Flowers, Poetry of Mother Earth

Tiny, new Pink Knockout Rose wet with the morning dew.

The first burst of yellow in the form of my showy Yellow Canna, first Canna to bloom this year. I also have red ones and peach ones. They're very easy to grow and spread like wildfire.

My daughter and I love magnetic poetry. I gave her a small nature set and this is a 12 year old boy's idea of what to do with magnetic poetry----make a robot monster, of course! We don't all think alike or create alike, thank God! I respect the individuality in all people.

My first red rose from one of six bushes that my sweet husband bought for me this year. It's called "Oklahoma" and is an everyblooming hybrid tea rose with large, fragrant red blooms. We had a small shower and the rose was still rain-kissed when I took her photograph. Isn't she beautiful?

Blessings and Love,

~Marion

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars. ~Martin Luther

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are. ~Osho

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.... People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982

Monday's Extraordinary Poet: Grace Cavalieri

I can't recall how I discovered the amazing Ms. Cavalieri, but I was half-assed cleaning my office desk last night in a futile attempt to get organized and I found a crumpled, worn copy of her poem, "The Protest" that I had printed out to read and re-read. I read it through yet again and remembered how profoundly it affected me, having grown up surrounded by alcoholics---then I related the first poem to the many wasted years of painful 'not creating' that I went through when someone cruelly dissed my poetry. That's what I love about poetry. It feeds your heart just the way YOU need it to. I'm feeling blah today but thought this poem wanted to be here, so here it is along with a sister-poem by this profoundly talented poet.

Blessings from Marion on this cloudy, dreary, warm day in swampy Louisiana.......



"Grace Cavalieri, born in 1932, is the author of 14 books of poetry and 20 staged plays. She's produced "The Poet and the Poem" on public radio, which entered its 30th year in 2007, now from the Library of Congress. Grace holds the Allen Ginsberg Award for Poetry, the Pen Fiction Award for story, and the CPB Silver Medal for Broadcasting."




YOU CAN'T START THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY UNTIL YOU HAVE A BROKEN HEART


By Grace Cavalieri

Take the edge of the past,
not the whole
just the edge,
the way the art teacher
said You Blink Too Much,
the way the English teacher said
Your Father Must Have Written This-
It's Too Good . . .
This must be why
God started talking to me
in my own voice with
thoughts of
consequence and
ideas I never knew,
in my own voice,
even though I thought
a better one surely
should be found,
and certainly could be found-
It sounded at first
like a fiery sun
and a silk moon
spinning through me,
in tongues
and languages
I finally understood
but fast- so fast-
by the time I got the pen
it was gone.



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




THE PROTEST


By Grace Cavalieri

I was supposed to make a five minute speech
so l took a tranquilizer
but the speech was cancelled,


I was to give another speech but
this too was cancelled,


As you can imagine, I stayed
tranquilized my whole life without speaking,


When the fire and blood came up
in thin spouts through
the kitchen floor
I called the manager
but it is never his fault
if we are speechless and in exile,


He said the problem in the floor
comes from being too emotional,


I had another chance to speak once
but the mashed potatoes lay thick
on my tongue and my indignation
sounded less than noble,


All the audience learned that night
is how anger sounds
through mashed potatoes,


"The physical is spiritual"
I said hotly, but
other people's impressions
had already brushed off on me,


By the time the audience left
I was a widow in a nightgown
and I had not told what
I'd come here to say.



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Grace Cavalieri's Poetry:


Anna Nicole : poems (CreateSpace, 2008).

Bliss (H. Roberts Publishing, 1986).

Body fluids (Bunny and the Crocodile Press, 1976).

Cuffed frays and other works (Argonne Press, 2001).

Greatest hits, 1975-2000 (Pudding House Press, 2002).

Heart on a leash (Red Dragon Press, 1998).

Migrations : poems with Mary Ellen Long (Book Distribution, In Support, 1995).

Pinecrest rest haven (Word Works, 1998).

Sit down, says love (Argonne Hotel Press, 1999).

Stealthy days (with Robert Sargent and Grace Cavalieri) (Forest Woods Media, 1998).

Swan research (Word Works, 1979).

Trenton (Belle Mead Press, 1990).

Water on the sun: Acqua sul sole (translated by Maria Enrico) (Bordighera, Inc., 2006).

What I would do for love (Jacaranda Press, 2004.

Why I cannot take a lover (Washington Writers Publishing House, 1975).

Poet, Li Po, Master of Imaginary Landscapes

I think it was Dr. Bloom, an Internet friend of mine (one of my many "imaginary friends" as my children and husband call them), who turned me on to the magnificently eloquent, but wine-loving, Li-Po. Either that or I stumbled across his writings in my study of the Tao. Either way, I'm so glad to have found him and his beautiful, inspiring "imaginary landscapes". Enjoy! ~~Marion, enjoying Saturday

Here's a bit of a bio to introduce you to the honorable Mr. Po: "Li Po was born in what is now Sichuan Province. At 19 he left home and lived with a Taoist hermit. After a time of wandering, he married and lived with his wife's family. Then he lived briefly as a poet at the Tang court in Chang'an. He decided to return to a life of Taoist study and poetry writing.

During his wanderings in 744 he met Tu Fu, another famous poet of the period. In 756Li Po became an unofficial poet laureate to Prince Lin. The prince was soon accused of intending to set up an independent kingdom and was executed. Li Po was arrested and imprisoned, but a high official looked into Li Po's case. The high official had Li Po released and made him a staff secretary. In the summer of 758, the charges were revived. Li Po was banished to Yeh-lang.

