April Showers Brought May Flowers...

 

 

"The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks." ~Tennessee Williams, from his 1953 play, "Camino Real".

 

 

My Skeleton Rose Pelegonium.  The leaves smell strongly of roses...

 

 

My Rose gardens are overflowing.  We've had amazingly cool weather and they're thriving.

 

 

Mr. Lincoln Rose - Makes my mouth water it smells so sweet.

 

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

 

 

 

"A profusion of pink roses bending ragged in the rain speaks to me of all gentleness and its enduring." ~The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams

 

 

xo,

Marion

 

 

Even if you think the Big Bang created the stars, don't you wonder who sent the flowers? ~Robert Brault

 

 

 

You Know Who You Are by Naomi Shihab Nye

You Know Who You Are
By Naomi Shihab Nye

Why do your poems comfort me, I ask myself.
Because they are upright, like straight-backed chairs.
I can sit in them and study the world as if it too
were simple and upright.

Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of words
and not one of them can save me.
Your poems come in like a raft, logs tied together,
they float.
I want to tell you about the afternoon
I floated on your poems
all the way from Durango Street to Broadway.

Fathers were paddling on the river with their small sons.
Three Mexican boys chased each other outside the library.
Everyone seemed to have some task, some occupation,
while I wandered uselessly in the streets I claim to love.

Suddenly I felt the precise body of your poems beneath me,
like a raft, I felt words as something portable again,
a cup, a newspaper, a pin.
Everything happening had a light around it,
not the light of Catholic miracles,
the blunt light of a Saturday afternoon.
Light in a world that rushes forward with us or without us.
I wanted to stop and gather up the blocks behind me
in this light, but it doesn’t work.
You keep walking, lifting one foot, then the other,
saying “This is what I need to remember”
and then hoping you can.

from:  "Words Under the Words" by Naomi Shihab Nye, page 22

===================

Wild Spring storms here in the swamp today.  So far, Spring has been violent as if the earth is giving birth...not an "easy" birth, but a difficult, excruciating, wildly harrowing birth. 

Today is "Poem in Your Pocket" day.  April is National Poetry Month which I don't celebrate because every single hour of every day is Poetry Day here at Casa Dragonfly. 

xo,
Marion

PS:  Congratulations to the illustrious, amazingly brilliant Sharon Olds for winning the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, 2013, for her book "Stag's Leap".

----------------------------------------

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you. ~Joseph Joubert

-----------------------------------

Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know. ~Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest

-----------------------------------

Mules of Love by Ellen Bass

One of my favorite books of poetry:  "Mules of Love" by Ellen Bass.  I've been away gardening, sprouting seeds, reading, writing and being depressed.  Not necessarily in that order.  xo

God and the G-Spot
by Ellen Bass

“He didn’t want to believe. He wanted to know.”
--Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan’s wife, on why he didn't believe in God.

I want to know too. Belief and disbelief
are a pair of tourists standing on swollen feet
in the Prado--I don't like it.
I do.--before the Picasso.

Or the tattoo artist with a silver stud
in her full red executive lips,
who, as she inked in the indigo blue, said,
I think the G-spot's one of those myths
men use to make us feel inferior.

God, the G-spot, falling in love. The earth round
and spinning, the galaxies speeding
in the glib flow of the Hubble expansion.
I'm an East Coast Jew. We all have our opinions.

But it was in the cabin at La Selva Beach
where I gave her the thirty tiny red glass hearts
I'd taken back from my husband when I left.
He'd never believed in them. She, though, scooped
them up like water, let them drip through her fingers
like someone who has so much she can afford to waste.

That's the day she reached inside me
for something I didn't think I had.
And like pulling a fat shining trout from the river
she pulled the river out of me. That's
the way I want to know God.

___________________________________

Poem to My Sex at Fifty-One
By Ellen Bass

When I wash myself in the shower
and afterward, as I am drying
with the terrycloth towel,
I love the feel
of my vulva, the plump outer lips
and the neat inner ones
that fit together trimly
as hands in prayer.  I like
the feel the slick crevice and the slight
swelling that begins
with just this casual handling.
So eager, willing as a puppy.
When I was young I could
not have imagined this
as I looked at women like me,
my waist thickened like pudding,
my rear end that once rode high
as a kite, now hanging like a
sweater left out in the rain,
skin drooping, not just the dewlaps
or pennants that flutter
under the arms, but all over,
loosening from the bone like boiled
chicken.  And it will only
get worse.  But that fleshy
plum is always cheerful.  And new.
A taut globe shining
in an old fruit tree.

