The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

The Peace of Wild Things

By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your prayer can be poetry, and poetry can be your prayer. ~Noelani Day

The Call by Kim Addonizio

That's a photo of my bedroom where I've been hiding, crying, shaking my fist at god and cursing the motherfucking incompetent surgeon who crippled me---surrounded by my books, cats and dragonflies. My books speak to me and comfort me. My cats purr and comfort me. My dragonflies look down at me and comfort me. My painting of my dead 20 year old cat on the wall comforts me. Ray tucks my blankets under my feet and comforts me. My prayers hit the ceiling and bounce back on my head giving me headaches. I read poetry, cry and adjust my heating pad and add more blankets, drink more water so I can cry more futile tears. I'm a fucking broken fountain in a town with no plumber. I'm reading Kim Addonizio off and on, one of my favorite poets, so hence, her poem below. The pages of her books are now salty and crinkled and water-warped......Life is not always what it seems, no?



THE CALL
By: Kim Addonizio


A man opens a magazine,
women with no clothes,
their eyes blacked out.
He dials a number,
hums a commercial
under his breath. A voice
tells him he can do
anything he wants to her.
He imagines standing her
against a wall, her saying
Oh baby you feel so good.
It's late. The woman
on the phone yawns,
trails the cord to the hall
to look in on her daughter.
She's curled with one
leg off the couch.
The woman shoulders the receiver,
tucks a sheet and
Yes. Do it. Yes.
She goes to the kitchen,
opens another Diet Pepsi, wonders
how long it will take him and where
she can find a cheap winter coat.
Remembering the bills
she flips off the light.
He's still saying Soon,
turning his wheelchair right,
left, right. A tube runs down
his pants leg. Sometime
she thinks he feels something,
stops talking to concentrate
on movement down there.
Hello, the woman says.
You still on?
She rubs a hand over her eyes.
Blue shadow comes off on her fingers.
Over the faint high hiss
of the open line
she hears the wheels knock
from table to wall.
What's that, she says.
Nothing, he tells her,
and they both
listen to it.



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



When you are sorrowful look again in your heart,
and you shall see that in truth you are weeping
for that which has been your delight. ~Kahlil Gibran



I didn't want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I'd cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full. ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Silent Saturday 2

Olena Kalytiak Davis Poem Quote

"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."

~From Olena Kalytiak Davis's Poem: 'A Few Words For the Visitor in the Parlor' from her amazing book, "And Her Soul Out of Nothing"

I respectfully ask that you not copy my dragonfly photos that I share here. Any others I don't mind sharing, but these are my heart and soul and I'd rather you not copy them. Thank you for respecting my request.

Blessings,

~*~Marion~*~

My Thanksgiving Giblet Gravy Story

"When making your roux for your gravy, it must be cooked s-l-o-w-l-y in an iron skillet until dark brown, the color of a pecan shell, before adding your onions, belpepper, etc. And you can't get in a damned hurry or cook it fast...." ~Mama

I'm sharing this true story I wrote several years ago. I hope you enjoy it.

THANKSGIVING GIBLET GRAVY

By Marion

Three days before Thanksgiving, I got a phone call from my youngest daughter, Sarah, who was cooking her first holiday meal on her own for her in-laws.

“Mama, this is an emergency. Tell me how to make giblet gravy.”

“Okay, Sarah, get a pen and paper and I’ll try. You know you should have called your Grandma since she’s the one who taught me how to make it.”

“I did call her, Mom, but you know how she tends to leave out important ingredients and never measures anything. She told me to take a big spoonful of shortening and a handful of flour to make the roux for the gravy and flat out refused to even guess a standard of measurement. She said, 'Sarah, you know, the big spoon I use for stirring!'”

I laughed. “This would be SO much easier if I was there to show you. That’s the exact same way she taught me how to make it, but I’ll try to use standard measures.”

“Do you have your giblets?”

“Mom, uhhhhh, what exactly is a giblet?”

Oh, boy, I thought, this is going to be a long telephone conversation…….

“Simply put, it’s that little sack of stuff inside of your turkey.”