Li Po frequently celebrated the joy of drinking. According to legend, Li Po drowned while drunkenly leaning from a boat to embrace the moon's reflection on the water. Most scholars believe he died from cirrhosis of the liver or from mercury poisoning due to Taoist longevity elixirs.

Most of Li Po's works are lost, but almost 2000 poems were collected in 1080. Li Po is best known for his pieces describing voyages through imaginary landscapes. He prefers older poetic forms such as songs or ballads. Some themes expressed in Li Po's works are the sorrows of those separated by the demands of duty and the relief found in wine. He also wrote about friendship, solitude, the passage of time, and the joys of nature." ---from famouspoetsandpoems.com


DRINKING ALONE
BY Li-Po

I take my wine jug out among the flowers
to drink alone, without friends.

I raise my cup to entice the moon.
That, and my shadow, makes us three.

But the moon doesn't drink,
and my shadow silently follows.

I will travel with moon and shadow,
happy to the end of spring.

When I sing, the moon dances.
When I dance, my shadow dances, too.

We share life's joys when sober.
Drunk, each goes a separate way.

Constant friends, although we wander,
we'll meet again in the Milky Way.

Li T'ai-po

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

PARTING AT A WINE SHOP IN NAN-KING

A wind, bringing willow-cotton, sweetens the shop,
And a girl from Wu, pouring wine, urges me to share it.
With my comrades of the city who are here to see me off;
And as each of them drains his cup, I say to him in parting,
Oh, go and ask this river running to the east
If it can travel farther than a friend's love!

Li Po

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

GOOD OLD MOON


When I was a boy I called the moon a
white plate of jade, sometimes it looked
like a great mirror hanging in the sky,
first came the two legs of the fairy
and the cassia tree, but for whom the rabbit
kept on pounding medical herbs, I
just could not guess. Now the moon is being
swallowed by the toad and the light
flickers out leaving darkness all around;
I hear that when nine of the burning suns out
of the ten were ordered to be shot down by
the Emperor Yao, all has since been quiet
and peaceful both for heaven and man,
but this eating up of the moon is for me
a truly ugly scene filling me with forebodings
wondering what will come out of it.

Li Po

Katie Wirsing, Poet with Soul

My Mentor, Edna St. Vincent Millay

I had to devote an entire post to the poet who gave me the gift of poetry, Edna St. Vincent Millay. If you've ever loved even one of her poems, then I recommend the amazing, moving biography, "Savage Beauty" by Nancy Milford. I read it once, then turned around and read it again. It broke my heart to learn of the harshness of Ms. Millay's later life and the pain she suffered. (But as it broke my heart, I also felt a kinship with her at the same time). Her free spirit enthralled me as did her wild life. It's most definitely NOT one of those dull and boring biographies, but reads more like a fascinating, riveting novel. I came away from it with a fresh admiration for both her and her amazing poetry. She lived her life as few women have before her or since.

I share below a few of my favorite poems which I first read almost 40 years ago. They're as fresh and inspiring to me today as they were then.

Blessings & Love,

~*~Marion~*~

You can find the enitre poem, Renascence, here: http://www.bartleby.com/131/1.html

RENASCENCE (First and Last Stanzas)

ALL I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;

And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

GOD'S WORLD

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!

Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!

Thy mists that roll and rise!

Thy woods this autumn day, that ache and sag

And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag

To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!

World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,

But never knew I this;

Here such a passion is

As stretcheth me apart, -- Lord, I do fear

Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;

My soul is all but out of me, -- let fall

No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

SPRING

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Celebrate Mother Earth Today with Poet, Mary Oliver

I had to post a poem by poet Mary Oliver today because she is so eloquent at describing the majestic beauty of the Earth. In my opinion, she has no equal when writing about the magnificance of Mother Earth.

Plant a flower today, or at least look out your window and thank a tree for it's wonderful shade.

Blessings, ~~~Marion


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


MORNING POEM

Every morning
the world
is created. Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies. If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere. And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---
there is still somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly, every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

Mary Oliver

Poets David Whyte, Anne Michaels & Others...

The book of poems shown is one of my favorite anthologies. If you're new to poetry, then anthologies are the way to go because they're like having a sumptuous feast of poems instead of just a meager snack. I highly recommend the poetry books of both David Whyte and Anne Michaels. I own several by both poets and they're amazing! I have the audio CD, "Midlife and the Great Unknown" by David Whyte and I listen to it often. He has a beautiful, soothing voice and to hear him read his own shimmering, healing poetry is like a waking dream.

I've chosen a few poems that are not in this book, but most are from "Staying Alive, Real Poems for Unreal Times". The quotes below are also from the book. ENJOY!!!!!!!

"Poetry has to do with the non-rational parts of man. For a poet, a human being is a mystery . . . this is a religious feeling." ---Czeslaw Milosz

"Poetry is what makes the invisible appear." ---Nathalie Sarraute


"If I knew where poems came from, I'd go there." Michael Longley

"Spend the day with yourself
Let nothing distress you
A person emerges so young and so old
You can't know how long it has lived in you." ---Sophia De Mello Breyner, "Day"


"Poetry can tell us what human beings are. In can tell us why we stumble and fall and how, miraculously, we can stand up." ---Maya Angelou

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Because the moon feels loved, she lets our eyes
follow her across the field, stepping
from her clothes, strewn silk
glinting in furrows. Feeling loved, the moon loves
to be looked at . . .

Her sister, memory, browses the closet
for clothes carrying someone's shape.
She wipes her hands on an apron
stained with childhood.