From:  "Mules of Love" by Ellen Bass

------------------------------------------------

"For women the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time." ~Isabel Allende

------------------------------------------

Litany by Billy Collins

This 3 year old recites my favorite Billy Collins' poem, "Litany" from memory.  Be still my poet-heart.  You are all my bread, knives, crystal goblets and wine....xo

LITANY
By Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.   

-------------------------------------------------------------

"Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting." ~Robert Frost

-----------------------

"I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests." ~Pablo Neruda, quoted in Wall Street Journal,, 14 November 1985

----------------------



 

Before Summer Rain by Rainer Maria Rilke

"When the chickens or dogs wander away, people know enough to search for them, but when the heart wanders away, they don't.

The Way of Learning is nothing other than this: searching for the heart that has wandered away." ~Confucious

======================

BEFORE SUMMER RAIN

By Rainer Maria Rilke

From:  "The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke", page 35

 

Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
in total silence. From the nearby wood

you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,
reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
so much solitude and passion come
from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour

will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide
away from us, cautiously, as though
they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.

And reflected on the faded tapestries now;
the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid.

 

------------------------------------

 

       "Accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields...." ~Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923

 

* * * * *

 

"Isn't it time to turn your heart into a temple of fire?" ~Rumi

* * * * *

 

"The heart never becomes wrinkled." ~Marie de Rabutin-Chantal

 

* * * * *

Happy Birthday, Billy Collins!

From one of my collages. 

 

I guarantee the following poem will leave mice and matches in your head for days.  It does what a great poem should do:  mess with your head.  :-)   Here in the swamp everything is powder-yellow from the Pine pollen.  No real rain for weeks, so yellow abounds.  (It rained a tiny bit last week and left abstract yellow paintings on the concrete where the rain had washed down some of the pollen...)  My house, yard, truck, driveway, cats are all yellow.  When I walk to the mailbox, I can taste the grit of the Pine pollen.  I'm hoping today wil bring us some much-needed rain.

 

Today is also the birthday of one of my favorite authors, Louis L'Amour.  Speaking of reading, (wasn't I?) I talked to my 9 year old granddaughter yesterday for over an hour about books.  I gave her a little Kindle for Christmas with a cute pink cover.  She wears it around her arm like diamonds and never puts it down.  I gave her a gift card for her birthday on Christmas Eve to buy books and I also taught her how to download the free classics like "Little Women".  She's into the Percy Jackson series now so we had to discuss mythology and plot.  I read the books along with her so we could discuss them and I really enjoyed the stories.  Luckily, my grandson had the series and loaned them to me.  Then she related how she has to get back to the 5th Harry Potter book because her best friend is ahead of her.  She told me she's out of money to buy books, so I sent her a new gift card.  A girl must always have book money!  I'd sell all of my favorite shoes to make sure she has book money.  One must have priorities.  And what are grammy's for anyhoo?? 

 

On that note, I have to go read.  I have two new books by one of my favorite poet-bloggers, Fireblossom.

 

They both look nice and juicy:

 

 

 

Happy Spring, Happy Reading, and have a wonderful weekend. 

 

xo, Marion

 

 

THE COUNTRY

By Billy Collins

 

I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe

behind the floral wallpaper
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth?
Who could not see him rounding a corner,

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare, and the creature
for one bright, shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time—

now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.
Who could fail to notice,

lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
of what once was your house in the country?

"The Country" by Billy Collins, from Nine Horses: Poems. © Random House, 2003

Stevie's Music Holds My Youth

"Edge of Seventeen" is my favorite Stevie Nicks song.  She's an amazing poet.  Seeing Fleetwood Mac in concert several years back was an awesome experience, my favorite live concert ever.  I so enjoyed reading this interview she did with NPR recently, especially the part I excerpted about the meaning/inspiration for this song.  Inspiration is a mystical/magical thing.  Enjoy!  ~Marion

 

From Interview With Stevie Nicks by NPR at the SXSW Festival in Austin, 2013.  The entire interview is here:  http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/03/17/174494011/stevie-nicks-when-we-walk-into-the-room-we-have-to-float-in-like-goddessses

Stevie: So I get to translate my songs. And if I feel like being elegant with the song I can. And if I feel like being, you know, "Ghosts Are Gone" — really crazy rock 'n' roll, then I can go to that song. You know, "Edge Of Seventeen." It's not really elegant. It's insane.

NPR: It is insane, but it's awesome.

SN: It's an awesome song. It is. And I do it every single time I end my set, you know. But that song is about Tom Petty, it's about the death of John Lennon. It's about a lot of strange things all mushed into one song.

NPR: How is it about Petty? And also your ... was it about your grandfather dying or your father being in the hospital?

