I like your smile unpenned.

Keep your bird-

              song close, imagine

                     an hourglass full

                         of architects and dreamers,

the first taste of fresh

              scooped ice cream.

                         You will learn to master

                         camouflage among ordinary things—

            men who spill words

not thoughts, trigger fingers

                           ready

                           to brand loose.

  

I love your smile unpenned.

Poetry Thursday, Remembering Ben

Your heart 

and 

my heart 

are very, very 

old friends. 

~ Sufi Saying

Poetry Thursday - late entry

August

~Helen Hunt Jackson

Silence again. The glorious symphony

Hath need of pause and interval of peace.

Some subtle signal bids all sweet sounds cease,

Save hum of insects’ aimless industry.

Pathetic summer seeks by blazonry

Of color to conceal her swift decrease.

Weak subterfuge! Each mocking day doth fleece

A blossom, and lay bare her poverty.

Poor middle-agèd summer! Vain this show!

Whole fields of golden-rod cannot offset

One meadow with a single violet;

And well the singing thrush and lily know,

Spite of all artifice which her regret

Can deck in splendid guise, their time to go!

 

Poetry Thursday

Heart to Heart

Rita Dove

It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.

It doesn’t have
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—

but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.

Equanimity Practice or Practice Pleasant/Neutral

I am not completely sure that these titles are equivalent or just both apt.

Here is my equanimity practice... the one I reach for most often:
No matter how much I wish things be otherwise, things are as they are.

My practice pleasant or neutral practice: for me, it started as #findbeauty on instagram.  And it morphed into being able to walk in quiet, listening to everything that is going on around me.

It means I can hear the birds singing or the bugs buzzing.

On Sunday, it meant watching the busy bees go from flower to flower checking for nectar.  And it meant watching Raleigh (neighbor tuxedo cat) as he stalked and tried to pounce on something and then celebrating his chase with him.

I was sitting on the stairs, listening to the birds, enjoying the sunny day from a shady spot somewhat out of view.  Raleigh happened by, when I spoke to him, he started, but then went back to stalking.  When he was out of view, I decided to follow him.  I crouched with him, slowly and quietly padding behind him, letting him know that I was there so he wouldn't start.  He was watching, carefully... mindfully something in the bushes. I couldn't see it.  He was still as a statue, intent on his prey.  I was talking quietly to him, encouraging him to go ahead and pounce.  He did, and didn't catch anything, but came over to celebrate with me anyway.  He brushed up against my legs and looked up at me for encouragement. I pet him and chatted him up.  Then he went back to the bushes to look for his prey again.

In the moment, there is tremendous activity... and it can be pleasant, or neutral or unpleasant. Raleigh's insistence on being in the moment was a gift... pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, it didn't matter to him, just the moment.

For me, forcing myself to stay in the moment is the gift.  I have been wound so tight the past few months, and let's be honest, the last four years, that I have given myself precious little room to be in the moment or otherwise.

I am trying to unwind in a way that won't leave me in a puddle in the middle of the floor when next Friday hits and my schedule becomes a little lighter.

Wish me luck.

Visiting Chila

This was the first time I hiked up to Chila's resting place by myself.  I was truly alone after this sign because my phone turned itself off in dramatic fashion.

I had to focus... on the sights and sounds and smells and temperature. It was lovely. Apparently, it was the day a million moths were born. They were swarming every where.

I was so focused on sounds, I kept hearing this little click, click, click. Finally, I spied a grasshopper, looked like still in baby stage, and I watched and listened to it move its body and make the click click click. 

There were so many beautiful wildflowers blooming ... hence the swarming moths.  As I approached Chila's place, I noticed these gorgeous flowers, like a morning glory but with a dark center. 

Turns out they are called catalina mariposa lilies.  I gathered a bunch and made a bouquet for Chila.

I went up to the rock and I had planned to sit there for a bit, but the plants around the rock were super overgrown and all in bloom.  

I stood there, listening to the wind and birds and bugs, and watching the landscape. 

I thought, where is she? Is she here?

Just as I was feeling sorry for myself and thinking she wasn't here with me, a hummingbird came up to me, she was about six inches from my face. She hovered there, and I acknowledged her and eventually she flew off. 

But then as I walked down the mountain, she buzzed me.  Then she sat on a tree and looked at me. I stood two feet from her and memorized her features so I could look it up in the bird book. 

As I kept walking, she moved to the next tree, this time, she positioned herself so that she could look right at me.  Finally she flew off. 

As I pulled out of the parking lot, I noticed a hummingbird again by my car.  She followed me down, half way to Uncle Louie's house.  

She was there... and she let me know. 

When I got home where my bird book was, I looked up the hummingbird and it was a female Anna's hummingbird...[or immature male, but I am preferring to think it was a female!]  You can see some photos here and here and here.

views from the road

I was in the train, briefly, and this was as close as I got to the beach on my short trip south.

Still it was lovely! I spent as much of the hour as possible checking for whale spouts. I didn't see any, but it was fun to be able to try.

I wish I had gotten at least one long walk by the water... next time.

Instead, the only forays into the world beyond my computer were the rest stop near Gaviota.

It had the best signage I had seen in a long while.

And this view of the mountains.

Frolicking dogs need to be careful of rattler snakes... just saying.

I also took a hike to see Chila... but I will save that for another post.