From: “Skin Divers” by Anne Michaels


<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<


The Lightest Touch

Good poetry begins with
the lightest touch,
a breeze arriving from nowhere,
a whispered healing arrival,
a word in your ear,
a settling into things,
then like a hand in the dark
it arrests the whole body,
steeling you for revelation.
In the silence that follows a great line
you can feel Lazarus
deep inside
even the laziest, most deathly afraid
part of you,
lift up his hands and walk toward the light.

-- David Whyte, from Everything is Waiting for You


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


"i shall paint my nails red"

by carole satyamurti

because a bit of a color is a public service
because I am proud of my hands.
because it will remind me I'm a woman.
because I will look like a survivor.
because I can admire them in traffic jams
because my daughter will say ugh.
because my lover will be surprised.
because it is quicker than dying my hair.
because it is a ten-minute moratorium.
because it is reversible.



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


The Opening of Eyes

That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.

　　-- David Whyte, from Songs for Coming Home



@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
　

“There are nights in the forest of words
when I panic, every step into thicker darkness,
the only way out to write myself into a clearing,
which is silence.” ---From, “What the Light Teaches” by Anne Michaels



#################################################

Lost

Stand still.
The trees ahead and the 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 may 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.



---An old Native American elder story rendered into modern English by David Whyte



<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>



What to Remember When Waking


In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

---David Whyte

Moody Monday Poems: Sharon Olds and More Dorianne Laux

I went into the living room yesterday to peruse my poetry books and look what I found: FAIRIES!!! I guess they're poetry fairies since they were playing in the poems.......

I can't get enough of the poetry of the down-to-earth Madam of Poetry, Sharon Olds.

The Promise
by Sharon Olds

With the second drink, at the restaurant,

holding hands on the bare table,

we are at it again, renewing our promise

to kill each other. You are drinking gin,

night-blue juniper berry

dissolving in your body, I am drinking Fumé,

chewing its fragrant dirt and smoke, we are

taking on earth, we are part soil already,

and wherever we are, we are also in our

bed, fitted, naked, closely

along each other, half passed out,

after love, drifting back

and forth across the border of consciousness,

our bodies buoyant, clasped. Your hand

tightens on the table. You’re a little afraid

I’ll chicken out. What you do not want

is to lie in a hospital bed for a year

after a stroke, without being able

to think or die, you do not want

to be tied to a chair like your prim grandmother,

cursing. The room is dim around us,

ivory globes, pink curtains

bound at the waist—and outside,

a weightless, luminous, lifted-up

summer twilight. I tell you you do not

know me if you think I will not

kill you. Think how we have floated together

eye to eye, nipple to nipple,

sex to sex, the halves of a creature

drifting up to the lip of matter

and over it—you know me from the bright, blood-

flecked delivery room, if a lion

had you in its jaws I would attack it, if the ropes

binding your soul are your own wrists, I will cut them.

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

Blessings for a Happy Week!

~*~Marion~*~

Oops, I found another one! Kelly, you'll appreciate the puzzle in this poem by Dorianne Laux:

Break

By Dorianne Laux

We put the puzzle together piece

by piece, loving how one curved

notch fits so sweetly with another.

A yellow smudge becomes

the brush of a broom, and two blue arms

fill in the last of the sky.

We patch together porch swings and autumn

trees, matching gold to gold. We hold

the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair

of brown shoes. We do this as the child

circles her room, impatient

with her blossoming, tired

of the neat house, the made bed,

the good food. We let her brood

as we shuffle through the pieces,

setting each one into place with a satisfied

tap, our backs turned for a few hours

to a world that is crumbling, a sky

that is falling, the pieces

we are required to return to.

from Awake, 2001 University of Arkansas Press

T. S., I Love You! Poet, T. S. Eliot & Ms. Mahvash Mossaed

It was a dark and stormy Sunday morning......LOL! I couldn't resist the photo of my busy kitchen window with all of my blue glass bottles, my blue origami bird Taylor made me years ago and my plants in it this morning. We had flooding last night, rivers of rain ran through the back yard. Only a little bit came into the back bedroom, but I was prepared for it with a stack of old towels. It's still dark and cloudy out. A perfect Sunday for reading. I found a book at the libary and couldn't resist the title, "Jane Austen Ruined My Life", so that's what I'm reading today. Its a romance, a good escapist read. I have some more new books to tell y'all about tomorrow. It's thundering out so I'm typing as fast as I can. I turn everything off during storms!!!

I ran across an old Yahoo blog entry I saved about how I acquired my first T. S. Eliot book of poems and decided to post it today on this dark, dreary Sunday. He's one to read on a day just like this. I know this poem is long, but it's worth the trip. Here's where you can find the poem in it's entirety:

http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

In a seriously heady bout of synchronicity a few years ago, I acquired a copy of T. S. Eliot's "Collected Poems, 1909 - 1935" at a book sale. It's worn and tattered (a 1958 paperback edition printed in Great Britain) and dog-eared. I had never really read T. S. Eliot that I could recall, but I have a habit of picking up any and every book of poetry I find at book sales or rummage sales, so I scooped it up for 50 cents. I got home and sat down to read it.

Inside the front cover in blue ink was written, George Lang, Glasgow, Scotland, August 13, 1959 in a shaky cursive, old man's scrawl. This intrigued me. I thumbed through the book and found small passages that Mr. Lang had underlined, "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons," from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "I, an old man, a dull head among windy spaces," from the poem, "Gerontion". There are five or six more such passages and I began to feel as if I knew Mr. Lang's sad state of mind as he read Mr. Eliot's poems.

