Reading, Photographing Flowers...

              A treasured gift from a poet friend...

  Photo by my daughter Sarah's sweet friend, Erin G.

     Singer P. J. Harvey's first book of poetry.  Awesome!

         And lastly, another awesome photo by my daughter Sarah's hiking friend, Erin G.

Easter Equals New Life, and A Poem

"Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.” 
― Pope John Paul II

           White Azaleas, Southern Snow. :-)

                            Hot Pink Azalea

          Beautiful Blueberry Blossoms, So Delicate

                   Gel Pen Quote Coloring Art

 

         My Buddha with Willow Angels, Mary & Jesus

                                                   ...where all truth resides

             A little poem I wrote a while back before I quit writing

Happy World Poetry Day!

YOUR WORLD
By Georgia Douglas Johnson

Your world is as big as you make it. 

I know, for I used to abide

In the narrowest nest in a corner, 

My wings pressing close to my side. 

But I sighted the distant horizon 

Where the skyline encircled the sea 

And I throbbed with a burning desire 

To travel this immensity. 

I battered the cordons around me 

And cradled my wings on the breeze, 

Then soared to the uttermost reaches 

With rapture, with power, with ease!

---

Read more about this poem and poet on the Poetry Foundation website: http://bit.ly/HltC6k


Sent from The Poetry Foundation POETRY mobile app. Download your copy from AppStore now!

Eating the Dragon's Heart by Deborah Digges

             Flooded yard one block away.  Swamp creeping up!

Willow (Blythe doll) yesterday frolicking in my Mint for St. Paddy's Day.

Another fun coloring page.  This one was a wooly-bugger to color. :-)

My friend's camp...lots of flooding near us, but so far, we're dry.

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

          (Photo found online...don't know the artist)...

Eating the Dragon's Heart

by Deborah Digges

What god left for me here a dragon's heart.  Resembling

     a pomegranate,

In a gold box.  The parchment read Fresh kill.

Eat raw or braise in oil.

I lifted it from royal foil onto my best blue willow, blood

     of the ages

seeping out across the bluest bridge.

The first bite sap-like tasted of smoke-filled rooms---

women wearing smocks unloading kilns, stone sheets

     of charcoal

crushed in bowls, sprinkled with dew

drawn just that morning from high grasses.  The second bite,

     sour as a lemon

eaten whole, the rind and all, the root

of Queen Anne's lace and goldenrod.

Still through the burning I began to understand what the

     crows were saying,

speaking in tongues, their news fraught with

     ill-fated warnings.

Never they choired, be tempted to suck lifeless sweet buds

     hung of seeds.

It is a trap.  Nor smear onto this page the juice that stains

     like afterbirth

your fingers, lest you're condemned to winery again,

lest you fall through the ice of time.

Sunk you my knees in sludge I waded bogs collecting feathers

     to be used as quills.

Then swore the pledge, kissing goodbye the last bite of my

     lover's lips.

Swallowed it whole in my green sequined dress.

Why do we offer you a dragon's heart and not a pomegranate?

To ask, one has no right to call herself a poet.

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

                     My yard is full of flowers, bees, dragonflies and Hummingbirds. 

THE SPIDER AND THE GHOST OF THE FLY By Vachel Lindsay

              Spider Web After Storm

THE SPIDER AND THE GHOST OF THE FLY
By Vachel Lindsay

Once I loved a spider

When I was born a fly,

A velvet-footed spider

With a gown of rainbow-dye.

She ate my wings and gloated.

She bound me with a hair.

She drove me to her parlor

Above her winding stair.

To educate young spiders

She took me all apart.

My ghost came back to haunt her.

I saw her eat my heart.

I read like I breathe...with holy wonder...books have saved me again & again, but how long??

Spring's Arrived Early in Swamplandia!!

      "A weed is but an unloved flower." ~Emerson (Clover flower).

          This Iguana materialized via my "Adult Coloring Book".  LOL!

Azaleas are wildly blooming & Bluebirds are building nests.

                                          My pink Azalea Bushes in the front yard.

       Dandelion this morning, already blown away...

WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND?  By Christina Rossetti

Who has seen the wind? 

Neither I nor you: 

But when the leaves hang trembling, 

The wind is passing through. 

Who has seen the wind? 

Neither you nor I: 

But when the trees bow down their heads, 

The wind is passing by.

         Dandelion flowers and a fallen Tulip petal...

                         Monday Humor, people. I love the ID Channel about true crime.

A shotgun house I drew. My son-in-law lived here in college.

And yes, I know I'm no artist.  Ha! Ha! I color good, though!

An artist I LOVE, Myka Jelina. Check her out on Etsy.com

I just ordered two of her prints.  She's very affordable!

This hippie chick link below will be my next month's piece of art if she doesn't sell out.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/271102181/rhianon-canvas-print-signed-boho-fairy?ref=listing-shop-header-2

As If The Moon Could Haul Through You by Neil Fischer

 Idris Elba's my favorite actor on earth.  I LOVE Luther.  (He's been looking over my shoulder.) 

                        My sky today.

                My sky yesterday.  Glorious!

           A Heron I colored with metallic gel pens.

