Matins by Louise Gluck

Tried to capture morning sunlight, but only caught herb shadows on my veranda.

Matins
By Louise Gluck

You want to know how I spend my time?
I walk the front lawn, pretending
to be weeding. You ought to know
I’m never weeding, on my knees, pulling
clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact
I’m looking for courage, for some evidence
my life will change, though
it takes forever, checking
each clump for the symbolic
leaf, and soon the summer is ending, already
the leaves turning, always the sick trees
going first, the dying turning
brilliant yellow, while a few dark birds perform
their curfew of music. You want to see my hands?
As empty now as at the first note.
Or was the point always
to continue without a sign?

from:  "Louise Gluck, Poems 1962 - 2012", page 267

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Matins:

noun

1. a service of morning prayer in various churches, especially the Anglican Church.

   • a service forming part of the traditional Divine Office of the Western Christian Church, originally said (or chanted) at or after midnight, but historically often held with lauds on the previous evening.
   • literary

     the morning song of birds.

Nouns of Assemblage - A List Poem by Marion

 

 

Nouns of Assemblage

A List Poem Assembled by Marion

A murmuration of starlings

An exaltation of larks
A murder of crows
A parliament of owls
A pitying of doves
An unkindness of ravens
A wilderness of monkeys
A bench of bishops
A desert of lapwing
A clowder of cats
A drunkship of cobblers
A barren of mules
A fall of woodcock

Aren’t words beyond amazing?  I have to say that nouns of assemblage are mind-blowing, fascinating and strangely curious.  These are my favorites from a very long list I found in an old book I own from the 1800's.

xo,

Marion

My newest journal.

When Someone Deeply Listens to You by John Fox

 

 

When Someone Deeply Listens To You

When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you've had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind's eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!

When someone deeply listens to you
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.

John Fox

 

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

I first read this poem years ago in a magnificent book:  "Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life". I highly recommend it.  I have several copies and have given away at least a dozen.  You can find it used, very cheap at Amazon. It has poetry, essays and lots of great quotes.

I used to work with a woman who never, ever let me finish a sentence without, first, interrupting me and, then, taking my story and turning it around to be about her.  Every single time I talked to her she did this and she seemed totally clueless at how rude she was.  If I began, "My daughter said...." she immediately interrupted and continued, "My frickin' daughter got drunk last weekend and blah, blah, blah...."  You get the picture.  I worked with her for over 6 years and never once got to finish a complete sentence...and sadly, I am not exaggerating. I tried to avoid her at all cost.  I've worked with hundreds of people and she was the worst, although I've known others who did the same thing. 

I believe that deeply listening to someone is a gift that few people possess.  If nothing else, I learned from this women how NOT to listen.  I became consciously aware of how I talked to people, trying not to interrupt or turn the conversation away from them to myself.  Give yourself the gift of conscious listening.  You won't regret it.

xo,

Marion

 

 

"My wife says I never listen to her. At least I think that's what she said." ~Author Unknown

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 "The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention." ~Thich Nhat Hanh

 

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Amaryllis by Karina Borowicz

"We walk on air, Watson.
There is only the moon, embalmed in phosphorus.
There is only a crow in a tree. Make notes." 

(underlines mine)  ~Sylvia Plath, from her poem 'The Detective'.

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

AMARYLLIS
By Karina Borowicz

Something with feathers
or possibly fangs
is curled up, raw
munching the starch
inside the bulb
in the dark drawer

or a flower waits
in the papery egg
that crackles like an onion
petals collecting themselves
in the yolk, composing
themselves from the red
and yellow glints that fall
on its shell as it drowses
by the windowsill

then, when it finally opens
there is no snake springing
from the cave of the clay pot
no sharp-shinned hawklet
building a nest laced with bones
on the cliff of my kitchen shelf

when the red fist defiantly opens
there's nothing
but opening

from:  "The Bees Are Waiting" by Karina Borowicz, page 84

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

Goodbye August, Welcome September

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.” ~ Roald Dahl

Autumn
By Amy Lowell

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.

from:  "Pictures of the Floating World", 1919

+++++

August has been wet, hot, humid, green, beautiful and bountiful.  I'll miss you, August, but I welcome your cooler pal, September, and in her suitcase, Fall.  xo

August 1 sun setting from my son-in-law's office on Music Row in Nashville.  See my camera?  :-)

Datura Moonflower with her curly-edged self.