In the center of the book I found a train ticket stub dated August 13 which he had apparently been using as a book mark. More intrigue!!! A veritable mystery. I keep that book with me at all times and read it often and wonder about the mysterious Mr. Lang, and how in the world his treasured little book of poetry ended up in my hands in central Louisiana, of all places. The fog imagery in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is some of the best I've read ever.

A few weeks later, I was again haunting the weekly library book sale and this time found a cassette tape of Mr. Eliot reading the very poems in the book I had so recently acquired! It's magnificent to hear a poet reading his own works. It put me back all of one dollar. I was listening to it in my truck as I drove to work one day thinking. , "I'll bet there's not another human being within 50 miles who reads OR listens to T. S. Eliot."

Here's an excerpt from my favorite Eliot poem:

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
By T. S. Eliot


"LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo. . . . "

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

Wishing you love, health and happiness on this perfect Sunday morning,

~*~Marion~*~

"Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away." ~Carl Sandburg, Poetry Considered

PS:

Oh, dear, I found another poem I wanted to share today! LOL! Here it is from the amazing book, "My Painted Dreams" by Ms. Mahvash Mossaed, who is an amazing poet and artist. Check out her web site too!

http://www.mahvashmossaed.com/book/index.html


IN THE FIELDS OF TIME
By Mahvash Mossaed

Walking on an eggshell,
With a piece of cloud on a string as my kite.
I am going nowhere, lost in the fields of time.
Running around, looking for a good wind.

I have a body which will not last me long.
I have a soul which wants to come out and fly.
And I know when I go back where I came from,
When I go back home, God will be there waiting for me.

But for now I will fly my soul like a piece of a cloud,
Or like a kite,While I am running around in the fields of time.

I Introduce to You the Amazing Poet, Naomi Shihab Nye

Today I introduce you to another of my favorite poets, Ms. Naomi Shihab Nye, and I share one of her poems, "Some Days". I have all of her books and her poetry is amazing, just like her! Here is a short bio about her:

"Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet and songwriter born in 1952 to a Palestinian father and American mother. She grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas. Both roots and sense of place are major themes in her body of work. Her first collection of poems, Different Ways to Pray, explored the theme of similarities and differences between cultures, which would become one of her lifelong areas of focus.



Her other books include poetry collections 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, Red Suitcase, and Fuel; a collection of essays entitled Never in a Hurry; a young-adult novel called Habibi (the autobiographical story of an Arab-American teenager who moves to Jerusalem in the 1970s) and picture book Lullaby Raft, which is also the title of one of her two albums of music. (The other is called Rutabaga-Roo; both were limited-edition.)


Nye has edited many anthologies of poems, for audiences both young and old. One of the best-known is This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from around the World, which contains translated work by 129 poets from 68 different countries. Her most recent anthology is called Is This Forever, Or What?: Poems & Paintings from Texas."





SOME DAYS


By Naomi Shihab Nye


Your handwriting stands
like a small forest on the page
You could enter it anywhere

Your rooms look new to you
maybe you moved a lamp
stretched a swatch of white gauze
across a window

Single stick of incense
waiting

Remember when you wrote:
I devote myself to short sentences

Air answers
Breath remembers

A streak of light
signs the floor

You missed it

Do you know its name yet?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>







I thought I was alone as I walked around the yard today until I looked down and saw the tiny footprints of what looks like a Raccoon next to mine. A ghost friend!!

As I walked barefoot in the wet grass and squishy mud this morning, I heard the flowers, fruit and foliage laughing loudly, happily discussing last night's refreshing storm. The blueberries above seemed to laugh the loudest!

This is the front of a hardback journal I collaged late last night as I sat listening to a storm raging outside my little office. I never put my pictures together ahead of time. I just let them choose where they want to go and somehow, they always seem to blend.

A haiku I just composed for my beautiful, shy rose:

My shy yellow rose
Waited for a stormy night
To open her heart

Sometimes the entire world is wrong, like about thinking OUTSIDE the box. At times, it feels much safer to think the other way, as I've stated on this decoupaged, painted tin I made.

Wishing you a nice, rainy Spring Saturday to read, relax and create.

Don't worry, be happy. :-O

Blessings,

~*~Marion ~*~

PS: I just found this little poem typed on an old note card, tucked away in a book of poetry I was perusing. It wanted to be here today so I add it to this post:

A MIND POET

A mind poet
stays in the house.

The house is empty

and it has no walls.

The Poem

is seen from all sides,

everywhere
at once.

Gary Snyder

Favorite Poem Friday - Wishes for Sons & To My Last Period by Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton is by far one of the best poets on earth. It's like she looks into the soul of woman and takes notes and turns them into perfect poems that express the inexpressable. I highly recommend all of her books. My favorite is "Blessing the Boats". These poems are just two of my favorites of hers.......


WISHES FOR SONS

i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
I wish them no 7-11.

i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.

later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.

let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.

~Lucille Clifton



TO MY LAST PERIOD

well girl, goodbye,
after thirty-eight years.
thirty-eight years and you
never arrived
splendid in your red dress
without trouble for me
somewhere, somehow.

now it is done,
and i feel just like
the grandmothers who,
after the hussy has gone,
sit holding her photograph
and sighing, wasn't she
beautiful? wasn't she beautiful?





