Friday, November 30, 2012

I Am Learning to Abandon the World by Linda Pastan

My Blythe-girl, Zooey. 

 

 
I Am Learning to Abandon the World
By Linda Pastan
 
I am learning to abandon the world
before it can abandon me.
Already I have given up the moon
and snow, closing my shades
against the claims of white.
And the world has taken
my father, my friends.
I have given up melodic lines of hills,
moving to a flat, tuneless landscape.
And every night I give my body up
limb by limb, working upwards
across bone, towards the heart.
But morning comes with small
reprieves of coffee and birdsong.
A tree outside the window
which was simply shadow moments ago
takes back its branches twig
by leafy twig.
And as I take my body back
the sun lays its warm muzzle on my lap
as if to make amends.
 
__________________________________
 
Goodbye to November!!  You've been a wild month.  xo

Monday, November 26, 2012

Rumi Rocks

Sunrise/Sunset? at Casa Dragonfly


Does sunset sometimes look like the sun is coming up?
Do you know what a faithful love is?
 
You're crying; you say you've burned yourself.
But can you think of anyone who's not hazy with smoke?
 
~Rumi
 
Steaming fence after rain.
 

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Girl In Chair by Mary Biddinger

 
My newest poet-crush is Mary Biddinger.  I say this often, but it's always a great day when you discover an amazing new poet.  Support poets!  Buy Poetry! 
 
Also, check out her blog: Wordcage.
 
This is one of my favorite poems from this book.  I had a really hard time choosing just one poem to post because they're all superb.  This is my favorite because I love the imagery:
 
Girl In Chair
By Mary Biddinger
 
The streets sew themselves
a beaded mat you can buy
every night.  Catfish in bed
with the rushes.  Everything
sleeping deep together.
 
Needlepoint is half blood
most of the time.  You miss
once, twice, by the window.
How else to stitch flowers,
or the red mailbox waiting
for a postman’s blue vest.
 
All a game of in and out.
Blood waiting to dump
its oxygen, the mosquito
and waxwing, storm fronts
quaking above as moths.
 
A seam-ripper hacks
the work in seconds, string
cut to a quarter.  Your love
is the one sunk, midnight
in the Monongahela.  How
did you not wake when
the river broke like a pane?
 
A page slits your fingertip
but you keep turning.  Now
the cicadas start their fall
from tree to lawn.  Cherry
blossoms ride the gutters.
Lightning on the air, men
chasing their hats home.
From:  “Prairie Fever” by Mary Biddinger, pages 53, 54
 
(The Monongahela is a river on the Allegheny Plateau in north-central West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania.)
 
+ + + + + + + + + +
 
"Saint Monica" by Mary Biddinger
 
+ + + + + + + + + +
 
and her newest book, coming soon:  "O, Holy Insurgency"
 
+ + + + + + + + + +
 
"Poetry is life distilled." ~Gwendolyn Brooks
 
+ + + + + + + + + +
 
Happy Thanksgiving!
 
For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
+ + + + + + + + + + 

 
 

Saturday, November 17, 2012

My Heart Lifted...


I potted this tiny plant in March.  I watered it and cared for it all summer.  I was patient.  Yesterday, November 16, 2012, it produced one perfect white flower.  I went outside this morning and it was pink. I swear to you, my heart lifted. I live for surprises like this.
 
xo,
~Marion
 
* * * * *

"I slept the afternoon, but you know what Breton says: I was not in the mood for visitors. Picture yourself inside that word. And yes, my house is a word, but my words, aren’t they words also? Today, the sky just wouldn’t happen. Today, I was blind-sided. Neither pain, nor its powdered absence. Like most days, I became the kitchen sill. I’m simply saying what I always say: what is lace-winged cannot be strong."