“I don’t have a turkey because we’re getting one already fried.”

“Then you have to get you some giblets---which, by the way, are livers, gizzards, and the neck of the bird.”

“Where do you get that?”

“At the grocery store…….Oh, Lord! Listen, do you have some chicken livers, chicken and/or chicken broth? We can do the rush version of this……only you cannot rush the roux. It has to be cooked slowly in an iron skillet for at least 30 minutes to be perfect.”

“I know. I already talked to April (her sister) about that. She told me that gravy was so hard to make like yours that she gave up and let Brian (her husband) make it.”

“I know. I’m the one who taught Brian! April thought you could make it in an aluminum or Teflon skillet in ten minutes. She couldn’t grasp the concept of stirring the roux on low in an iron skillet for a minimum of half an hour until it was pecan colored, but not burnt.”

"Okay, Mom, I have one more important question for you: Why do we put a chopped up boiled egg in the gravy?"

"I have no idea. That's the way Mama taught me how to make it and that's the way your Aunt Mace taught her how to make it and her Mama taught her."

This telephone conversation went on for about an hour and I walked Sarah through her first official skillet of giblet gravy which turned out fabulous. I thought back to my first time. The gravy was lumpy and horrible and my husband said, "It sure doesn't taste like your mother's gravy." It took me many years to get it perfected to where it tasted as good as Mama's....

A few days later, I called my Mama as I was making some cornbread dressing for a dinner at work. Now I know good and well after 35 years of cooking how to make cornbread dressing, but Mama enjoys getting the phone call and bragging to her friends how she still has to help her baby girl make the dressing. And it makes her happy....

"Mama, this is Marion. I'm making the cornbread dressing and I can't remember: Is it more eggs to make it fluffier or less eggs to make it fluffier? And exactly how much chicken broth do I put in it? What do you mean 'keep pouring it in until it's juicy'? And why the hell do we put that boiled egg in the giblet gravy, anyway?"

"Minnie (that's my nickname)," said Mama, "Aunt Mace put the egg in the gravy and my Mama taught her how to make it----and that's just the way we do it!"

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

I hope you all have a healthy, happy, safe Thanksgiving!

Blessings,

~Marion


"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

"The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving." ~H.U. Westermayer

"Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone"~G.B. Stern

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice." ~Meister Eckhart

"When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them." ~Chinese Proverb

Silent Saturday

Advice to Writers by Billy Collins

Advice To Writers

by Billy Collins

Even if it keeps you up all night,

wash down the walls and scrub the floor

of your study before composing a syllable.

Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way.

Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration.

The more you clean, the more brilliant

your writing will be, so do not hesitate to take

to the open fields to scour the undersides

of rocks or swab in the dark forest

upper branches, nests full of eggs.

When you fiind your way back home

and stow the sponges and brushes under the sink,

you will behold in the light of dawn

the immaculate altar of your desk,

a clean surface in the middle of a clean world.

From a small vase, sparkling blue, lift

a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet,

and cover pages with tiny sentences

like long rows of devoted ants

that followed you in from the woods.

From: "Sailing Alone Around the Room"

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

The photo is one of my three holey stones with holes made by water.

Blessings, Love & Peace,

~*~Marion~*~

November, Welcome!

Hey, everyone. Welcome to November in Louisiana. The air is cooler today and the mosquito population is dwindling slightly, but sure to surge after all the rain we had last week. Having had a dry summer, we had no fire ant mounds in the yard. After the rain about 20 mounds appeared overnight...fleas, too. Oh, how nature wants to take our money to kill vermin!

O, the moon-lady tonight is a pure, white bride, dropping her veil which flows like mist over all it touches---until it sighs softly down upon the bejeweled dewy grass. ~Marion, moonstruck yet again......