This is yesterday's project. I cut the arms off of a white tee shirt, then cut out the neckline into a "U" shape. I took a soft small paint brush and painted my dragonfly stamp (the yellow-winged one in the foreground) lightly, but evenly with the acrylic paint, then stamped it onto the fabric and pressed down lightly, but evenly. I added another dragonfly, but didn't take a pic of it. I then iron over the dry paint with a piece of wax paper to set it. Ta-daaa! I'm done.



Ray couldn't stand it. Taylor has wanted a skateboard for a long time. But where he lives in the country, there's no place to use one close by. First, Ray called April (Taylor's mother, our daughter) and asked permission to buy him one. We didn't want to get grounded or anything. She didn't mind, so he went and picked up Taylor and they finally found one he liked at Academy Sporting Goods. I had a blast using the video button on my camera for the first time. Maybe next I'll learn how to upload videos! LOL! Here's a few pics of the expert with his awesome board. I tried to just stand still on the board holding on to Taylor and almost busted my butt. It's much harder than it looks, trust me!!! Notice Cody's adoring look at Taylor. He loves having his very own boy, even if it's only part-time!!




On that note, Happy Friday and appreciate the sons in your life today.

Peace, Blessings and Love,

~*~Marion~*~

A Walk Around My Yard

I can't begin my daily 'camera walk' without first checking out this Rose bush next to my St. Frances statue that makes the most frilly, pink-lined yellow roses. It never fails to treat me with a beautiful bud or open Rose. So far my homemade rock salt spray is working and I haven't had the first sign of black spot on the leaves.

This used to be a long set of windchimes, but the chimes have long since gone. The cross remains which catches the evening sun in all it's glory.

A view from my lawn chair sitting in the driveway, watching the day slowly fade away..........

The first little bounty from my Strawberry box. It's loaded with mostly green Strawberries at the moment, and about a dozen leggy, baby Mammouth Sunflowers shooting up......

The hanging baskets that I planted last month and the ever-present, calm Nashville Buddha in his circular rock garden. You can see the Virgin of Guadalupe in the background. We don't discriminate at our house. LOL!

Of all my varieties of Mint growing around the house, this is my favorite, Chocolate Mint. It grows year round and puts out the most amazing sweet, minty scent. Not as minty as the Spearmint, but sweeter. It's hard to try to describe it. When you crush an herb, it gives you it's strongest scent. I know there's an amazing metaphor there somewhere.

The morning sun in the front yard. The sunshine yesterday was awesome, like God smiling down upon the earth. A rare humidless, cool, sunny, breezy Spring day.

These bulbs bloom every Easter. I don't know their name, but they're mixed in with my purple bearded Iris's around my front yard tree. I love this shade of pink.

This little guy was having his breakfast when I stumbled outside yesterday morning with my camera and my first cup of coffee to photograph the flowers, I thought. Ray puts out seeds for him and I put out seeds on the other side of the yard for the Cardinals and other birds, so Mr. Rocky (as in Rocky and Bullwinkle, remember?) won't eat the bird seeds. He's gotten to be quite tame, but this is the first time he's posed for me and not run off. He likes to climb the trees nearest the house and bark at the cats in the yard. He's all talk and no action, though. We've had squirrels ever since we moved into the house over 20 years ago. They love to jump (fly almost) from the trees in our yard to the trees in our neighbor's yard. They don't have cats to bother them next door, only dogs, who ignore them.

I leave you with a poem about letting go of my words. Peace & Sunshine, ~*~Marion~*~

WORDS 4 SALE

Words 4 sale
(They didn’t come cheap)
I ranted and raved
And lost hours of sleep.

They didn’t come cheap
(These words 4 sale)
I plumbed the depths
Of my own private hell.

I ranted and raved
And lost hours of sleep
Trying to decide
Which words to keep.

I plumbed the depths
Of my own private hell,
Trying to let go
Of these words 2 sell.

7/18/08

Marion

Mugged By Poetry - Introducing Poet Dorianne Laux

Oh, what a yummy, tasty treat y'all are in for today if you have not yet discovered the down-to-earth, gritty, delicious poetry of Dorianne Laux. She's my Whitman, my Eliot and my e e cummings all rolled into a 'knowing' woman's body and soul.

I first found her when I read the book she co-authored with Kim Addonizio, "The Poet's Companion" which is a jewel of a book. When I read her poem below, "Mugged By Poetry", I went out and bought a copy of Tony Hoagland's "Donkey Gospel" because I loved him, dear bloggers, I LOVED him and wanted to hug him for sending Ms. Laux that magnficient little chapbook made from his heart tied with the shoe laces. I wanted to BE her and have someone send ME such a heartfelt prize of a gift---more precious than diamonds is a gift from the heart like that----especially to a poet, a word collector, a person that most of the world does not understand OR appreciate---my truest treasures are my poet-friends. (My husband rolls his eyes when I say to him, "Can I read you this little poem?" And then he impatiently tolerates my reading of it and then I get mad and cry and he says, "You know I've NEVER liked poetry---except for your poems, that is...." ) But it's too late by then and I know that I have to call or email someone who "knows" what it's like to have a handful of words arranged a certain way touch your soul and thrill you from the top of your head all the way down to the tips of your red-painted toes.....