Olena Kalytiak Davis, from:  "And Her Soul Out Of Nothing", page 3

* * * * *

"I'm feeling terrifically heavy.
I'm feeling as well-grounded as the dead."  ~Olena Kalytiak Davis, page 19

* * * * *

"Oh, my cloud covered heart." ~Olena Kalytiak Davis, page 3

* * * * *



Thursday, November 15, 2012

40 Love Letters by Jeanann Verlee

 
I love Ms. Verlee's book, "Racing Hummingbirds" from which this poem, "40 Love Letters" comes.  I'm on my second copy because I tore out several poems and sent to friends.  :-)
 
Enjoy!  Support Poets.  BUY POETRY!!!
 
~Marion
 
 
40 Love Letters
By Jeanann Verlee

Dear Dennis,
I still think of you.
 
Dear Andre,
I saw you kiss her.
I haven’t looked back.
 
Dear Patrick,
You’re just too young.
 
Dear Eric,
I said horrible things about
you.
Your teeth are fine,
it’s the rest of you I don’t
like.
 
Dear Greg,
Thank you for the poem, for
every single scar.
 
Dear William,
I love you, simple.
I like that we will never be we.
 
Dear Jay,
The bruises fell off
eventually.
 
Dear Michael,
I’ll never be enough to fill
the shoes
that will one day stand at
your side.
 
Dear Ben,
I did read your letters.
All of them.
 
Dear Freeman,
I’ll never stop looking over
my shoulder,
boots laced, ready to run.
 
Dear Jon,
I’ll always love you.
You are all there ever was.
 
Dear Derek,
There was no one thing,
your everything is
impossible.
 
Dear Eddie,
We are refracting magnets.
We will battle this to the
end.
 
Dear Dennis,
I still think of you.
 
Dear Ryan,
I love you, simple.
Sex under the streetlight was
a delicious accident.
 
Dear Kevin,
Your kiss came too late.
My lips were already dancing
in the other room with Jon.
 
Dear Ethan,
No.
 
Dear Joseph,
I said you were too pretty.
They said to try it anyway.
They are fools.
 
Dear Avery,
You are the definition of unrequited.
 
Dear Skippy,
I’m sorry about the whiskey
and the tampon.
I’m sorry I never called you.
 
Dear Nate,
Until you mocked my smile, I
was yours.
 
Dear Marc,
I like your wife too much.
Is your brother still single?
 
Dear Mitch,
You were my biggest mistake.
I’m sure that only makes your
smile more sinister.
 
Dear Allen,
While you poured Guinness for
Patrick,
I pictured you bending me
over the bar.
 
Dear Graham,
I’d have swallowed that
bullet.
 
Dear Miguel,
You said a man never forgets
his first redhead.
What color are my eyes?
 
Dear Dennis,
I still think of you.
 
Dear Francis,
I’d have broken you in half.
 
Dear Chris,
I’m sorry I stalked you.
I’d try to forget me, too.
 
Dear Dex,
I can’t be with you again.
Just accept it.
 
Dear Dr. Matthews,
No.
I’ll have you fired.
Again.
 
Dear Aiden,
I wrote a poem about you.
It’s everyone’s favorite.
I find it trite.
 
Dear Logan,
I think I finally stopped
wanting you.
 
Dear Cynthia,
I was drunk.
I thought you were, too.
 
Dear Ricky,
Maybe it was the red dress
or because I was fifteen.
Your brother married my
mother
on the same day I first
touched your cock.
Maybe you’re still a pervert.
Call me.
 
Dear Jeff,
I was your biggest mistake.
 
Dear Robert,
You are more than beer and
vomit.
You are more than I could
ever put into a poem.
 
Dear Dennis,
I still think of you.
 
Dear Dennis,
I keep your photos in a box.
Each
one, still in its frame.
 
 
"Racing Hummingbirds" by Jeanann Verlee

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Lost In a Circle of Books...

