Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Courage by Anne Sexton and Flower Miracles

Poem: "Courage," by Anne Sexton, from The Awful Rowing Toward God

Courage

It is in the small things we see it.
The child’s first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off our heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you’ll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you’ll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.

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

      This exact flower was yellow yesterday...a miracle in the rain.

Angel Trumpets (Brugmansia) yesterday. They need fertile soil to bloom. I use sea kelp.

  Godlight, shining within the flower...NO SMALL THING!




Friday, April 22, 2016

Earth Day, Every Day!

After ten days of clouds and rain, the sun came out today and the flowers bloomed with joy.  It's a certain kind of Eden, for sure... xo

A CERTAIN KIND OF EDEN

By Kay Ryan

It seems like you could, but
you can’t go back and pull
the roots and runners and replant.
It’s all too deep for that.
You’ve overprized intention,
have mistaken any bent you’re given
for control. You thought you chose
the bean and chose the soil.
You even thought you abandoned
one or two gardens. But those things
keep growing where we put them—
if we put them at all.
A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall.
Even the one vine that tendrils out alone
in time turns on its own impulse,
twisting back down its upward course
a strong and then a stronger rope,
the greenest saddest strongest
kind of hope.


Kay Ryan, "A Certain Kind of Eden" from Flamingo Watching.



      Angel Trumpet bloomed today...Earth Day 2016!

          Passionflowers...Indigo blooming...

       Wild Blackberries preparing to be jam...

       A wasp friend eating a bad bug & pollinating...

                         Hello, blue sky!!!





Saturday, April 16, 2016

I Grew Her Under My Heart...

      My gorgeous baby girl and her sweet husband going to a party.

THE SPIRIT IS TOO BLUNT AN INSTRUMENT

By Anne Stevenson


The spirit is too blunt an instrument 
to have made this baby. 
Nothing so unskilful as human passions 
could have managed the intricate 
exacting particulars: the tiny 
blind bones with their manipulating tendons, 
the knee and the knucklebones, the resilient 
fine meshings of ganglia and vertebrae, 
the chain of the difficult spine. 

Observe the distinct eyelashes and sharp crescent 
fingernails, the shell-like complexity 
of the ear, with its firm involutions 
concentric in miniature to minute 
ossicles. Imagine the 
infinitesimal capillaries, the flawless connections 
of the lungs, the invisible neural filaments 
through which the completed body 
already answers to the brain. 

Then name any passion or sentiment 
possessed of the simplest accuracy. 
No, no desire or affection could have done 
with practice what habit 
has done perfectly, indifferently, 
through the body's ignorant precision. 
It is left to the vagaries of the mind to invent 
love and despair and anxiety 
and their pain.


Anne Stevenson, "The Spirit is Too Blunt an Instrument" from Poems 1955-2005

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Rock Me, Mercy by Yusef Komunyakaa

Rock Me, Mercy

BY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA
The river stones are listening
because we have something to say.
The trees lean closer today.
The singing in the electrical woods
has gone dumb. It looks like rain
because it is too warm to snow.
Guardian angels, wherever you're hiding,
we know you can't be everywhere at once.
Have you corralled all the pretty wild
horses? The memory of ants asleep
in daylilies, roses, holly, & larkspur.
The magpies gaze at us, still
waiting. River stones are listening.
But all we can say now is,
Mercy, please, rock me.

Yusef Komunyakaa, "Rock Me, Mercy" from The Emperor of Water


    
    My favorite tea cup that I found at Etsy.  So pretty!

    After two rainy days, my Roses are wildly blooming!

       Nothing on earth is as beautiful as a red Rose...

                 This is a Knockout Rose...nowhere near as pretty as a regular Rose.

                                        Brilliant yellow Squash blossom...

         Sunflower painting by my husband.

             Five Moonflowers, ready for planting.







Sunday, April 10, 2016

How to Kill a Living Thing by Eibhlín Nic Eochaidh

                        Moonflower seeds sprouting in a sunny window---

How to Kill a Living Thing

Neglect it
Criticize it to its face
Say how it kills the light
Traps all the rubbish
Bores you with its green

Continually
Harden your heart
Then
Cut it down close
To the root as possible

Forget it
For a week or a month
Return with an axe
Split it with one blow
Insert a stone

To keep the wound wide open.

—Eibhlín Nic Eochaidh

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Spring by Edna St. Vincent Millay




SPRING

By Edna St. Vincent Millay


To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.









Saturday, April 2, 2016

Flowers Paint the Sky...

                                                God, the greatest Artist & Poet...

                                                     A Rose is a Rose is a Rose.