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

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"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

My Indigo by Li-Young Lee

Angel Trumpet flower - Artist Unknown

 

My Indigo

It's late. I've come
to find the flower which blossoms
like a saint dying upside down.
The rose won't do, nor the iris.
I've come to find the moody one, the shy one,
downcast, grave, and isolated.
Now, blackness gathers in the grass,
and I am on my hands and knees.
What is its name?

Little sister, my indigo,
my secret, vaginal and sweet,
you unfurl yourself shamelessly
toward the ground. You burn. You live
a while in two worlds
at once.
     

Li-Young Lee

_____________________

I planted a Sacred Datura Moonflower last year from a tiny seed.  It grew into a large bush with woody branches and fragrant white bell-like flowers that hung under the leaves, upside down.  I could not believe I had grown this amazing being.  This year I found two more flowers of this variety...one is pale pink and the other is pale yellow.  I planted the seeds.  The plants are now over five feet tall with leaves larger than my hands.  One of them has what looks like string beans hanging under the leaves.  I await the first opening of the first flowers each night.  Did I not tell you they only bloom at night?  They are night creatures, like the moon...shy and unassuming.  How is it that these amazing creatures appear from such tiny seeds?  It is a mystery.  I do not want to know the whys of it or the hows.  I watch the night butterflies (moths) drink from my flowers.   They know the mystery but are not talking.

 

 

xoxo,

Marion

 

 

"Look at us, said the violets blooming at her feet, all last winter we slept in the seeming death but at the right time God awakened us, and here we are to comfort you." ~Edward Payson Rod

I'd Love To Be A Fairy's Child by Robert Graves

For John Milton's "Good Luck Befriend Thee" by illustrator Warwick Goble

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“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”  ~Albert Einstein

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“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”  ~Albert Einstein

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I'd Love To Be A Fairy's Child
Robert Graves

Children born of fairy stock
never need for shirt or frock,
never want for food or fire,
always get their heart's desire:
jingle pockets full of gold,
marry when they're seven years old.
Every fairy child may keep
two strong ponies and ten sheep;
all have houses, each his own,
built of brick or granite stone;
they live on cherries, they run wild--
I'd love to be a Fairy's child.

+++

I have been blissfully lost for the past few weeks immersed in reading several books.  I re-read "A Discovery of Witches" by the talented historian/novelist, Deborah Harkness, and the sequel, "Shadow of Night".  I fell into this brilliant tale and only came up for a bit of sleep and food.  Oh, the inexpressible joy of reading/experiencing a well-written book!  I have to wait a year or more for the last book in her "All-Souls Trilogy", but it will be worth the wait.  She's an amazing writer with a magnificent imagination and her writing is pure prose.

After reading her books I felt a bit lost until I discovered that one of my favorite authors had a new book out:  "Some Kind of Fairy Tale" by Graham Joyce.  I own all of his books and highly recommend them each and every one.  We've had rain for a week or more, but the sun came out for a few hours today.  What better weather for reading than a rainy day?  

Wishing you blessings & a good book to read.  ~Marion

Forgetfulness by Billy Collins

Willow Rose and Molly Mace, two of my Blythe girls

Forgetfulness
By Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

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

I forget my seven Blythe dolls' names.  I have them written in a notebook to refresh my memory.  Sometimes forgetfulness is a good thing.  But sadly, it can't be selective.  I'd love to make a list of things I'd LOVE to forget.  Wouldn't that be awesome?  I have been re-reading quite a few books I'd read years ago.  That's a plus for forgetfulness.  I get to read my entire book collection and it's all new.

It's been a hot, hot, humid summer here in the swamps, but at least we're used to it.  I feel for those of you up north who are experiencing the heat and aren't used to it.  I'm pretty much hibernating indoors and reading except when I go outside every day to water my plants and new trees.  Maybe, if I'm lucky, we'll take a vaction to the beach before summer is out.  I hope so.

xo,
Marion

To Waiting by W. S. Merwin

I found this work of art at Pinterest.  I don't know who the artist is.  If you do, please let me know.  It's an amazing watercolor painting. Can't you just feel the breeze blowing that gauzy curtain?