 
I'm on my fourth or fifth reading of "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss.  This book is in my top five favorite books of all time, ever.  This book led me to my #1 favorite book:
 
 
"The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories" by Bruno Schulz.  This book has no equal.  Do not die having NOT read this book.  It will change your life.  I weep all the way through it every time I read it because it is too much---too beautiful, too rich, too unique.  After reading one chapter, I realized that I looked at the world through new eyes.  (Also, knowing that Mr. Schulz was shot in the head at age 50 by a Nazi and that his magnum opus, "The Messiah" was lost just breaks my heart into a million pieces.)  But reading this book is like falling into a lake of color & words & otherness & mystery & magic.  It is like no other book on earth.  And then I read that Ms. Krauss is married to the writer, Jonathan Safran Foer, which led me to fetch my copy of:
 
 
"Tree of Codes" by Jonathan Safran Foer which is more a work of art than a simple book because he took "The Street of Crocodiles" and selectively cut out words to create a new book which is in itself a miracle and a wonder.  And then I read more books by Ms. Krauss and Mr. Foer. 
 
And that's what I've been up to.  And you? 

 
 
 

Monday, November 5, 2012

This Moment by Eavan Boland

Sunrise through spider web, October, 2007


This Moment
By Eavan Boland

A neighbourhood.
At dusk.

Things are getting ready
to happen
out of sight.

Stars and moths.
And rinds slanting around fruit.

But not yet.

One tree is black.
One window is yellow as butter.

A woman leans down to catch a child
who has run into her arms
this moment.

Stars rise.
Moths flutter.
Apples sweeten in the dark.

from "In a Time of Violence", 1994
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY


____________________________________

I shared this poem with a friend last week.  It was the first poem I'd ever read by Eavan Boland and I fell instantly in love with her poetry.  It's a great day when you discover a new poet.    This moment is all we have, so cherish it.  It's what I'm trying to do.

Love & Blessings,
Marion

"What saves a (wo)man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it." ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière

Friday, November 2, 2012

What Every Woman Should Carry by Maura Dooley

 
 

What Every Woman Should Carry
By Maura Dooley

My mother gave me the prayer to Saint Theresa.
I added a used tube ticket, kleenex,
several Polo mints (furry), a tampon, pesetas,
a florin. Not wishing to be presumptuous,
not trusting you either, a pack of 3.
I have a pen. There is space for my guardian
angel, she has to fold her wings. Passport.
A key. Anguish, at what I said/didn’t say
when once you needed/didn’t need me. Anadin.
A credit card. His face the last time,
my impatience, my useless youth.
That empty sack, my heart. A box of matches.

from:  "Staying Alive:  Real Poems for Unreal Times" edited by Neil Astley, page 116

florin - a former British coin worth two shillings or a gold coin formerly used in Eurpoe
pesetas - monetary unit of Spain before the Euro
anadin - a brand of painkiller sold in the UK

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



 
 

Monday, October 29, 2012

Weather Channel by Sheryl Crow



Weather Channel
by Sheryl Crow


Sunny morning
You can hear it
Siren's warning
There is weather on both sides
And I know it's coming
Just like before
There's a black dog
That scratches my door
He's been growling my name saying
You better get to running
Can you make it better for me
Can you make me see the light of day
Because I got no one
Who will bring me a
Big umbrella
So I'm watching the weather channel
And waiting for the storm
It's just sugar
Just a pill to make me happy
I know it may not fix the hinges
But at least the door has stopped it's creaking
I got friends
They're waiting for me to comb out my hair
Come outside and join the human race
But I don't feel so human
Can you make it better for me
Can you make me see the light of day
Because I got lab coats
Who will bring me a panacea
While I'm watching the weather channel
Waiting for the storm
You won't want me
Hanging around the birthday pony
Even though it's just a game
You know we are the same
But you're the better faker.
 
=================
 
Enjoying some cold weather here in the swamp today and cooking gumbo.  It's interesting to watch a hurricane that's not headed for us here in the Gulf.  Those of you on the East Coast, hunker down and beware of Frankenstorm Sandy.  

This is one of my favorite songs by Sheryl Crow.  She wrote it when she was going through a bout of depression.