I boo-hooed the first time I read "Mugged By Poetry" by Ms. Laux. I was so envious of her for getting that little book, first, and secondly for having written MY poem---I have felt what she writes too many times to count when reading poetry!! When I read the poem I shake my head up and down like a fool and mouth the word YES over and over because I've experienced the same feelings she so eloquently writes about when reading other poems by other poets who inspire me. There always seems to be that one line that breaks your heart----and later there's the line that puts your heart back together again. (My tears are dripping onto Ms. Laux's books in my lap---)

I have some credit card debt. Not as much as most American's, I'm sure, but some. And 99% of it is from buying books, mostly poetry. I don't care. You can't take it with you when you go----I should get me one of those nice, square pieces of cardboard and a large magic marker (don't you word freaks out there like me just love that they're called 'magic' markers?) and make me a sign that says, "WILL WORK FOR POETRY" and stand on the side of a busy intersection at a stop light and hold out a plastic bucket like the firemen do when collecting for charity. "Coins for words! Coins for words! Dollars appreciated, too," I'd holler. Then I'd carry my ass straight to Books a Million and spend every damn cent on poetry books. Okay, I'm mind-tripping here. Let me get back to the subject at hand.....

In her book "What We Carry" the first poem is "Late October" and it's awesome. I couldn't find it on the web, so I'll be naughty and not type it all here but tease you into buying her book by sharing a few lines:

" . . . The moon was a white dinner plate

broken exactly in half. I saw myself as I was:

forty-one years old, standing on a slab

of cold concrete, a broom handle slipping

from my hands, my breasts bare, my hair

on end, afraid of what I might do next."

Okay, now carry yourself on to Amazon.com and buy the book because, trust me, all of the poems are awesome, brilliant, shimmering and just plain good.

I'm going to leave you with a brief bio of Ms. Laux and the title poem for you to savor. Support poets and poetry today. Go to your public library and bitch to the manager if they don't have current poets in the 811's. I do it often and I've noticed recently that they're buying more poetry books. Signing off affectionately, ~*~Marion~*~

Dorianne Laux

Dorianne Laux was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her fourth book of poems, Facts about the Moon (W.W. Norton, 2007), is the recipient of the Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also author of Awake (Eastern Washington, 2007, rpt.), What We Carry (BOA, 1994), Smoke (BOA, 2000), and Superman: The Chapbook (Red Dragonfly Press, 2008).



Mugged By Poetry

—for Tony Hoagland who sent me a handmade chapbook made from old postcards called OMIGOD POETRY with a whale breaching off the coast of New Jersey and seven of his favorite poems by various authors typed up, taped on, and tied together with a broken shoelace.

Reading a good one makes me love the one who wrote it,

as well as the animal or element or planet or person

the poet wrote the poem for. I end up like I always do,

flat on my back like a drunk in the grass, loving the world.

Like right now, I'm reading a poem called "Summer"

by John Ashbery whose poems I never much cared for,

and suddenly, in the dead of winter, "There is that sound

like the wind/Forgetting in the branches that means

something/Nobody can translate..." I fall in love

with that line, can actually hear it (not the line

but the wind) and it's summer again and I forget

I don't like John Ashbery poems. So I light a cigarette

and read another by Zbigniew Herbert, a poet

I've always admired but haven't read enough of, called

"To Marcus Aurelius" that begins "Good night Marcus

put out the light/and shut the book For overhead/is raised

a gold alarm of stars..." First of all I suddenly love

anyone with the name Zbigniew. Second of all I love

anyone who speaks in all sincerity to the dead

and by doing so brings that personage back to life,

plunging a hand through the past to flip off the light.

The astral physics of it just floors me. Third of all

is that "gold alarm of stars..." By now I'm a goner,

and even though I have to get up tomorrow at 6 am

I forge ahead and read "God's Justice" by Anne Carson,

another whose poems I'm not overly fond of

but don't actively disdain. I keep reading one line

over and over, hovering above it like a bird on a wire

spying on the dragonfly with "turquoise dots all down its back

like Lauren Bacall". Like Lauren Bacall!! Well hell,

I could do this all night. I could be in love like this

for the rest of my life, with everything in the expanding

universe and whatever else might be beyond it

that we can't grind a lens big enough to see. I light up

another smoke, maybe the one that will kill me,

and go outside to listen to the moon scalding the iced trees.

What, I ask you, will become of me?

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Mother Earth and Quotes from my Indian Heritage

"There is no death. Only a change of worlds." ---Seattle (1786 - 1866) Suquamish Chief


My white Rose, after yesterday's hard rain storms, seemed to be weeping raindrops. So beautiful that words almost ruin the picture.


"The old Indian teaching was that it is wrong to tear loose from its place on the earth anything that may be growing there. It may be cut off, but it should not be uprooted. The trees and the grass have spirits. Whenever one of such growths must be destroyed by some good Indian, his act is done in sadness and with a prayer for forgiveness because of his necessities. . ." ---Cheyenne Elder (late 19th Century)


The pink Rose is sharing its first bloom with us today. She posed so beautifully, that I just had to snap her picture.


"Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. We did not weave the web of life; we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves." ---Seattle (1786 - 1866) Suquamish Chief

"You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. . . . The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. . . Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The very life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves." ---Black Elk (1863 - 1950) Oglala Sioux holy man


Yellow butterflies
over the blossoming, virgin corn,
with pollen-spotted faces
chase one another in
brilliant throng.
---Hopi Song


". . . Everything on the earth has a purpose, every disease an herb to cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence." ---Mourning Dove (1888 - 1936) Salish


". . . I am poor and naked, but I am the Chief of the Nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. WE WANT PEACE AND LOVE." ---Red Cloud (late 19th century) Sioux Chief

Happy Easter - New Beginnings - New Life

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." (Matt. 6:28-29)


LILIES
By Mary Oliver

I have been thinking
about living
like the lilies
that blow in the fields.