To Waiting
by W. S. Merwin

You spend so much of your time
expecting to become
someone else
always someone
who will be different
someone to whom a moment
whatever moment it may be
at last has come
and who has been
met and transformed
into no longer being you
and so has forgotten you

meanwhile in your life
you hardly notice
the world around you
lights changing
sirens dying along the buildings
your eyes intent
on a sight you do not see yet
not yet there
as long as you
are only yourself

with whom as you
recall you were
never happy
to be left alone for long

from 'Present Company'

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

I'm still on a summer reading binge.  Today I'm reading:

"Spring Fever" by Mary Kay Andrews;
"The Night Journal" by Elizabeth Crook;
"The Crooked Inheritance:  Poems" by Marge Piercy, and
"The Name of This Book is Secret" by Pseudomymous Bosch. 

(Why, yes, I do read several books at once...The last one is a children's book I'm reading before giving it to my granddaughter...she's in 3rd grade, and reads at 6th grade level, but I always read the books I send her so we can talk about them together). 

It's been raining almost every afternoon here in the swamps which makes for perfect reading weather and humidity so thick you can cut it with a butter knife.  My yard loves it as do my tomatoes and herbs.  Me, I'm staying close to the air conditioner, book in hand.

Any of you reading anything good?  Let me know if you are.  I'm always on the lookout for new authors/books. 

Happy reading!

xo,
Marion

"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading." ~Logan Pearsall Smith, Trivia, 1917

Our Town by Iris Dement and Emmylou Harris

This song is for a good friend.  I love Iris Dement and Emmylou more than white bread and long gravy.  Their voices are perfect in this amazing song. (My awesome playlist is gone due to forces beyond my control, but I'm working on a new one.)

They don't make singers like this anymore.  Enjoy.

xoxo,

Marion

Lyrics:

Our Town

By Iris Dement

And you know the sun's settin' fast,

And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
'Cause your heart's bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.

Up the street beside that red neon light,
That's where I met my baby on one hot summer night.
He was the tender and I ordered a beer,
It's been forty years and I'm still sitting here.

But you know the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
'Cause your heart's bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.

It's here I had my babies and I had my first kiss.
I've walked down Main Street in the cold morning mist.
Over there is where I bought my first car.
It turned over once but then it never went far.

And I can see the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
'Cause your heart's bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.

I buried my Mama and I buried my Pa.
They sleep up the street beside that pretty brick wall.
I bring them flowers about every day,
but I just gotta cry when I think what they'd say.

If they could see how the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
'Cause your heart's bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.

Now I sit on the porch and watch the lightning-bugs fly.
But I can't see too good, I got tears in my eyes.
I'm leaving tomorrow but I don't wanna go.
I love you, my town, you'll always live in my soul.

But I can see the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on, I gotta kiss you goodbye,
But I'll hold to my lover,
'Cause my heart's 'bout to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to my town, to my town.
I can see the sun has gone down on my town, on my town,
Goodnight.
Goodnight.

What To Remember When Waking by David Whyte

What to Remember When Waking
By David Whyte

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

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

I've been away a while, mired in life:  drawing, painting, scribbling, reading ('Les Miserables' by Victor Hugo, all 1463 pages), crying (that awesome full moon), watching 6 seasons of "Northern Exposure" and the last season of "True Blood".  And watering my plants/flowers/tomatoes.  That about sums up my last month.  It's almost too hot and humid for life, but we walk around the block early every morning, dodging stinging horseflies the size of small birds.  It's a trip. 

I love you all.  Keep on trucking and stay cool.

xoxo,
Marion


"In summer, the song sings itself." ~William Carlos Williams


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"Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability." ~Sam Keen

Up To The Mountain by Patty Griffin

Photo collage on my desk.