PS:  The word "Panacea" is one of my favorite words on earth.  So full of meaning and fun to say.  (Pronounced pan-a-see-a with emphasis on the see).

Panacea:  a remedy for all diseases or ills; a cure-all;
 
xoxo,
Marion

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Flowers are Earth's Poetry

A bee headed for my Confederate Roses this week.

 
Pink personified.

 

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End by Mary Oliver

A 'trash tree' (Chinese Tallow) in my neighborhood all clad in yellow.


Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?
By Mary Oliver
There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree–
they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of goldfluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.
 
-----------------------------------------------------
 
"Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter."   ~Carol Bishop Hipps
 
----------------------------------------------------

Monday, October 8, 2012

October, An Elegy by Sue Goyette

October Fairy by Amy Brown


October, An Elegy
By Sue Goyette

The whole month of October
is an elegy, a used bookstore
getting rained on.  This weather
makes me read endings first.  Partings
and farewells, the way we're baffled, startled
when happiness falls.  Let me tell you something about darkness, though,
because there's been enough about light.  But first
about the handwritten poem copied out in the back
of a Rilke translation.  It begins with beloved,
I'm tempted to tell you, or with rest,
and is written in the kind of couplets that are made
for each other, lines with stories of how they first met,
and I'm tempted to say that after I read it, light didn't matter,
nor darkness, that poetry somehow gathers
them both into one word.  O, how often we are baffled,
startled by our own happiness.  I read the poem
and kept its last three unresolved lines:  our
line break hearts.  There is a pause always around the word
heart, the history
of leaving, the small right-angled scars of loss.  Another line break
then into, a space, then the words:  like small trees.  We are made up
of small trees, limbs that reach for each other, forest
of longing, root systems of light, small blossoms of darkness
and there is a poem handwritten after pages of Rilke and, after Rilke,
how can our hearts be anything but small trees.  The book was used.  The lines
unresolved.  It was raining so I sat in the store and read
the ending first.  Here happiness falls, sometimes
the only difference between our
and hearts is a line break after a long elegy.  This is the season that begins
by ending.  The space between light
and darkness is unresolved
as the space between our hearts
and small trees.  Beloved, rest.  It's true.  I read the ending first
but I kept reading it until I got all the way back
to the beginning.
 
From:  "Undone" By Sue Goyette

Support Poets.  Buy Poetry!!!!!

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Tear It Down by Jack Gilbert

Lizard eating a butterfly in my backyard.  I was following the butterfly around the yard with my camera to my eye and BAM! the lizard came out of nowhere and ate my butterfly.  Oh, what a metaphor for life.  :-)


Tear It Down
By Jack Gilbert


We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound

of racoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within the body.


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

I love the poet, Linda Gilbert, and Jack is her ex-husband.  (This poem is sort of a mindfuck, but I love it.)  I was reading some of her poetry online and found this poem several years ago.  It caused quite a lot of discussion when I first posted it. 

Enjoy! 

~Marion, enjoying rare, cool October weather here in the swamp on opening weekend of hunting season.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Dearest Rose

Woman Writing Letter by Henry O'Hara Clive (1881 - 1960)


Dearest Rose,
For the first time I understand why men mortgage their souls for a diamond the size of a skipping stone.  I understand why dragonflies mate on the wind, their abdomens a perfect flying heart.  I know the thrill of the match as it lights the fire---and the fire’s joy as it consumes all it touches.  I even know the ashes’ ache as it smears your fingertips and touches your face as you wipe away your tears.

For the first time I feel.

I am the needle on the Victrola and you, the record.  Together, we become music.

Rose, you are the elusive drop of joy wrung from the heart of the Poppy making my brain a dream collage.

My heart becomes heavy.  I know this can’t last.  I weep as you shake your head smiling and capture my tears in a tiny cobalt blue bottle.  You say you will use them to season your stuffed zucchini blossoms and feed them back to me to negate my sorrow.

