Thursday, March 22, 2012

Lost by David Wagoner

I looked across the street to take a photo of the forest and this Blue Jay jumped into the shot.


Lost
By David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
and you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you must come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
where you are. You must let it find you.


My Blythe dolls, P. J. and Annie Marie, enjoying the Spring weather.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Gravity by Andrea Gibson

"The Madness Vase" by Andrea Gibson

I have most of Ms. Gibson's books on CD as she's such an incredible slam poet, but this one is amazing in print, and I think this is her best book yet.  'Gravity' is my favorite short poem in the book.

Gravity
By Andrea Gibson

We wear our traumas
the way the guillotine
wears gravity.

Our lovers' necks
are so soft.

From:  "The Madness Vase"

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Spring is in full swing here in the swamp at Casa Dragonfly.  Winter forgot us completely this year.  Now if only spring fever will kick my ass in gear.   I hope wherever you are, you're enjoying beautiful weather.  Time for me to go and hang my Hummingbird feeders now.   Take care....

Love & Hugs,
Marion

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"Springtime is the land awakening.  The March winds are the morning yawn."  ~Quoted by Lewis Grizzard in Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You

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

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Saturday, March 10, 2012

The Big Heart by Anne Sexton

A tree that wears its hearts like leaves....

(Thank you, Annie, for sending me this poem a few moons back on the beautiful scroll.)  


THE BIG HEART
By Anne Sexton

"Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold."  ~From an essay by W. B. Yeats

Big heart,
wide as a watermelon,
but wise as birth,
there is so much abundance
in the people I have:
Max, Lois, Joe, Louise,
Joan, Marie, Dawn,
Arlene, Father Dunne,
and all in their short lives
give to me repeatedly,
in the way the sea
places its many fingers on the shore,
again and again
and they know me,
they help me unravel,
they listen with ears made of conch shells,
they speak back with the wine of the best region.
They are my staff.
They comfort me.

They hear how
the artery of my soul has been severed
and soul is spurting out upon them,
bleeding on them,
messing up their clothes,
dirtying their shoes.
And God is filling me,
though there are times of doubt
as hollow as the Grand Canyon,
still God is filling me.
He is giving me the thoughts of dogs,
the spider in its intricate web,
the sun
in all its amazement,
and a slain ram
that is the glory,
the mystery of great cost,
and my heart,
which is very big,
I promise it is very large,
a monster of sorts,
takes it all in--
all in comes the fury of love.

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"Birth is nothing but death begun......"  ~Stephen King, The Dark Tower VII, page 588

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My 7 year old granddaughter, Mary Mace, calls me almost every night.  As she says, 'We have a LOT in common . . . We both love dolls and fairies and have big imaginations.'  She's the light of my life.

Mary Mace:  Grammy, are you a crazy cat lady?
Me:  No, Mary, you have to have 20 cats to be a crazy cat lady and I only have six."
Mary Mace:  Oh, okay!!

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

"A child needs a grandparent, anybody's grandparent, to grow a little more securely into an unfamiliar world." ~Charles and Ann Morse

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Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Mam, Me and Mary by Marion

Our Lady of Guadalupe in my yard surrounded by wild berry blooms and Apple Mint.

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

This is a repost from my old blog.  I wanted it here with my other Mam poems.  Please excuse the rerun.  

I saw my first dragonfly of the year today, 2 weeks before spring offically arrives.  Happy, happy, joy, joy!  We put up 4 Bluebird houses last week and four little Bluebird families have moved it.  More joy! 

xo,
Marion

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

M'am, Me & Mary
by Marion

M'am & me lived on a
old houseboat barge
deep in the Atchafalaya swamp.
She made a livin’ sewing
counterfeit voodoo dolls
and sellin’ ‘em to a lady
what had a shop down in
the Quarter in
N’Orleans. I helped her some
by collectin’ & stitchin’
on the Spanish moss hair
and she’d pay me by lettin’
me take off into the swamp all
by my lonesome with my
beat-up copy of
Gone With the Wind.

I’d find me a dry
hidey hole & sit, read &
dream I was
Miss Scarlet kissing that old
scoundrel, Rhett Butler.
I never got tired of him.

In the corner of our barge,
were a statue of Mother Mary
with dollar store candles
in blue mason jars
all ‘round her. She shore was
purty at night. It was like
fireflies worshipping @ her
ever-young feet. M'am says that
the only god worth her gumption
was precious Mary.

She’d clarify, between puffs and fancy exhales
of her Pall Mall filterless ciggies,
“Sweet Lord, but givin’ birth
ain’t hard enough, like squeezing
a GD watermelon out your arsehole
but the Blessed Mother
did it as a virgin.
Shit, I know it ruint her
for sex ever after."

I sure miss M'am. Them
damned Pall Malls kilt her
way before her time.


---------------------------------
 
"Come voyeur my poems

Feel free, I feel free."

~Carrie Latet

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"A bird does not sing because it has an answer.  It sings because it has a song."  ~Chinese Proverb
 
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Sunday, March 4, 2012

In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver

Hodges Gardens State Park last Spring


I love this poem the way I love my very own life.

xoxo,

 ~Marion

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

In Blackwater Woods
By Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

From:  "American Primitive" by Mary Oliver, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry



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"Imaginary gardens with real toads in them." ~Marianne Moore's definition of poetry, "Poetry," Collected Poems, 1951
 
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To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee.

~Emily Dickinson


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There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing. ~John Cage

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Saturday, March 3, 2012

The Naming of Cats by T. S. Eliot


I have 6 cats and I know they party at night while we're asleep.  You have to own a cat to fully understand this strange phenomenon.  Cats are wild & crazy people in little fur suits.  :-)


"Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" by T. S. Eliot is my favorite book of cat poetry.  The illustrations are pretty awesome, too.  Did you know that this book (which Mr. Eliot wrote for his godchildren in the 1930's) inspired the Broadway musical Cats?  Indeed! 

This is one of my favorite poems in the book:

The Naming of Cats
By T. S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Fabulous New Book By Jeanette Winterson


I've read all of Ms. Winterson's books and was extremely happy to get an advance reader's copy of this, her new memoir, which comes out March 6.  I highly recommend everything she's written.  

Here's her web page with a listing and description of all of her books:  http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/books.asp

HAPPY MARCH!!!!!

xoxo,
Marion

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The Freedom of the Moon
By Robert Frost

I’ve tried the new moon tilted in the air
above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster
as you might try a jewel in your hair.
I’ve tried it fine with little breadth of luster,
alone, or in one ornament combining
with one first water-star almost as shining.

I put it shining anywhere I please.
by walking slowly on some evening later
I’ve pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,
and brought it over glossy water, greater,
and dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,
the color run, all sorts of wonder follow.