Stevie: No, my dad's older brother died a week after John Lennon. And I was there with my cousin John when he died. I mean it was like everybody else was gone, which is crazy, and we were just the only people there. And he just, he died. John Lennon died when I was in Australia. And that was a very strange thing, because I was staying right on the ocean in this hotel that I can't even remember the name of. But it's where everybody used to stay in Sydney. And on that day all of these like, they have all these black submarines. And when he died, all the black submarines came up from the green water. It was so heavy, you know. So of course we as rock and roll stars — when John Lennon was killed it was like we were all afraid.

NPR: Oh yeah, I'm sure.

Stevie: Because it was like, why would anybody do that, you know? So back to Tom Petty. I asked his wife when she met him, his first wife Jane. And she said, in her very Florida swamp accent, "I met him at about the age of 17." And I thought she said, "At the edge of 17." And I just went like, ... "Oh Jane. This is fantastic." And I just wrote it right down. And I told her, I said, "I'm going to use that in a song." I was really good friends with her, so she dug it, you know. So anyway, some of my songs end up really being [made of] pieces, you know: "And suddenly there was no one left standing in the hall." That's when my uncle died. Because there was nobody. And then "In a flood of tears that no one really ever heard fall at all. I went searching for an answer up the stairs and down the hall. And not to find an answer, but I did hear the call of the night bird." So then that sort of summarized John Lennon and my uncle.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Edge of Seventeen
By Stevie Nicks

Just like the white winged dove...
Sings a song ...
Sounds like she's singing...
Whoo...whoo...whoo
Just like the white winged dove...
Sings a song...
Sounds like she's singing...
Ooo...baby...ooo...said ooo

And the days go by....
Like a strand in the wind
In the web that is my own...
I begin again
Said to my friend, baby...
Nothin' else mattered

He was no more...than a baby then
Well he... seemed broken hearted...
Something within him
But the moment...that I first laid...
Eyes...on...him...all alone...
On the edge of...seventeen

Just like the white winged dove...
Sings a song ...
Sounds like she's singing...
Whoo...whoo...whoo
Just like the white winged dove...
Sings a song...
Sounds like she's singing...
Ooo...baby...ooo...said ooo

I went today...maybe I will go again...
Tomorrow
And the music there it was hauntingly...
Familiar
And I see you doing...
What I try to do for me
With the words from a poet...
And the voice from a choir
And a melody...nothing else mattered

Just like the white winged dove...
Sings a song ...
Sounds like she's singing...
Whoo...whoo...whoo
Just like the white winged dove...
Sings a song...
Sounds like she's singing...
Ooo...baby...ooo...said ooo

The clouds...never expect it...
When it rains
But the sea changes colours...
But the sea...
Does not change
And so...with the slow...graceful flow..
Of age
I went forth...with an age old...
Desire...to please
On the edge of...seventeen

Just like the white winged dove...
Sings a song ...
Sounds like she's singing...
Whoo...whoo...whoo
Just like the white winged dove...
Sings a song...
Sounds like she's singing...
Ooo...baby...ooo...said ooo

Well then suddenly...
There was no one...left standing
In the hall...yeah, yeah...
In a flood of tears
That no one really ever heard fall at all
Oh I went searchin' for an answer...
Up the stairs...and down the hall
Not to find an answer...
Just to hear the call
Of a nightbird...singing...
Come away...come away...

Just like the white winged dove...
Sings a song ...
Sounds like she's singing...
Whoo...whoo...whoo
Just like the white winged dove...
Sings a song...
Sounds like she's singing...
Ooo...baby...ooo...said ooo

Well I hear you in the morning...
And I hear you...
At nightfall...
Sometime to be near you...
Is to be unable...to hear you...
My love...
I'm a few years older than you...
Are (I'm a few years older than you) my love

Just like the white winged dove...
Sings a song...
Sounds like she's singing...
Ooo baby...ooo...

Moths by Eavan Boland

My favorite Moonflower and Sphinx Moth photo taken after a rain one evening in 2007 on a hot summer night.  I spent hours (days---my entire life!!) stalking this moth and got ate up by mosquitoes in the process.  And yes, 'ate up' is correct grammar in regard to mosquitoes chewing you to pieces here in the South.

 

MOTHS

By Eavan Boland

Tonight the air smells of cut grass.

Apples rust on the branches.  Already summer is
a place mislaid between expectation and memory.

This has been a summer for moths.

Their moment of truth comes well after dark.
Then they reveal themselves at our window-
ledges and sills as a pinpoint.  A glimmer.

The books I look up about them are full of legends:

ghost-swift moths with their dancing assemblies at dusk.
Their courtship swarms.  How some kinds may steer by the moon.