Rose, you are a love alchemist.

Heal me.

Yours,
Lilly
By Marion:  9/25/2012
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

Monday, September 17, 2012

Autumn by Amy Lowell

Autumn 2011 at Casa Dragonfly.

 

Autumn

By Amy Lowell 1874–1925
 
All day I have watched the purple vine leaves
fall into the water.
And now in the moonlight they still fall,
but each leaf is fringed with silver.
 
-----------------------------------------------------
 
Goodbye summer.  Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out, you hot, mean bitch.  Adios!!  ~Marion

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Reading Mary Oliver...


Storm clouds over Casa Dragonfly
 
 
From the poem, ‘Work’ by Mary Oliver

And how shall we speak of love
except in the splurge or roses, and the long body
     of the river
shining in its silk and froth;

and what could be more wonderful
than the agility and the reaching of the fingers of Hannah,
who is only seven days old;

and what could be more comforting than to fold grief
like a blanket---
to fold anger like a blanket,
with neat corners---
to put them into a box of words?

 From:  “The Leaf and the Cloud”, page 13


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
Another raggedy dragonfly visiting me, 2012
 

From the poem “Gravel” by Mary Oliver

The high-piled plum-colored storm-heavy clouds
are approaching.
The fly mumbles against the glass.

This is the world.
The hot little bluebirds in the box are getting ready to fly.
This is the world.

The sweet in the parsnip
waits for our praise.

The dragonfly lives its life
without a single error, it also
waits for our praise.

The pale-green moths are pressing
against the screen, fluttering, they are
dying to get in to press their papery bodies
into the light.

This is the world.

From:  “The Leaf and the Cloud”, page 43

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

I love Mary Oliver.  She has a grasp on the natural world like no other poet I've ever read.  She speaks to my heart today from her book, "The Leaf and the Cloud", an amazing book length poem in seven parts. 

xo,
Marion

"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

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

"I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes." ~e.e. cummings

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

Sunday, September 9, 2012

As Our Bodies Rise, Our Names Turn Into Light by Charles Wright

Sunlight spilled, 2010 by Marion

 
 
As Our Bodies Rise, Our Names Turn Into Light
By Charles Wright
 
The sky unrolls like a rug,
                                                unwelcoming, gun-grey,
Over the Blue Ridge.
Mothers are calling their children in,
                                                mellifluous syllables, floating sounds.
The traffic shimmies and settles back.

The doctor has filled his truck with leaves
Next door, and a pair of logs.
                                                Salt stones litter the street.
The snow falls and the wind drops.
How strange to have a name, any name, on this poor earth.

January hunkers down,
                                                the icicle deep in her throat---
The days become longer, the nights ground bitter and cold,
Single grain by single grain
Everything flows toward the structure,
                                                last ache in the ache for God.

1995
 
---------------------------------------------
 
I awoke shivering this morning because I went to bed with all the windows wide open last night.  It was a luscious, humidless 57 degrees.  I felt as if I'd been transported to another place and time.  It was near 100 degrees all last week. 
 
My orange cat brought me a baby rabbit almost as big as he was to the back door.  I thanked him, then rescued the poor, scared little bunny.  I sat in the cool sunlight and picked up my heavy "Norton Anthology of Poetry", all 1,376 pages of it, and it fell open to this poem.  Poetry has saved my life over and over and over again.  Few understand this, but the ones who do have also changed my life. 
 
Happy almost Autumn,
~Marion
 
--------------------------------------------
 
"Ink runs from the corners of my mouth
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry."
~Mark Strand, "Eating Poetry," Reasons for Moving, 1968


 

Saturday, September 8, 2012

The Towns We Know and Leave Behind, The Rivers We Carry With Us by Richard Hugo

A battered, tattered, curious old river dragonfly visiting me last summer.