Three of the hundreds of Morning Glories that bloomed in my back yard.

About mid-August, glorious afternoon storms began with amazing clouds.

This one brought buckets of rain...

Cloud-love & thunder-love.

Letting my freak flags fly.  No, really, they're my Tibetan Buddhist Prayer flags.

Passionflower.  I just can't pass these without sniffing them...still smells like grape kool-aid.

Goodbye, August.  See you next year, I hope.

++++++++

"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.... September is dressing herself in showy dahlias and splendid marigolds and starry zinnias. October, the extravagant sister, has ordered an immense amount of the most gorgeous forest tapestry for her grand reception." ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Late Prayer by Jane Hirshfield

My bird feeder holding a Passionflower & Dragon Wing Begonia's flowers---

 

= = = = =

 

Late Prayer

By Jane Hirshfield

 

Tenderness does not choose its own uses.

It goes out to everything equally,

circling rabbit and hawk.

Look: in the iron bucket,

a single nail, a single ruby -

all the heavens and hells.

They rattle in the heart and make one sound.

 

 

from:  "Nine Gates - Entering the Mind of Poetry - Essays by Jane Hirshfield", page 211

 

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A beautiful, soul-searing book.

 

 

Hearing the cuckoo,

even in Kyoto

I long for Kyoto.    ~Basho

 

 

I post my favorite haiku by Basho on this rainy, stormy Saturday in which my oldest grandson is on his way to his first year of college two hours away.  I have two daughters and he was born when I was in my early 40's, so it was like having the little boy I never had.  Oh, the fun we had!  I can't count the number of times we went to the zoo and the book store---his favorite two places.  He still loves the book store, but not the zoo quite as much.  :-)  He taught me how to be a grammy and I taught him how to see (a little bit, I hope).  I asked him the other day what he looked forward to most about college (expecting something about girls, freedom, etc.), and he said, "I'm eager to get back to school to learn more stuff."  Yes, he's my boy. 

 

"Even in Kyoto, I long for Kyoto......."  Indeed.

 

xo,

Marion

 

= = = = =

 

"Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild." ~Welsh Proverb

 

= = = = =

 

"Grandchildren are God’s way of compensating us for growing old." ~Mary H. Waldrip

 

= = = = =

 

Taylor & April at college.  (He's 6'1"...he got my long legs.)

 

 

A Morning Glory heart-leaf...

 

 





Denise Levertov---Extraordinary Poet

"Old River" by my sister, Margaret.  There's nothing like Louisiana sky...unless it's sky & water.

 

 

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*  Remember Mallarme's words that "Poems are not made with ideas, they are made with words."

*  Beware of consciously searching for the original; nothing is more likely to lead to the banal.  The fresh word is not necessarily the odd word.

*  Strength of feeling, reverence for mystery, and clarity of intellect must be kept in balance with one another.  Neither the passive nor the active must dominate, they must work in conjunction, as in a marriage.

~Denise Levertov on the craft of poetry, from "Women of the Beat Generation", page 205

^  ^  ^  ^  ^

Morning Glories, tangled & dewy, August 2006

 

 

Captive Flower

By Denise Levertov

 

This morning's morning-glory
trying to thrust
through the wire mesh towards the sun
is trapped
     half-open.
I ease it back
to see better its unfurling,

but only slowly it resigns
the dream. Its petals
are scarred.
I had not thought myself
a jailer

**********

HuntingThe Phoenix
By Denise Levertov

Leaf through discolored manuscripts,
make sure no words
lie thirsting, bleeding,
waiting for rescue. No:
old loves half-
articulated, moments forced
out of the stream of perception
to play “statue,”
and never released —
they had no blood to shed.
You must seek
the ashy nest itself
if you hope to find
charred feathers, smoldering flightbones,
and a twist of singing flame
rekindling.

