Waiting For My Life by Linda Pastan

Of all my new poetry finds, this is a favorite.  Every poem is awesome.  Buy poetry and support poets!!!

Waiting For My Life

By Linda Pastan

I waited for my life to start
for years, standing at bus stops
looking into the curved distance
thinking each bus was the wrong bus;
or lost in books where I would travel
without luggage from one page
to another; where the only breeze
was the rustle of pages turning,
and lives rose and set
in the violent colors of suns.

Sometimes my life coughed and coughed:
a stalled car about to catch,
and I would hold someone in my arms,
though it was always someone else I wanted.
Or I would board any bus, jostled
by thighs and elbows that knew
where they were going; collecting scraps
of talk, setting them down like bird song
in my notebook, where someday I would go
prospecting for my life.

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

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else." ~Emily Dickinson

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

There Are Poems

By Linda Pastan

There are poems

that are never written,

that simply move across

the mind

like skywriting

on a still day:

slowly the first word

drifts west,

the last letters dissolve

on the tongue,

and what is left

is the pure blue

of insight, without cloud

or comfort.

**********

"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance." ~Carl Sandburg

**********

What We Want

By Linda Pastan

What we want

is never simple.

We move among the things

we thought we wanted:

a face, a room, an open book

and these things bear our names---

now they want us.

But what we want appears

in dreams, wearing disguises.

We fall past,

holding out our arms

and in the morning

our arms ache.

We don't remember the dream,

but the dream remembers us.

It is there all day

as an animal is there

under the table,

as the stars are there

even in full sun.

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

In a dream you are never eighty. ~Anne Sexton

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

The lovely, shy, unique, blushing flowers of my Angel Wing Begonia plant.  I first heard about this plant in a fabulous book that I re-read every year, "The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue" by Barbara Samuel.  The main character had a greenhouse attached to her kitchen (swoon) and had a huge Angel Wing Begonia plant.  I immediately began searching for one and found a tiny, ratty one at a Wal-Mart garden center.  I brought it home and nursed it to health and I now have 5 plants which I propagated from this one.  They're easy to grow and so beautiful. 

Here's a shot of the 'wings' of my plant.  I mean leaves, of course.  It's about 3 feet tall and sits in a tomato cage to hold the heavy limbs up.  She blooms every Fall but I have to look for the flowers as they hide under the leaves.  There's also a varitey with bright green leaves, but I haven't been able to find one of those yet.  It's warm and humid here today, typical Louisiana weather. 

My potted tomato plant is still thriving with 17 tomatoes on it.  I cover it with a sheet on cold nights.  This is the longest I've ever kept a tomato plant alive.  Hell, I might be picking 'maters at Christmas! 

I hope you all have a wonderful week, full of love, family and friends.

Love & Blessings,

Marion

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

I've read all of Ms. Samuel's books and, although this is my favorite, they're all fabulous reads.

**********

"For friends... do but look upon good Books: they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble." ~Francis Bacon

**********

"The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters. ~Ross MacDonald

**********