Language gives light...

“Language is the house with lamplight in its windows, visible across fields.
Approaching, you can hear music; closer, smell
soup, bay leaves, bread – a meal for anyone
who has only his tongue left.
It’s a country; home; family:
abandoned; burned down; whole lines dead, unmarried.
For those who can’t read their way in the streets,
or in the gestures and faces of strangers,
language is the house to run to;
in wild nights, chased by dogs and other sounds,
when you’ve been lost a long time,
when you have no other place.” (Anne Michaels from:  “What the Light Teaches“ 128–9)

Now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now...

Sunlight on my Roses...

An abandoned Bluebird nest...

Moonflowers, always...

For Death by John O'Donohue

Fecund life here in Swamplandia...

Comfrey transplants a month or so ago.

Same Comfrey plants this week.

Wind chimes & sunrise through porch screen.

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.

__________________

Thus far, my family has avoided Corona.  I hope you can say the same.  Peace, love, prayers to those who have suffered illness, loss and the death of loved ones.  I feel your pain.

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

Remember by Joy Harjo - For Those of Us Who’ve Forgotten

Remember by Joy Harjo

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is.

Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. 

Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.

Remember your father. He is your life, also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.

Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.

Remember you are all people and all people
are you.

Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.

Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.

Remember language comes from this.

Remember the dance language is, that life is.

Remember.

Meyer’s Lemon blossoms.

Meyer’s Lemon & blossoms

Comfrey flowers

My Flowers are my Poetry

This Shit Just Got Real

I am doing okay in lockdown, as it’s so inappropriately called.  I own my home, own over 1,000 books, can pay my bills for months, and have an acre of land around my home where I grow vegetables.  My cabinets are stocked.  I bought 3 cases of TP right before this pandemic hit.  I own guns and ammo should the world go nuts and chaos ensues.  I doubt seriously that will happen, though.  I was a Campfire Girl...Always be prepared!  Honestly, I once started a campfire in the pouring rain.  I got two MFing badges for that feat.  I’m a country girl.  

BUT, for most of my life, I lived paycheck to paycheck like many of you do.  I feel for those who are out of work and broke because I’ve been there.  I feel your fear, uncertainty and confusion.  I sincerely pray for this virus to die out soon.  I pray for God’s mercy for humankind.  I pray for you to not fear and to stay well.  I’ve never seen anything like this in my lifetime.  It’s a time of reflection on the fragility of life and trust in God.  Nature prevails.  The seasons still change, the trees are covered in blooms and new leaves.  

Know this:  life goes on and this, too, shall pass.  Love, peace, calm and hugs,  xo, ~Marion 

Hmmmm, I’m not so sure about this, but I’m staying home anyway.

My favorite 30 year old cookbook that tells you how to cook anything & everything from scratch.  

City Park in New Orleans after Madrid Gras.  Beads in the trees...

Truth.  And the truck drivers & grocery store employees who work tirelessly.

Bored? Never!

My solitary life is never boring.  Readers, poets, gardeners and creative people are never bored!

A really good book to read.  It’s truly a meditation...

It’s  Spring!  Plant flowers and veggies and trees.  Take photos of the new flowers blooming.  Plant tomatoes, herbs and lettuce for your own salads.  Write about this strange time we’re experiencing in your journal for future generations to read.  Collage a can, a box or a notebook cover.  Write a story or a poem about your aloneness.  Color in a coloring book with gel pens.  Organize your craft supplies or your closet. Prepare a will, just in case.

 Call and check on friends and family members often!

Pray for our leaders, our fellow Americans/the world and especially our healthcare workers.  Pray for healing of the sick.  Meditate on the fragility of life and the mighty strength of Nature!  Read those philosophy books, the Bible, Rumi and Khalil Gibran.  Expand your mind/feed your head by reading books outside your comfort zone.

And keep your sense of humor and laugh often!

A can I painted and collaged.  I get my material from catalogs & magazines.

A coloring page from Laurel Burch’s coloring book that I colored this week.

