Monday, January 10, 2011 (Encounters with the winter sun at mid-day.)
Cold-faced sun,
you're a sharp one,
quite brilliant, in fact.
You lay low,
then tease & dazzle
with brief appearances,
paving the path with frosty diamonds,
scattering gold coins among the stream's shadows.
Cold-hearted sun,
who gives no warmth --
you are precious to me.
Monday, January 10, 2011 I'm looking for my words here,
where the woods are quiet, shimmering and deep.
Sunday, January 9, 2011 I'm impatient to be off to Queen Elizabeth Park --
M says it's a hot spot for bird watching,
but i'd go there anyway --
just for the sky.
Falling into the sky
Up from the earth and into the sky
Lift off the ground, and hover awhile
Do you think you could fly if you tried(T. Dekker, Falling into The Sky; from Great Lake Swimmers' Bodies & Minds.)
Before I leave,
I'll share two small stones from yesterday with you --
to make up for january 7, which I missed.
(Removing dust, schumtz & paw prints from the hardwood floor required mindful attention but I've given more than enough time to housework this weekend so no writing about it.)
I found the first stone during walk #1, while looking down at the earth:
Chinese Lanterns (Physalis alkekengi)
On our second walk, I found the second stone, unexpectedly, while looking up at the sky:
North Shore rainbow
Perhaps I rely on my camera too much to preserve these small stones. I know I should be using my words. (I'll keep trying.)
Thursday, January 6, 2011 Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives....
We can train ourselves to respect our feelings, and to discipline (transpose) them into a language that matches those feelings so they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream or vision, it is the skeleton architecture of our lives.
OK, I admit this essay both perplexes and exhilarates me. (It makes my head hurt a little, too. I think I'll be re-reading it a few more times.) Perhaps I'm too left-brained to understand poetry at it's deepest level, but I can appreciate truth and beauty and recognize resonance with my own memories and yearnings. When I find a poem that speaks for me, well, I feel like I've discovered a treasure.
Time for some Mary Oliver. Wild Geese & The Swan, I think.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011 early in the new year,
under clear, blue skies,
i collected some small stones
in fact,
some rather large rocks ;-)....
nothing lifts my heart more than this:
to turn the corner
or reach the top of the hill,
at just the right moment
to see water, trees, mountains --
even glass & concrete --
in their best light,
at the edges of the day.