I've been reading the Tao and some Zen writings and Anne Michaels' poetry. I'll share a few quotes today then I'm back to my couch and reading. It's been a wild week here. All of our cats got sick with diarrhea (TMI, I know) and I was seriously thinking of giving them all away. Then we found out two had tapeworms (TMI, I know) so I had to give them ALL a pill---ONE little pill. Any of you ever tried to give a cat a pill? Well, it's just like every joke you ever read about it. After losing one of those $10 pills, I crumbled them up fine and put them in some tuna for each cat. Two of them gobbled it down and two of them looked up at me like, "Do you really think I'm stupid enough to fall for this dirty trick?" So I put away their dry food and told them (I'm sure they understood, right?) in no uncertain terms that they'll eat that friggin' drugged tuna fish or DIE of starvation!!!! It's just like having hard-headed kids again, except they purr while you're fussing at them to guilt you. I seriously considered joining a monastery for a few days there.

Verse 11 of

Tao Te Ching

Thirty spokes are joined together in a wheel,

but it is the center hole that allows the wheel to function.

We mold clay into a pot,

but it is the emptiness inside that makes the vessel useful.

We fashion wood for a house,

but it is the emptiness inside that makes it livable.

We work with the substantial,

but the emptiness is what we use.

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

Verse 11 from

"The Tao of Inner Peace"

"Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

I know Mardi Gras is a long time away, but I found this pattern online and used some of my heavy scrapbook paper to make some easy masks and then I found this synchronistic quote:

"You wear a mask and your face grows to fit it." ~George Orwell, 'Shooting An Elephant'

And this funny photo is my husband trying to teach Catfish to walk on a leash. (This cat really acts like a dog. It's uncanny. He does everything but bark!) It was a cool, quiet day and we heard one of our neighbors exclaim to her mother, "Oh my God, I think he's walking a CAT on a leash!!!" Ha! We're still laughing about it. The experiment didn't work too well. The cat ended up walking him around the yard. LOL!

And a stanza from a poem by Anne Michaels from her amazing poem, "What the Light Teaches":

"Language is how ghosts enter the world.

They twist into awkward positions

to squeeze through the black spaces.

The dead read backwards,

as in a mirror. They gather

in the white field and look up,

waiting for someone

to write their names.

Language remembers.

Out of obscurity, a word takes its place

in history. Even a word so simple

it's translatable: number. Oven.

Because all change is permanent,

we need words to raise ourselves

to new meaning: tea and dacha and river."

~From "Poems" by Anne Michaels, pages 121, 122

If you've never read this amazingly talented Canadian poet, then I highly recommend her books. This one, entitled simply "Poems" includes poetry from three of her books: "The Weight of Oranges", "Miner's Pond" and "Skin Divers". Each poem is like a gift.

Blessings, Peace, Love & Happiness,

~Marion~

Autumn Poetry

LODGED
By Robert Frost


The rain to the wind said,
"You push and I'll pelt."
They so smote the garden bed
that the flowers actually knelt,
and lay lodged --- though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.



~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~


In my young days I never
tasted sorrow. I wanted
to become a famous poet.
I wanted to get ahead
so I pretended to be sad.
Now I am old and have known
the depths of every sorrow,
and I am content to loaf
and enjoy the clear Autumn.


Hsin Ch'i Chi
From: "Life Prayers"



~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~


I will nurse this autumn carefully,
treat its brittleness gently,
smooth its crumbling edges, its weeping afternoons.


I will rise early and go to it,
wrap it in a soft cloth
and watch its breathing.


I will nurture this Autumn knowing
it is myelf
in a pure and golden form,
and that childlike
soft words will be brought bubbling up
to be recorded in the pattern of leaves
and the low fog coming across the bay...


Wendy Smyer Yu
From: "Life Prayers"



~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~


AUTUMN LOVE
By Li Ch'ing Chao


Search. Search. Seek. Seek.
Cold. Cold. Clear. Clear.
Sorrow. Sorrow. Pain. Pain.
Hot flashes. Sudden chills.
Stabbing pains. Slow agonies.
I can find no peace. I drink two cups, then three bowls,
Of clear wine until I can’t
Stand up against a gust of wind.
Wild geese fly over head.
They wrench my heart.
They were our friends in the old days.
Gold chrysanthemums litter
The ground, pile up, faded, dead.
This season I could not bear
To pick them.
All alone,
Motionless at my window,
I watch the gathering shadows.
Fine rain sifts through the wu-t’ung trees,
And drips, drop by drop, through the dusk.
What can I ever do now?
How can I drive off this word —
Hopelessness?