I've spent most of my life along the Red River in Louisiana and this poem just brings out the river-love in me.  My uncle who raised us was a carpenter and fisherman and made a living from the river.  I often went with him to run the nets and he'd drop me off at a sandbar to play while he baited lines.  Today I live a few miles from the river but I think of it every day.   ~Marion, reading Anne Michaels on this rainy day in Louisiana.  xo

The Towns We Know and Leave Behind,
The Rivers We Carry with Us - By Richard Hugo

for James Wright

I forget the names of towns without rivers.
A town needs a river to forgive the town.
Whatever river, whatever town –
it is much the same.
The cruel things I did I took to the river.
I begged the current: make me better.

Your town, your river, or mine –
it is much the same.
A murdering man lives on the land
in a shack the river birds hate.
He rubs the red shriek of night from his eyes.
He prays to water: don’t let me do that again.

Let’s name your river: Ohio.
Let’s name all rivers one in the blood,
red stream and debris in the blood.
Say George Doty had a wrong head.
Say the Ohio forgives what George did
and the river birds loved his shack.
Let’s name the birds: heron and sweat.
Let’s get away from the mud.

The river is there to forgive the town
and without a river a town abuses the sky.
The river is there to forgive what I did.
Let’s name my river: Duwamish.
And let’s admit
the river birds don’t hate my home.
That’s a recent development, really
like mercury in the cod.

Without a river a town abuses the air.
The river is there to forgive what I did.
The river birds hate what I did
until I name them.
Your river or mine –
It is much the same.
A murdering man lived on the bank.

Here’s the trick;
We had to stay drunk
to welcome the river
to live in a shack
to die on the bank
beneath the bigoted sky
under the river birds
day after day
to murder away
all water that might die.

A murdering man is dead on the bank
of your new river, The East,
on mine, The Clark Fork.
It is much the same.
Your river has gulls and tugs.
Mine has eagles and sky.
I rub last night from my eyes.
I ask bright water what’s happened.

The river, I am not sure which one,
Says water has no special power.
What should I do?
Or you?

Now water has no need to forgive
what shall become of murder?
How shall we live
when we killed, when we died by the word?

Whatever the name of the river,
we both had two women to love,
one to love us enough we left behind
a town that abuses the day.
The other to love the river we brought with us,
the shack we lived and still live in,
the birds, the towns that return to us for names
and we give them names knowing the river
murders them away.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Autumn Sunlight

 
I found this beautiful photo at Pinterest.  I don't know the source, but the way the sunlight touches the wood of the open window breaks my heart and reminds me of Autumn.  I think of the past, of friends, of a woman in a window, and I grieve and I don't know why.  Time, which used to pass like molasses being poured from a  cold cup, is now a runaway train. 
 
But Autumn seems possible once again.  I hope, in the autumn of my life.
 
Love,
Marion
 
*****
 
The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
*****
 
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~George Eliot
 
*****
 
The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. ~Madeleine L'Engle
 
*****
 
How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days. ~John Burroughs
 
*****
 
The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time hath made.
~Edmund Waller
 
*****
 
 

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Drunken Poet's Dream by Ray Wylie Hubbard


Thank you, Annie, for introducing me to Ray.  (Snicker...)  I'm seriously in love with him. xoxo
 
Drunken Poet’s Dream
By Ray Wylie Hubbard

I got a woman who's wild as Rome
She likes being naked and gazed upon
She crosses a bridge then sets in on fire
She lands like a bird on a telephone wire

I'm gonna hollar, and I'm gonna scream
I'm gonna get me some mescaline
Then I'm gonna rhyme that with gasoline
It's a drunken poet's dream

There some money on the table and a pistol on the floor
A few paperback books by Louis L'amour
Whisky bottles are scattered like last night's clothes
Cigarettes, papers and Oreos

My harmonica's got a busted reed
My lips are chapped and about to bleed
She says, that's nothing when she was a kid
She danced with the dead at the pyramids

I'm gonna hollar, and I'm gonna scream
I'm gonna get me some mescaline
Then I'm gonna rhyme that with gasoline
It's a drunken poet's dream

I'll never pay back my student loan
Smelling like Coors and cheap cologne
She tells me not to worry about Judgment Day
She says dying to get to heaven's just not our way

I'm gonna hollar, and I'm gonna scream
I'm gonna get me some mescaline
Then I'm gonna rhyme that with gasoline
It's a drunken poet's dream

I got a woman who's wild as Rome
She likes bein naked and gazed upon
 
=======================

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

The Panic of Birds by Olena K. Davis

My yellow Moonflower in the rain.