                                                        My new Tulips.

[AS IF THE MOON COULD HAUL THROUGH YOU]

By Neil Fischer

As if the moon could haul through you 

Its tremor of light and stone, 

Be cleared of sound. Plough 

The mind's noise until it's a shine 

In the purl of south-bending river that bears 

Itself toward a blacker part of the forest. 

If you hum, hum through the motes of air, 

Perhaps your nerves will find at last 

A tone to which they will succumb. 

Be still. Be not so heavy-hearted 

For a moment. All is not a tomb, 

Blind sarcophagus staring dumb, thwarted 

Pleasures nailed inside. These fireflies 

Sweep their tracings on the evening. 

Weep if you must, but board what falls 

Away, abdomens flaring— 

The brief, nomadic intervals.

My Friend, Pammie Is In Heaven

Pam, my imaginary friend who became real.

I 'met' Pam, (I called her Pammie), her sister Kelly and our friend Lynn through an old writing site, long gone, called Pearl Soup.  We then got together in a private Yahoo 'Princess' group with several other women (Sherry!) where we discussed books, men, kids, grandkids, pets and life in general.  We had a blast.  Oh, the stories we shared!!  Pammie had THE best man story ever, hands down, but it's a secret.  She was a pistol, a real Texas sweetheart.  

She loved her family (especially her beloved grandsons) and her dogs, who she called her fur kids.  Then a few years back (how the years have flown by!) me, Lynn, Pam and Kelly all met at the beautiful "Cane River Cottage" on Cane River Lake near Natchitoches, Louisiana for a long weekend.  (Below are photos from their web site).  We had so much fun...it was like we'd known each other our whole lives from the moment we met.  We talked ourselves hoarse, ate, watched movies (I remember "Steel Magnolias" and "Stardust") and talked some more.  We ate out in Natchitoches and I showed them some of the places where "Steel Magnolias" was filmed.  It was a magical time making real friends of imaginary ones.  (I used to call my Internet friends imaginary...but I've met almost ten and made them real). :-)

                                                 Cane River Cottages

      The gorgeous living room where we watched movies, talked and laughed A LOT!!! 

Sadly, our Pammie died last week from a sudden illness that hit her just before Christmas.  She will be greatly missed.  I know she's in heaven with her fur kids and parents.  And I'm so grateful for the wonderful, sweet memories I have of Pammie.  I'm glad she was my friend.

I was reading back on my blog and found this comment that Pam left under a post I'd written after my grand-dog, Olympis, died in 2009:

"As the pillow Kelly gave me from Christmas says:  

'Heaven is the place where all the dogs you've ever loved come to greet you.'

How true; how true!"

Pammie, I know you're in a much better place where there is no pain or suffering.  And I can just imagine the joyous smile on your face as your fur kids and family members who've gone before you greeted you at Heaven's gate.  I will always love you, dearest big-hearted friend.  xxoo, Marion

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.” ~Erma Bombeck

John 14:1-6

1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

4 And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.

5 Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?

6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Sixty-One by Doug Anderson

                      Catfish is Mr. Death, sneaking up on my Monster High Doll. :-)

SIXTY-ONE

By Doug Anderson

Fifty was poignant, heavy pear 

departs the tree and the poem 

a sigh between branch and mulch. 

But no more. Another decade, 

I’m all song and scruff, 

the mind’s hot wire threading joint to joint. 

I’ll tell you straight out what I think, 

no sweetener. Nor has Aphrodite left me 

collapsed in a stairwell 

and don’t you father-flirt me, girl. 

This morning the world unbelts her robe, 

rose fleshed and randy. 

I like the rats that skitter 

under the subway’s hot rails.   

The little black dog 

who’s afraid of no one, 

not even the dope dealer’s pitbulls.   

Montaigne said sickness 

is God’s way of weaning us from life 

but I don’t think yet. I like the way 

soul clings to gristle like a newspaper 

wrapped around a light pole in a storm. 

Death’s a street away 

walking parallel and at my pace. He gets a nod.

Doug Anderson, “Sixty One” from Cry Wolf. Copyright © 2008 by Doug Anderson.

Windchime by Tony Hoagland

                    Longleaf Pines at Red Dirt, Kisatchie National Forest

WINDCHIME

By Tony Hoagland

She goes out to hang the windchime 

in her nightie and her work boots. 

It’s six-thirty in the morning 

and she’s standing on the plastic ice chest 

tiptoe to reach the crossbeam of the porch, 

windchime in her left hand, 

hammer in her right, the nail 

gripped tight between her teeth 

but nothing happens next because 

she’s trying to figure out 

how to switch #1 with #3. 

She must have been standing in the kitchen, 

coffee in her hand, asleep, 

when she heard it—the wind blowing 

through the sound the windchime 

wasn’t making 

because it wasn’t there. 

No one, including me, especially anymore believes 

till death do us part, 

but I can see what I would miss in leaving— 

the way her ankles go into the work boots 

as she stands upon the ice chest; 

the problem scrunched into her forehead; 

the little kissable mouth 

with the nail in it.

“Windchime” copyright © 2003 by Tony Hoagland from What Narcissism Means to Me