**********

A Blessing

By Denise Levertov

 

'Your river is in full flood,' she said,

'Work on---use these weeks well!'

She was leaving, with springy step, a woman

herself renewed, her life risen

up from the root of despair she'd

bent low to touch,

risen empowered. Her work now

could embrace more; she imagined anew

the man's totem tree and its taproot,

the woman's chosen lichen, patiently

composting rock, another's

needful swamp, the tribal migrations---

swaying skeins rotating their leaders,

pace unflagging---and the need

of each threatened thing

to be. She had met

with the council

of all beings.

'You give me

my life,' she said to the just-written poems,

long-legged foals surprised to be standing.

 

The poet waving farewell

is not so sure of the river.

Is it indeed

strong-flowing, generous? Was there largesse

for alluvial, black, seed-hungry fields?

Or had a flash-flood

swept down these tokens

to be plucked ashore, rescued

only to watch the waters recede

from stones of an arid variety?

 

But the traveler's words

are leaven. They work in the poet.

The river swiftly

goes on braiding its heavy tresses,

brown and flashing,

as far as the eye can see.

 

From: "Breathing the Water", pages 6 - 7

 

**********

I have this entire book of short essays highlighted, dog-eared and underlined.  It's a word-feast...like chocolate truffles or something way better.  :-)

 

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Stone fence in Nashville, Tennessee - I immediately thought of the following poem when we drove by this fence on the way to see my granddaughter's new school, Lipscomb Academy.

 

Mending Wall

Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.  The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side.  It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors?  Isn’t it
Where there are cows?  But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.'  I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself.  I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'

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

Yes, they do.  I have a wooden fence and wouldn't have any other kind.

xo,

Marion

"If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be

 average." ~Derek Walcott

Leaf hearts, wet with morning dew.

Good Morning, Moonflower

Let Morning Come

By Marion

Let the river flow

unimpeded, night black,

cradled within

strong, willow-sewn banks.

Let the crickets sing

ancient, mystical

tunes, sweet and time-kissed

into my awakened ears.

Let the moonlady’s silver

beams rain down

and suffuse my

twisted, ominous dreams.

Let the candle flame pull me into

its dancing shadow.  May

the flame illuminate

my jaded, somnolent mind.

Let the rivers flow.

     Let the crickets sing.

           Let the moonlady glimmer.

               Let the candlelight shimmer.

Please, let morning come.

January/April 2012



Early morning sunlight on my Datura Moonflower---

A bee stops by for breakfast---

If it tastes as good as it smells, he's in culinary ecstasy---

A few more minutes of sunlight and the Moonflower will be gone---

xo,

Marion

^  ^  ^  ^  ^

"The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him." ~Auguste Rodin

O Captain! My Captain! - Walt Whitman

Robin Williams.  From "Dead Poets Society."

 

 

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!

By Walt Whitman

O CAPTAIN! my Captain, our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

 

But O heart! heart! heart!

    O the bleeding drips of read,

        Where on the deck my Captain lies,

            Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up---for you the flag is flung---for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths---for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

 

Here Captain! dear father!

    The arm beneath your head!

        It is some dream that on the deck,

            You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

 

Exult O shores and ring O bells!

    But I with mournful tread,

        Walk the deck my Captain lies,

            Fallen Cold and Dead.

1865

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

R.I.P. dear Robin Williams.  "Dead Poets Society" is one of my favorite movies of all time for obvious reasons.  What to say when such a talented, beloved person is dead by his own hand?  Words seem inadequate yet they're all we have.  Who can know the despair, depression and suffering of another person?  Nobody, that's who.  I pray for his family.  It's all I've got.

xo,
Marion


'"O Captain! My Captain!" is a poem written by Walt Whitman in 1865. The poem is classified as an elegy, or mourning poem, and was written to honor Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States.'  ~from Wikipedia

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'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

My blue Morning Glory in black & white.  The bees left pollen footprints...