The moon is up.  The back windows are wide open.

Mid-July fills the neighborhood.  I stand by the hedge.

Once again they are near the windowsill---

fluttering past he fuscia and the lavender,
which is knee-high, and too blue to warn them

they will fall down without knowing how

or why what they steered by became, suddenly,
what they crackled and burned around.  They will perish---

I am perishing---on the edge and at the threshold of

the moment all nature fears and tends towards:

the stealing of the light.  Ingenious facsimile.

And the kitchen bulb which beckons them makes

my child’s shadow longer than my own.

 From:  “New Collected Poems” by Eavan Boland, pages 220, 221

 

--------------------------------------

(Thank you, dear Erin, for mentioning Eavan Boland to me not long ago.  I went and found 5 used books of her amazing poetry.  Once again, you feed me.)

---------------------------------------

In winter, rabid gardeners such as myself read seed catalogues and books about gardening.  My latest favorite gardening book is “The Evening Garden, Flowers and Fragrance from Dusk Till Dawn” by Peter Loewer.  I learned, to my surprise, that of the order Lepidoptera, to which moths and butterflies belong, there are over 11,230 species and only some 800 of these are butterflies. The rest are moths.  I have been an avid night-blooming flower grower for over 20 years (my Moonflower seeds are already planted, sprouted and have two leaves on them) and am well-acquainted with moths.  I just had no idea they outnumbered butterflies by that much.  Also, night-blooming flowers smell like heaven...they have a much stronger scent that day-blooming flowers in order to attract the moths.

Here’s the conundrum I have about loving moths, especially the gorgeous Sphinx Moth, which I especially enjoy stalking and photographing:  one of their favorite meal is tomatoes---every part of the plant.  I also grow tomatoes religiously.  So, as soon as I learned this little tidbit about tomatoes being moth caviar, I began growing some extra (is there such a thing????) tomatoes for the caterpillars to devour.  I know, crazy, right?  But I’m happy to share my bounty.  And crazy runs in my family. 

 

It's almost Spring.  Do a little happy dance and plant some flower seeds.  (I found my first packet of Moonflower seeds at Wal-Mart quite by accident.  The flowers go to seed in the fall and now I have my own supply of seeds.)  I highly recommend that you grow Moonflowers, if only to have one whiff of their scent before you die... It's sweeter than Magnolias or even Jasmine. They're a member of the Morning Glory family and do well in pots.   You just have to keep the seeds extra wet until they sprout.  I've grown them in pots and in the ground and I prefer pots.  They need part shade here in the hot South, but can do well with full sun further north.  And they need a fence or trellis to climb. 

Happy March. 

 

xo,

Marion


"To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat." ~Beverly Nichols

+++++

"Perfumes are the feelings of flowers, and as the human heart, imagining itself alone and unwatched, feels most deeply in the night-time, so seems it as if the flowers, in musing modesty, await the mantling evening....~Heinrich Heine

+++++

"The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks." ~Tennessee Williams

+++++

Goodbye February, You Had Your Moments...

...Like the sky over my house right before sunset after a storm a few days ago...

or realizing that my neighbor's tree was blooming wildly and several branches had grown to my side of the fence.

 

or that my Apple Mint had returned in the leaky, recycled watering can

 

and my Azaleas bloomed crazily this year because for once, I'd pruned them at the right time

 

and the evening I took all of these photos, a cloud began forming at earth, enveloping all it touched

 

and that full moon Saturday night through a gauzy cloud, tangled in the tree limbs.... 

Oh, February, you went out shaming me for cursing you...

 

xo,

Marion

 

 

"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night." ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

 

* * *

 

 "Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems." ~Rainer Maria Rilke

 

* * *

 

"It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!" ~Mark Twain

 

Gorgeous, blushing blooms on my old Blueberry Bush...

 

 

 

Pretty Words by Elinor Wylie

Pretty Words
By Elinor Wylie (1885 - 1929)

Poets make pets of pretty, docile words:
I love smooth words, like gold-enamelled fish
Which circle slowly with a silken swish,
And tender ones, like downy-feathered birds:
Words shy and dappled, deep-eyed deer in herds,
Come to my hand, and playful if I wish,
Or purring softly at a silver dish,
Blue Persian kittens fed on cream and curds.
I love bright words, words up and singing early;
Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing;
Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees;
I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly,
Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees,
Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.

*****************************

My own favorite pretty word is tabula rasa. 

(Tabula rasa, meaning blank slate in Latin, is the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception.)

xo,
Marion

"The day will happen whether or not you get up." ~John Ciardi