Courage by Anne Sexton and Flower Miracles

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

Courage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earth Day, Every Day!

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

A CERTAIN KIND OF EDEN

By Kay Ryan

It seems like you could, but

you can’t go back and pull

the roots and runners and replant.

It’s all too deep for that.

You’ve overprized intention,

have mistaken any bent you’re given

for control. You thought you chose

the bean and chose the soil.

You even thought you abandoned

one or two gardens. But those things

keep growing where we put them—

if we put them at all.

A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall.

Even the one vine that tendrils out alone

in time turns on its own impulse,

twisting back down its upward course

a strong and then a stronger rope,

the greenest saddest strongest

kind of hope.

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

      Angel Trumpet bloomed today...Earth Day 2016!

          Passionflowers...Indigo blooming...

       Wild Blackberries preparing to be jam...

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

                         Hello, blue sky!!!

I Grew Her Under My Heart...

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

THE SPIRIT IS TOO BLUNT AN INSTRUMENT

By Anne Stevenson

The spirit is too blunt an instrument 

to have made this baby. 

Nothing so unskilful as human passions 

could have managed the intricate 

exacting particulars: the tiny 

blind bones with their manipulating tendons, 

the knee and the knucklebones, the resilient 

fine meshings of ganglia and vertebrae, 

the chain of the difficult spine. 

Observe the distinct eyelashes and sharp crescent 

fingernails, the shell-like complexity 

of the ear, with its firm involutions 

concentric in miniature to minute 

ossicles. Imagine the 

infinitesimal capillaries, the flawless connections 

of the lungs, the invisible neural filaments 

through which the completed body 

already answers to the brain. 

Then name any passion or sentiment 

possessed of the simplest accuracy. 

No, no desire or affection could have done 

with practice what habit 

has done perfectly, indifferently, 

through the body's ignorant precision. 

It is left to the vagaries of the mind to invent 

love and despair and anxiety 

and their pain.

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

Rock Me, Mercy by Yusef Komunyakaa

Rock Me, Mercy

BY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA

The river stones are listening

because we have something to say.

The trees lean closer today.

The singing in the electrical woods

has gone dumb. It looks like rain

because it is too warm to snow.

Guardian angels, wherever you're hiding,

we know you can't be everywhere at once.

Have you corralled all the pretty wild

horses? The memory of ants asleep

in daylilies, roses, holly, & larkspur.

The magpies gaze at us, still

waiting. River stones are listening.

But all we can say now is,

Mercy, please, rock me.

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

    

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

    After two rainy days, my Roses are wildly blooming!

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

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

                                        Brilliant yellow Squash blossom...

         Sunflower painting by my husband.

             Five Moonflowers, ready for planting.

How to Kill a Living Thing by Eibhlín Nic Eochaidh

                        Moonflower seeds sprouting in a sunny window---

How to Kill a Living Thing

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

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

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

To keep the wound wide open.

—Eibhlín Nic Eochaidh

Spring by Edna St. Vincent Millay

SPRING

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Flowers Paint the Sky...

                                                God, the greatest Artist & Poet...

                                                     A Rose is a Rose is a Rose.