Japan by Billy Collins

A Tobacco Moth, having supper at my Moonflower last summer.

Japan
by Billy Collins

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It’s the one about the one-ton
temple bell
with the moth sleeping on the surface***,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it into the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

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

***Haiku by the Japanese poet and painter Buson (1715 - 1783): 

"On the one-ton temple bell
A moon-moth, folded into sleep,
sits still."

(Translated by X. J. Kennedy)

From:  "The Norton Anthology of Poetry", page 1190

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

It's storming here in the swamps of my Louisiana.  Glorious shiny sheets of shimmering rain (I dare you to say that 3 times, really fast) are covering my world.  The drought is officially over.  I'm headed to my favorite cozy chair to read poetry, drink coffee and then read some more.  Oh, happy day!  :-)

xoxo,
~Marion


"An ordinary man can... surround himself with two thousand books... and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy." ~Augustine Birrell
 
 
"Let your bookcases and your shelves be your gardens and your pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh." ~Judah Ibn Tibbon

The Moment by Margaret Atwood

Edited and with an introduction by Sina Queyras - Foreword by Molly Peacock

The Moment
By Margaret Atwood

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

********************************
The only thing I used to know about Canada was that it was up North and very cold.  The first person I met from Canada was Renee Khan at Circling My Head and we became good friends.  Renee died of cancer over a year ago.  I knew her less than a year, but knowing her changed my life.  She was an angel on earth, always encouraging and uplifting others in spite of her own pain and tragedy.  I still recommend her blog because it will open your heart and feed your soul.  Her daughter continues to post there ever so often.
 
Then I met Erin and felt as if I'd found a soulmate and fellow traveler on my poetic journey.  She just gave me this amazing book of Canadian poets which I read from cover to cover.  It's overflowing with luminous, fabulous, awesome poems, most by people I'd never heard of.  I only knew three of the poets in the book. The foreword by Molly Peacock (one of my favorite poets) is enlightening.  I highly recommend this book.
 
I also have to mention my same-name friend, Marion.  She's another of my sweet, precious Canadian friends.  She blogs beautifully about nature and her life's journey. 
 
I'm in the midst of culling books and getting organized...a malady which hits me annually as Fall nears. I read this sentence recently:  “Everyone gets organized at some point, they just might not be around for it,"  and I had a mental image of myself dead and my poor children having to go through my thousands of books.....so I'm determined to downsize my book collection to hundreds of books, not counting my poetry, of course.  Yesterday I filled my dining room table with piles of books and Ray boxed them up and took them to the library for the twice weekly sale before I could change my mind.  I feel lighter, much lighter.  As my Mama always says, "You can't take it with you when you go."  My closet is next, God help me. 
 
Those of you in the U.S., I hope you have a wonderful, relaxing Labor Day weekend!!
 
Love & Blessings,
Marion
 
 
"A house without books is like a room without windows." ~Heinrich Mann

The Moon by Robert Bly

Hazy moon, tangled in trees by Marion.

The Moon
Robert Bly

After writing poems all day,
I go off to see the moon in the pines.
Far in the woods I sit down against a pine.
The moon has her porches turned to face the light,
But the deep part of her house is in the darkness.

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

Dear August:

Goodbye, au revoir, farewell.

Piss off,
Marion

Dearest September:

I eagerly await your imminent cool arrival.

Truly yours,
Marion

To Make a Prairie by Emily Dickinson

My Wisteria in Spring---breakfast for a fat, hungry bumble bee.

To Make a Prairie
By Emily Dickinson

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
one clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
if bees are few.

Interiors by Stephen Dunn

Cards are from my Rider-Waite Tarot deck.

Interiors
By Stephen Dunn

In New Orleans, a Bed and Breakfast in a seamy part of
town.  Dentist’s chair the seat of honor in the living room.
Dark, the drapes closed, a lamp’s three-way bulb clicked just
once. I’m inside someone’s version of inside. All the guests
looking like they belong. Muffled hilarity coming from one
of the other rooms. Paintings everywhere, on the walls, the
floor.  Painted by the proprietress who, on the side, reads the
Tarot. In her long black gown she doesn’t mind telling me
things look rather dismal. Something about the Queen of
Swords and the Hanged Man. I wake early the next morning
for a flight. 5 A.M. She’s sitting in the dentist’s chair, reading a
book about the end of the century. Says a man like me needs
a proper breakfast. Wants to know everything I dreamed.
This, I tell her, I think I dreamed this.

From: “Good Poems, American Places” selected by Garrison Keillor, page 125

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

I have Garrison Keillor's previous two collections of selected poetry and they're amazing---overflowing with awesome poems ("Good Poems" & "Good Poems for Hard Times").  I scooped up this newest collection, "Good Poems, American Places" from the new book shelf at the library today and it's as good as the other two.  I've already marked about five poems to share.  I'll be adding it to my collection when it comes out in paperback. 

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Sunset at Hodges Gardens State Park

The Summer Day
By Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?




My house spider, suspended on her delicate web.



One Need Not Be A Chamber to be Haunted by Emily Dickinson

Brumidi Corridors are the vaulted, ornately-decorated corridors on the first floor of the Senate wing in the U. S. Capitol.

One Need Not Be a Chamber to be Haunted
By Emily Dickinson

One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.

Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter
In lonesome place.

Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartment,
Be horror’s least.

The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O’erlooking a superior spectre
More near.

"The Leaf and the Cloud" by Mary Oliver

My favorite shy, blushing rose.

6.

And how shall we speak of love
except in the splurge of roses, and the long body
of the river
shining in its silk froth;

and what could be more wonderful
than the agility and the reaching of the fingers of Hannah,
who is only seven days old;

and what could be more comforting than to fold grief
like a blanket---
to fold anger like a blanket;
with neat corners---
to put them into a box of words?

From:  "Work", section 6, page 13.  "The Leaf and the Cloud" by Mary Oliver

____________________________

One of my roses after a shower.

7.

The high-piled plum-colored storm-heavy clouds
are approaching.
The fly mumbles against the glass.

This is the world.

The hot little bluebirds in the box are getting ready to fly.
This is the world.

The sweet in the parsnip
waits for our praise.

The dragonfly lives its life
without a single error, it also
waits for our praise.

The pale-green moths are pressings
against the screen, fluttering, they are
dying to get in to press their papery bodies
into the light.

This is the world.

From:  "Gravel", section 7, page 43, "The Leaf and the Cloud" by Mary Oliver

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

"The Leaf and the Cloud" by Mary Oliver is an amazing, breathtaking book-length poem/meditation on mortality as seen through the mirror of nature.  I wish I could post the entire 53 pages of the book, it's so moving, enlightening and astonishing.  I've had this book on my shelf for years and just recently got around to reading it when I discovered it tucked away behind some novels.  I'm so glad I found it. 

Gift by Czeslaw Milosz

One of my ruby-throated Hummingbirds.

Gift
By Czeslaw Milosz

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

From:  "Teaching With Fire:  Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Teach", page 159

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

From Preface to "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem. . ."

All Things Pass by Timothy Leary

All Things Pass
By Timothy Leary, homage to Lao Tzu

All things pass

A sunrise does not last all morning

All things pass

 A cloudburst does not last all day
All things pass
Nor a sunset all night

But Earth... sky... thunder...
wind... fire... lake...
mountain... water...
These always change

And if these do not last
Do man’s visions last?
Do man’s illusions ?

Take things as they come
All things pass