Mindful (by Mary Oliver) Everyday I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for — to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world — to instruct myself over and over …
Today is traditionally celebrated as The Bard’s birthday… so… I’ll give you a favourite of mine… Sonnet 18 (by William Shakespeare) Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no; it is an ever-fixed …
Every Morning (by Mary Oliver) I read the papers, I unfold them and examine them in the sunlight. The way the red mortars, in photographs, arc down into the neighborhoods like stars, the way death combs everything into a gray rubble before the camera moves on. What dark part of my soul shivers: you don’t …
Palm Springs (by J.V. Healy, 1939) Here the white lizards scatter over the white sand; The sun creates stillness, makes t knee-joints limp, The sullen heat gives power to prolong The furtive tenderness of a bronzed hand. There the movie actress flats in the blue pool: White is her suit, brown her skin, …
a bit of a classic today… A Psalm Of Life (by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou …
We like March, his shoes are purple (by Emily Dickinson) We like March, his shoes are purple, He is new and high; Makes he mud for dog and peddler, Makes he forest dry; Knows the adder’s tongue his coming, And begets her spot. Stands the sun so close and mighty That our minds are hot. …
Motherhood (by Medora C Addison) Playing alone by the ocean’s edge, eager and unafraid, you are the child I used to be, playing the games I played. Now I have only a cowards’ heart, finding you all too dear, learning at last that love shall teach the fearless how to fear. You are so little …
(photos from 1989… the day we left for our European adventure, I’m on the left with a giant fringe, S is on the right wearing the most awful shorts) A Time To Talk (by Robert Frost) When a friend calls to me from the road And slows his horse to a meaning walk, I don’t …
Again, Mary Oliver does it best. On Winter’s Margin (by Mary Oliver) On winter’s margin, see the small birds now With half-forged memories come flocking home To gardens famous for their charity. The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins Hang at the entrance to the silent wood. With half a loaf, I am the …
Letter Beginning with Two Lines by Czesław Miłosz (by Matthew Olzmannn) You whom I could not save, Listen to me. Can we agree Kevlar backpacks shouldn’t be needed for children walking to school? Those same children also shouldn’t require a suit of armor when standing on their front lawns, or snipers to watch their backs …
while you're ahead... 