THE PANIC OF BIRDS
By Olena Kalytiak Davis

The moon is sick
of pulling at the river, and the river
fed up with swallowing the rain,
So, in my lukewarm coffee, in the bathroom
mirror, there's a restlessness
as black as a raven.

Landing heavily on the quiet lines of this house.
Again, the sun takes cover
and the morning is dead
tired of itself, already, it's pelting and windy
as I lean into the pane
that proves this world is a cold smooth place.

Wind against window---let the words fight it out---
as I try to remember: What is it
that's so late in coming? What was it
I understood so well last night, so well it kissed me,
sweetly on the forehead?

Wind against window and my late flowering brain,
heavy, gone to seed. Pacing
from room to room and in each window
a different version of a framed woman
unable to rest, set against a sky
full of beating wings and abandoned
directions. Her five chambered heart
filling with the panic of birds, asking: What?

What if not this?

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

A perfect poem, this, to go with a hurricane.  So far, we've only had some wind, dark clouds and no rain.  But the Hummingbirds are here in droves.  I've had to refill my 3 feeders every single day for a week.  I guess they're escaping the storms down South.  I'll feed them all.

The wind is awesome, just amazing.  I wish I could bottle it.  I've taken down all my windchimes and moved my plants in.  Come on Isaac.  Bring it on.  I'm ready now.

xo,
Marion

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

"No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,
Watches beside me in this windy place."   ~Edna St. Vincent Millay


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

The wind shows us how close to the edge we are. ~Joan Didion
================

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Please Stay Tuned...

I'm having technical difficulties with my blog.  It won't let me edit and I can endure anything but misspelling and bad grammar.  When I hit "post", it adds or subtracts spaces and returns at random.  OY!  So here's a picture of some of my Blythe dolls to persuse while I curse Blogger.  :-)

Willow, Annie-Marie, P.J., Violet, Molly and Li-Li.

+++++

"The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius. "~Rebecca Pepper Sinkler

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

For Death by John O'Donohue

August storm brewing in the swamps


For Death
By John O'Donohue

From the moment you were born,
your death has walked beside you.
Though it seldom shows its face,
you still feel its empty touch
when fear invades your life,
or what you love is lost
or inner damage is incurred...

Yet when destiny draws you
into these spaces of poverty,
and your heart stays generous
until some door opens into the light,
you are quietly befriending your death;
so that you will have no need to fear
when your time comes to turn and leave,

that the silent presence of your death
would call your life to attention,
wake you up to how scarce your time is
and to the urgency to become free
and equal to the call of your destiny.

That you would gather yourself
and decide carefully
how you now can live

the life you would love
to look back on
from your deathbed.

__________________

August in Louisiana burns everything up, rain or no rain. The flowers and gardens wither, the butterflies leave and the hummingbirds come by the dozens.  Dragonflies loiter carelessly on the edge of hot bird baths.  The crickets hum a slow, back-to-school song and the frogs sing along, predicting rain. 

And oh, the clouds, the afternoon storms and the knowledge that autumn is around the corner.  How I long for the dying of autumn and the death of winter!   August is about waiting for September.  It will come.  It always does. 

xo,
Marion

"All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live." ~Mark Twain

------------------
"When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you. Your forgotten or neglected wealth begins to reveal itself. You come home to yourself and learn to rest within. Thoughts are our inner senses. Infused with silence and solitude, they bring out the mystery of inner landscape."  - Anam Cara, by John O'Donohue, p. 17