They rise and fall
in the edge of the wind,
and have no shelter
from the tongues of the cattle,

and have no closets or cupboards,
and have no legs.
Still I would like to be
as wonderful

as the old idea.
But if I were a lily
I think I would wait all day
for the green face

of the hummingbird
to touch me.
What I mean is,
could I forget myself

even in those feathery fields?
When Van Gogh
preached to the poor
of coarse he wanted to save someone--

most of all himself.
He wasn't a lily,
and wandering through the bright fields
only gave him more ideas

it would take his life to solve.
I think I will always be lonely
in this world, where the cattle
graze like a black and white river--

where the vanishing lilies
melt, without protest, on their tongues--
where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,
just rises and floats away.




Emily Dickinson

A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown —
Who ponders this tremendous scene —
This whole Experiment of Green —
As if it were his own!

Wishing you a beautiful Easter and wonderful new beginnings, just like these new flowers----

Love & Peace,

~Marion @->-----

"I think of the garden after the rain;

And hope to my heart comes singing,

At morn the cherry-blooms will be white,

And the Easter bells be ringing! ~Edna Dean Proctor, "Easter Bells"

What Do Women Want Saturday - A Red Dress??

RED: The color of blood, passion, lust, roses, dresses, heARTs, anger, lipstick and love. Red Rocks!!!!

There's nothing, not a single damn thing on earth, that can make you feel sexy and beautiful like a RED DRESS!

Poet and author Kim Addonizio (shown above) was born in Washington, D.C., in 1954. She received her B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University.

Her books of poetry include Tell Me (BOA Editions, 2000), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Jimmy & Rita (1997); The Philosopher's Club (1994); and Three West Coast Women, with Laurie Duesing and Dorianne Laux (1987). Addonizio is also the author of In the Box Called Pleasure (1999), a collection of stories, and, with Dorianne Laux, the co-author of The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (1997). She co-edited Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos (2002) with Cheryl Dumesnil. Addonizio was a founding editor of the journal Five Fingers Review. Among her awards and honors are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and a Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal. Kim Addonizio teaches in the M.F.A. program at Goddard College and lives in San Francisco.

And I'm happy to say that she has a brand new book out entitled, "Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within" which just came out in February of this year. It's another keeper, trust me! Here's a blurb from Amazon.com which persuaded me to buy yet another book on writing poetry (we must always grow---to stagnate is to die!):

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"Inspired by the gratifying success of Companion, Kim Addonizio presents exciting new insights into the creative process, craft, and the lessons of her own creative subjects--love, loss, identity, community--are here, along with a heady variety of writing exercises (and innovative ways to use the Internet). Chapters on gender, race, and class challenge readers to explore their creative vision more deeply, Addonizio, hailed for her passionate, award-winning poetry, shares her breakthroughs and frustrations frankly, including samples of rejection slips. She offers not only encouragement but also a wealth of knowledge about form and structure, metaphor and rhythm, revision, and that elusive goal: publishing.

"Poetry is not a means to an end," Addonizio maintains, "but a continuing engagement with being alive." Her generous guide is for beginners and experienced poets, for groups and in the classroom--indeed for anyone eager to glimpse the angel of poetry.

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If I had that girl's bod, I'd wear a flowing, RED dress every single day of my life! LOL!

One of my all-time favorite poems by the amazingly talented, tattooed and beautiful Kim Addonizio. I own all of her books and they are all amazing, fabulous and full of heART & soul:

WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

Kim Addonizio

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I hope you all have a super, relaxing, inspirational Saturday! Read and write a poem today----I plan to!!!

Hugs and Blessings and Peace and Love,

~*~Marion @->-----

Let books be your dining table,

And you shall be full of delights

Let them be your mattress

And you shall sleep restful nights.~Author Unknown

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind. ~James Russell Lowell

Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled "This could change your life." ~Helen Exley

Favorite Poem Friday - Fall in Love with Poetry & Collages!

In my early collage days (I'm still a novice), I did the Stevie Nicks collage above. She's one of my favorite ladies of Rock & Roll, in addition to the luscious P. J. Harvey. I found this journal with blank, black pages for $2 at Waldenbooks (they have great sales) and loved writing on it with a white pen. I found most of the pics on the Internet or from magazines and interspersed the words of her songs with the pics. Some people scrapbook and it costs them a small fortune. I always say I do it basically for free except for the large Scotch glue sticks I buy in quantity! It's much more fun this way. The library gives away old magazines and books and I have a blast cutting them up. It feels a little wicked, like being a bad child with scissors. LOL!

I chuckle at one of my favorite lines from singer, Nick Cave's, song, "I Call Upon the Author to Explain" because it fits me so perfectly. It's, "Prolix, prolix, nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!" Of course, I take this line at face value and apply it to my scissoring habit. I even made a sign of it and put it up in my craft room. He'd probably cringe in horror, but maybe not. If you can't laugh about something, then you really have a problem, right?




This signed and numbered Amy Brown fairy print is my pride and joy and my all-time favorite of her many works of art. I get SO much inspiration from it. Falling in love. Falling into dream time. Being carried away by the butterflies of inspiration. Falling within her mind. Escaping reality. . . Well, you get the picture. Art is SO tied into poetry for me that I consider them married. Yesterday we watched an artist on CBN create a magnificently moving sculputre of Jesus as he spoke of the crucifixtion. The marriage of art and word. It was powerful! Art definitely has heART! Create something beautiful today in honor of Good Friday.




COLLAGE POEM

By Marion

Three weeks ago
In the early evening
I sat at my desk composing
A new spin on language,
Harnessing the power of the universe,
Dreamtime,

and inner space.