From: "Life Prayers"



~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~


UNRAVELING
By Marion


There are days, hours
when I lust after
Nothingness
the way
I used to lust
after Life.


I hang by a thread,
you know---
the one that holds
the proverbial garment
together.
It droops there, dangling,
that thread,
wanting me to pull
it, begging me
(I worry it with my fingernail---).
My finger itches, twitching
for that first timid tug, then
one firm yank---
and
it all
unravels.


10/28/09


~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Mary Karr, Memoirist and Poet Extraordinnaire

I own every book that Mary Karr has written and was very fortunate and excited to get an advance reading copy of "Lit", her newest memoir, to review for Amazon. The book is fabulous, just amazing. I just LOVE reading memoirs and this one was particularly compelling for me because she's also a poet. It comes out on November 3, 2009 and below is my review from Amazon.com. Her three memoirs in order are: "The Liar's Club", "Cherry", then "Lit". I highly recommend them all, along with her poetry. Love & Blessings ~Marion

I have to admit that Ms. Karr's "The Liars' Club: A Memoir" is one of my favorite books of all time. Memoirs are one of my favorite genres and being able to see behind the scenes in the life of a poet/writer is intriguing. I enjoyed reading "Cherry" and was thrilled when I saw that Ms. Karr had "Lit" coming out, taking up where "Cherry" left off. What I enjoyed most about this book was her lyrical, moving language and her fierce honesty. This couldn't have been an easy book to write because she holds nothing back and is brutally candid about her alcoholism and how it almost destroyed her, but more importantly, how she overcame her inner demons to find sobriety and success. She has several stories about her experiences in AA that had me either rolling with laughter or crying. The story about the woman, the frozen turkey and the vodka was side-splitting funny. I won't share the details because you need to buy the book and read it for yourself. It's overflowing with wit, humor, love, angst and wisdom.

Each chapter begins with a quote, most from poems, (and a few from some literary masterpieces) and I've discovered some amazing new poets from them. I've highlighted and dog-eared pages to refer back to in nearly every chapter. I like that she included a 'Contents' page and titled each of the 45 short chapters. The book is divided into four major sections:

I. Escape From The Tropic of Squalor

II. Flashdance

III. Self Help

IV. Being Who You Are Is Not A Disorder

Ultimately, this is a dazzling tale of redemption, liberation, grace and survival. By all accounts, Mary Karr should not have survived her hardscrabble life, but thank God she did because we are all richer for her life and her stories.

I also highly recommend her books of poetry, "Viper Rum (Poets, Penguin)", Sinners Welcome: Poems", "Abacus", and "The Devil's Tour". Thank you, Ms. Karr, from the bottom of my bookaholic, poet-heart, for having the guts to share your incredible, extraordinary journey with us.

Disgraceland
by Mary Karr


Before my first communion, I clung to doubt
as Satan spider-like stalked
the orb of dark surrounding Eden

for a wormhole into paradise.
God had formed me from gel in my mother’s womb,
injected by my dad’s smart shoot.

They swapped sighs until
I came, smaller than a bite of burger.
Quietly, I grew till my lungs were done

then the Lord sailed a soul
like a lit arrow to inhabit me.
Maybe that piercing

made me howl at birth,
or the masked creatures whose scalpel
cut a lightning bolt to free me.

I was hoisted by the heels and swatted, fed
and hauled around. Time-lapse photos show
my fingers grow past crayon outlines,

my feet come to fill spike heels.
Eventually, I lurched out
to kiss the wrong mouths, get stewed,

and sulk around. Christ always stood
to one side with a glass of water.
I swatted the sap away.

When my thirst got great enough to ask,
a clear stream welled up inside,
some jade wave buoyed me forward,

and I found myself upright
in the instant, with a garden
inside my own ribs aflourish.

There, the arbor leafs.
The vines push out plump grapes.
You are loved, someone said. Take that
and eat it.


~From: "Sinner's Welcome", page 6