Lemons on my Meyer’s Lemon tree.  My first Lemon tree!!!!! 

Scooby, our Pitbull, who likes to sniff the wind for enemies, I pontificate...

Two of my Blythe girls, holding hands.

My favorite comic, Calvin & Hobbs.

Enough Words? by Rumi

Enough Words?
Rumi

How does a part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?

Don’t try to put out a fire
by throwing on more fire!
Don’t wash a wound with blood!

No matter how fast you run,
your shadow more than keeps up.
Sometimes, it’s in front!

Only full, overhead sun
diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you!
What hurts you, blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.

I can explain this, but it would break
the glass cover on your heart,
and there’s no fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.

When from that tree, feathers and wings sprout
on you, be quieter than a dove.
Don’t open your mouth for even a cooooooo.

When a frog slips into the water, the snake
cannot get it. Then the frog climbs back out
and croaks, and the snake moves toward him again.

Even if the frog learned to hiss, still the snake
would hear through the hiss the information
he needed, the frog voice underneath.

But if the frog could be completely silent,
then the snake would go back to sleeping,
and the frog could reach the barley.

The soul lives there in the silent breath.

And that grain of barley is such that,
when you put it in the ground,
it grows.

Are these enough words,
or shall I squeeze more juice from this?
Who am I, my friend?

Taken from The Essential Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks

February is STILL the Cruelest Month

Sunny & Annie Marie, Blythe dolls...totally random.

"April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers......"

From:  "The Waste Land, (The Burial of the Dead)" by T. S. Eliot

February is The Cruelest Month

(with apologies to T. S. Eliot)

By Marion Lawless

February is the cruelest month

breeding death and stygian darkness.

Hungry Robins peck the unforgiving ground

and Cardinals perch listlessly on dry, brittle branches.

February is a miserable month---

colorless, frigid, gloomy and bleak.

Depression hangs in the air like

cigarette smoke in a honky-tonk bar---

Sadness staggers from room to empty room

dragging heavy, lethargic feet.

Time steals friends and tosses them to

the incinerator, burning them to bitter, black ash...

Suffering grabs you by the throat and chokes

you until you gasp and pant for air. . .

You silently whisper a cry for help---

and who shows up? 

Despair.

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

January 2020 in Pictures & Sister Cat Poem

Scooby, 60 pound Pit Bull, in my lap today.

Little Debbie, warming by the stove.  Haven’t turned on the heat yet!

My Azalea already blooming!  It’s been a mild Winter here in Swamplandia.

A surprise Hyacinth I forgot I planted years ago, making a comeback.

Daunting Drusilla Blythe in red & fake Blythe, Macey, in blue.

HILARIOUS!  As a grammarian, poet, word painter, voracious reader & retired legal secretary, I must say this is, so far, THE funniest thing I’ve read this year.  If you’re offended, then don’t fucking read it!  Happy 2020!

Sister Cat

Cat stands at the fridge,
Cries loudly for milk.
But I've filled her bowl.
Wild cat, I say, Sister,
Look, you have milk.
I clink my fingernail
Against the rim. Milk.
With down and liver,
A word I know she hears.
Her sad miaow. She runs
To me. She dips
In her whiskers but
Doesn't drink. As sometimes
I want the light on
When it is on. Or when
I saw the woman walking
toward my house and
I thought there's Frances.
Then looked in the car mirror
To be sure. She stalks
The room. She wants. Milk
Beyond milk. World beyond
This one, she cries.

—Frances Mayes

Winter Poems, 2020

I planted this giant Water Oak as a 4 foot tall twig 25 years ago.

My backyard on a sunny Winter day last week.

Winter Trees
By Marion Lawless

The trees are all bare tonight,
their gangly limbs, 
bony-fingered arrows
pointing to the ghostly full moon
shining luminously overhead
casting murky shadows
on the frozen ground.

Unearthly they seem---
like beings from another realm,
vulnerable and naked,
yet sure of who they are---
safe,
watched over 
by the stars.

<><><><><><><><><><>
  
"Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?" ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982 

**********

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.