Treading softly, breaking taboos,
Creating realities
That never before existed.
Destroying imaginings that cried
Out not to be.

I became the High Priestess
Of mystery,


words,

dreams

and ambiguity.

My writing only lead to more writing

Words multiplied like rabbits in my brain---
Pregnant with language---
My imagination in labor,
Gloriously giving birth
To newborn poems.

7/10/08



I began this poem with words from one of my altered collage books. I love to put snips of words cut from magazines and old books on almost all of my collage pages and subconsciously, I made this poem. I was reading the little altered book (my first) it came from one day and realized that there was a poem hiding in the pages. What an exciting discovery! The subconscious mind is awesome.

Blessings, Peace and Hope to you all,

@->---- Marion, thankful for Jesus's sacrifice today.....


"The resurrection gives my life meaning and direction and the opportunity to start over no matter what my circumstances." ~Robert Flatt


"Where man sees but withered leaves, God sees sweet flowers growing." ~Albert Laighton


"Let the resurrection joy lift us from loneliness and weakness and despair to strength and beauty and happiness." ~Floyd W. Tomkins

Thursday Confession: I Sew

Yes, I confess, I sew. I lay out patterns (after much altering---always lengthening due to the fact that I'm almost 6 feet tall), cut them out, mark the appropriate centers, etc., and sew them together. In high school I took four years of Home Ec, and believe me, I've taken tons of crap about this. But I was the youngest of three girls and I got all of my sisters' hand-me-down clothes to wear to school---oh, and I'm taller than both of my sisters. Good thing mini skirts were in style in the 1970's because I had some doozies! I made most of my clothes all through high school. Necessity IS the mother of invention. My lifelong career plans were to be a wife and a mother and poet on the side. I think I was born in the wrong generation---the 50's would have been more "me".


About the confession: At the last law office I worked at, several secretaries were looking at incoming resumes for another attorney's paralegal search. One particular resume included a photo of the applicant and one of the girls condescendingly said, "Oh, my God, she looks like she sews!" I ran to look at the photo and the woman had a tight, short, curly perm, 50's style pointy eye glasses and red lipstick. I had a good laugh and was marked for life. LOL! Not really, but it stuck with me. People tend to stereotype someone who sews their own clothes, for some reason. I guess they don't stop to think that someone somewhere sews all of our clothes!


That photo is a skirt I made a few weeks ago. It's the first piece of clothing I've made in years. Actually, my daughter, April, got me back into it. She called me and asked me to teach her to sew. After I had a good laugh (she makes maginficent quilts that I wouldn't even think of making), I told her that what she really wanted was for me to teach her was how to read a pattern, not to sew which she already knew how to do. She was starting with a simple skirt with an elastic waistband. It's came out so pretty, I decided I wanted one, too, so I hunted down the pattern (under $3 at Wal-Mart) and bought the material ($1.50 per yard on the bargain table at Wal-Mart---2 yards needed due to the added length) and made my skirt. I already had the thread and elastic at home in my sewing box. So my pretty, sparkly, festive hippie skirt that comes all the way down to my ankles cost me less than ten dollars. I'd forgotten the joy of creating clothing! I haven't worn it yet, just looked at it. LOL! Ray checked it out and was duly impressed about me meeting all of the stripes perfectly together on the side seams. I found several patterns for tee-shirts and am now in the progress of rounding out my summer wardrobe with the fabrics I had in my closet.


Happy Thursday!


Hugs, Blessings and Peace,


~Marion

PS: In a perfectly synchronistic moment, I got the following email from one of the poetry sites I subscribe to, so I had to come back and post it. Enjoy!!!

Two Sewing
by Hazel Hall (1886-1924)

The wind is sewing with needles of rain.
With shining needles of rain
It stitches into the thin
Cloth of earth. In,
In, in, in.
Oh, the wind has often sewed with me.
One, two, three.
Spring must have fine things
To wear like other springs.
Of silken green the grass must be
Embroidered. One and two and three.
Then every crocus must be made
So subtly as to seem afraid
Of lifting colour from the ground;
And after crocuses the round
Heads of tulips, and all the fair
Intricate garb that Spring will wear.
The wind must sew with needles of rain,
With shining needles of rain,
Stitching into the thin
Cloth of earth, in,
In, in, in,
For all the springs of futurity.
One, two, three.

----------------------------
Poet, John Witte, Comments: Beginning with the materials at hand – her limited mobility, her isolation and loneliness, her gifts with needlework and words, and her exquisite grief – Hazel Hall fashioned in the short span of her career a poetry of remarkable originality and durability.

Born in St. Paul on February 7, 1886, Hall moved with her family to the bustling young city of Portland, Oregon as a small girl. She was an exuberant and unusually sensitive and imaginative child. But at the age of twelve, following a bout of scarlet fever, she was confined to a wheelchair, and, like Emily Dickenson on the opposite end of the continent, would live out her life in an upper room of her family’s house. To help support her mother and two sisters, Hall took in sewing, and gainfully occupied herself embroidering the sumptuous fabrics of bridal gowns, baby dresses, altar cloths, lingerie, and Bishop’s cuffs that would figure so lushly in her poems.

In “Two Sewing,” from 1921, as in so many of her poems, Hall escapes her confinement into the fertile refuge of language and imagination. As both seamstress and poet, she enjoyed the fortuitous coincidence of two activities that ingeniously referred to and informed one another, the interplay of stitch and song.

After seventy years out of print, Hazel Hall’s poems have been rediscovered and her Collected Poems republished in 2000 by Oregon State University Press.