Up To The Mountain
By Patty Griffin (#28 on the playlist at the bottom of my blog)

I went up to the mountain
Because you asked me to
Up over the clouds
To where the sky was blue
I could see all around me
Everywhere
I could see all around me
Everywhere

Sometimes I feel like
I've never been nothing but tired
And I'll be walking
Till the day I expire
Sometimes I lay down
No more can I do
But then I go on again
Because you ask me to

Some days I look down
Afraid I will fall
And though the sun shines
I see nothing at all
Then I hear your sweet voice, oh
Oh, come and then go, come and then go
Telling me softly
You love me so

The peaceful valley
Just over the mountain
The peaceful valley
Few come to know
I may never get there
Ever in this lifetime
But sooner or later
It's there I will go
Sooner or later
It's there I will go.

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

Despair is my shadow-twin.

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

"Today I felt pass over me
A breath of wind from the wings of madness."  ~Charles Baudelaire

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Herb Tea & Poetry!!

This morning's herb harvest from my yard.

Patriotism
By Ellie Schoenfeld

My country is this dirt
that gathers under my fingernails
when I am in the garden.
The quiet bacteria and fungi,
all the little insects and bugs
are my compatriots. They are
idealistic, always working together
for the common good.
I kneel on the earth
and pledge my allegiance
to all the dirt of the world,
to all of that soil which grows
flowers and food
for the just and unjust alike.
The soil does not care
what we think about or who we love.
It knows our true substance,
of what we are really made.
I stand my ground on this ground,
this ground which will
ultimately
recruit us all
to its side.

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

I read once that to be a gardener, one must have a cast-iron back with a hinge in it.  Well, I have no such thing, but I do have a small wooden child's chair painted 5 colors that I sit in to cut my herbs, plant stuff or pull weeds.  I wear my hot pink plastic shoes, my word shirt (a long-sleeved, old, men's dress shirt I wrote poems on) and a huge, battered straw hat.  I make quite the dashing figure.  LOL!  Where there's a will, there's a way. 

So, how about that million-watt moon last night?  I saw where it was the brightest full moon this year and won't be that bright (close to earth) again until 2029.  I may not make that one, but I sure enjoyed this one.  It was magically delicious shining through my gauzy curtains and spilling onto the floor.  I slept on the couch by my picture window so I could moonbathe and moongaze.  I was awake because my cats have been going apeshit all week.  I'm guessing it's the moon for them, too.  I have a nice moonglow about me today.  ;-)

We took our 15 year old grandson to see "The Avengers" yesterday.  It was just plain awesome.  We clapped, laughed, screamed and sighed when it was over.  All the things one wants from a movie, right?

Off to wash those herbs and dry them.  (Ben, this batch is for your tea...I'll have it to you in a week or two).

Blessings & Love,

xoxo,
Marion

PS:  I garden organically and have a grasshopper invasion.  Of all things, they're eating up my Peppermint and Spearmint only.  If anyone has any tips on getting rid of them, please clue me in.  (Cussing does not work, I've tried....)

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"My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant's point of view."  ~H. Fred Dale

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"Gardening is about enjoying the smell of things growing in the soil, getting dirty without feeling guilty, and generally taking the time to soak up a little peace and serenity." ~Lindley Karstens, noproblemgarden.com

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"Coffee.  Garden.  Coffee.  Does a good morning need anything else?"  ~Betsy Cañas Garmon

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The Ravine by Cyrus Cassells

My peach Canna after a shower last week.

The Ravine
By Cyrus Cassells

In my fifth
holy year on earth,

undeterred,
I climbed out of a corpse-filled,

breakspirit ravine,
clutching the roots of trees

(so beautiful,
the god-tall cypresses,

the grandfather pines
in that part of the Crimea),

and groped my way, gingerly,
toward my twilit village,

the lone, itinerant survivor.
You understand the pull,

the rose light of home
is unkillable.

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Everyone says to me--you have such a green thumb.  Look at all of your plants, vegetables, flowers and herbs.  I nod and smile and do not tell them that I have killed many more plants than I will ever grow.  To create life is to experience death.  To live this life, one must persevere.

Support poets.  Buy poetry!!

Happy May,
~Marion


"When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other." ~Chinese Proverb