some words

Hungry to fold these feelings inside-out, outside of myself; to weave this tangle of disillusionment into a smooth blanket of truth. Discover myself creating again. Remember that which is forgotten. Dig up my own buried heart. Shake it out and pin it to the line, in full view of the sun.

one for beth..

poem by Wendell Berry, from Given

(VI)

By expenditure of hope,
Intelligence, and work,
You think you have it fixed.
It is unfixed by rule.
Within the darkness, all
Is being changed, and you
Also will be changed.

Now I recall to mind
A costly year: Jane Kenyon,
Bill Lippert, Philip Sherrard,
All in the same spring dead,
So much companionship
Gone as the river goes.

And my good workhorse Nick
Dead, who called out to me
In his conclusive pain
To ask my help. I had
No help to give. And flood
Covered the cropland twice.
By summer's end there are
No more perfect leaves.

But won't you be ashamed
To count the passing year
At its mere cost, your debt
Inevitably paid?
For every year is costly,
As you know well. Nothing
Is given that is not
Taken, and nothing taken
That was not first a gift.

The gift is balanced by
Its total loss, and yet,
And yet the light breaks in,
Heaven seizing its moments
That are at once its own
And yours. The day ends
And is unending where
The summer tanager,
Warbler, and vireo
Sing as they move among
Illuminated leaves.

My two favorite inspirational poems...

The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?


When I Am Among the Trees, by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

tagged

okay okay. there's no way out....

1.Post the rules on your blog
2.Write 6 random things about yourself
3.Tag 6 people at the end of your post
4.If you are tagged, just do it, and pass the tag along!

1) every time chris is gone overnight, i have this urge to creep in and sleep on the floor in odin's room... though so far i haven't done it. and it's funny that i could be lonely so soon, because i was recently pining for the days when i lived alone and had my whole life to myself! ha.

2) i am so addicted to molasses cookies, that today at coffee cat I saw they had two... and i resisted. but then when a lady bought one, so that only one was left, well i just had to buy it because even if i didn't want to eat it right then, you never know when your next opportunity will come! maybe i won't see another perfectly chewy, gingery molasses cookie for six months!! it could happen....

3) Eminem "Lose Yourself": i have to agree with lisa, that there is something profound and emotional in that song, even if i'm embarrassed to admit it. lately that's my go-to when i feel insecure and incapable. oddly, it's very uplifting for me. like a motivational speaker... and a punching bag, in one!

4) i am such a geek, that while pondering another random thing to write about, i caught myself subconsciously analyzing the line breaks OF THE TAG RULES LISTED ABOVE. (how nicely they cascade to the right, don't you think?)

5) i love hymns. i fear that technology is very bad. i am painfully, awkwardly old-fashioned in many many ways. i think i was born in the wrong century. which makes my marriage to computer-monkey highly ironic.

6) I also spend way more time feeling guilty about not writing, than actually writing. so, michael, you're not crazy. or, if we're both crazy, at least you're not the only one!

Tag:
i am completely honest when I say, i don't know six people who have a blog AND haven't already done this tag. (that tells you something else about my social life, huh?)

why I'm deleting things

sorry folks; I just realized that posting my poetry online may inhibit me from actually publishing down the road. duh. guess i shoulda known. anyway, i will be redirecting my focus but not abandoning the blog. that's all for now....

for the girls...

I didn’t write this, but it made me smile so thought I’d share.

WHAT YOU WANT
by Barbara Crooker

is more than refrigerator art,
more than making sack lunches.
You want a bad boy for a lover,
one who'd make a lousy husband, a wanderer
on a Harley, and you with a mini-van.
What you want has high cholesterol,
lots of sodium, and no fiber; no 7 grain
sprouted hearth-baked added-oat-bran.
Bring on the heavy cream.
What you want comes in five flavors,
and all of them are chocolate;
milk, mocha, alpine white, semi-, bittersweet.
What you want never goes on sale,
or, if it does, by appointment only,
5th Tuesday, dark of the moon, Scorpio rising.
Is never found at garage sales.
What you want
would feel so good on your skin
you'd never wear clothes again.
What you want is not found
at K-Mart, naked in the blue light.
What you want isn't canned by Campbell's
or baked by elves; it must be flown in from Rome
or brought from Alaska by dog sled.
What you want isn't played on AM radio,
borrowed from public libraries.
Isn't found in Webster's or Roget's.
Never gives double-coupons, green stamps, rebates
or money-back guarantees;
gains no interest, gathers no moss.