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Burning The Old Year

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies.

*    *    *    *

Unready in nearly every way, I am moving over to my new blog, A Fire Horse Bearing Water.  Hope to see you over there.  Hope to see me over there!

Peace and love...and thank you.

Hello again

Sorry to drop out there, but Precious the Larger my laptop was acting funny so I took her to the local Genius Bar and, gasp, had to leave her there for a couple of days!  She is back home now, we'll see how she does...

I have been off cane sugar and gluten since Monday.  I am sleeping well and my stomach doesn't hurt.  I continue to wake up ache-y and wiped out.  Some days this passes, some days not so much.  My mood, which had gotten pretty bad before I finally stopped it already with the gluten and sugar, has been slowly improving.  I am starting a Dragon's Way on Monday and look forward to the Qigong push.  I'll also cut out dairy, grains and meat, at that point.  Holding onto eggs, at least theoretically, for now.

I have been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about and buying clothes.  I tend not to shop regularly for clothes for myself.  I rely on items that are/were made well and therefore last, seemingly a lifetime.  I also purchase pieces impulsively because I am bored with what I have (and they just won't die) or I happen upon something super on sale.  Every now and again I'll buy a bunch of things all at once (things I think of as staple-ware) and then they all fall apart at the same time necessitating restocking.  Then there's my Oprah-esque body weight pendulum swinging.  Because I go back and forth, I try to keep things "just-in-case" when they are too big, but also tend to celebrate by buying when I am "smaller".  (Meaning: I have more clothes than I actually do or can wear.)

Right now, I'm in a restocking place...but also am anticipating/hoping to swing to a smaller place.  This kind of pondering is so...dull and dull-making.  But, as the cooler weather hit and I found myself with not much to wear other than my sweatpants...


As unappealing as it was, I needed to do consider new clothes.  Ordering online, returning much, trying things on in stores, not liking anything, making time to get to stores, taking time to check prices and find free shipping coupon codes...yuck.

I think I'm almost done.  Today I went to an L.L. Bean store and to make a long story short, they didn't have what I thought they would, I discovered that sometimes what's discounted online is not necessarily so in the store, and, seeing and feeling something can really change one's impression.

This sweater, which I can't remember ever noticing in their catalogue, drew me like a moth to a flame, in the store.  It was so cushy and comfy and the color was fantastic...more orange and less coral.  If it had fit me better, I would have snapped it right up, full price.  As it is, I am considering ordering it online despite my suspicion that I fall right between two sizes...but can't quite justify it.  They have three items I want more than I need, but they are all full price.  I suppose I'll wait till I get notification of their next sale.  But, they tend to run out of stock.  But, but, but.

Oh. My. God.  Just...stop.

Here's a lovely poem.

And a link to new music.

And one, two, three books I just requested from the library.

All free because I am trying NOT to spend money!  Go away thoughts of a pretty new sweater!

Peace and love.

Weekend update

I am overwhelmed, yo.

In one of those hyperly-noticing-every-little-and-big-thing-I-wish-was-done-but-isn't places.

Yuck.

Here are the (seventeen) tabs I currently have open in Chrome:

• Ikea Hack Standing Desk For Shorter Ladies.

•.Gummy Bears recipe.

• my Goole calendar:

• Sesame Kelp Noodles recipe.

• Fresh Ginger Syrup recipe.

• Momastery post that has had me very seriously pondering a 40 day internet fast.

• Momastery post with amazing letter to child posted during her 40 day internet fast which has had me seriously rethinking the fast thing.

• Texts From Mittens.

• The Two Simple Equations That Lead To Financial Success.

• Louis CK Was Almost Right About Smartphones, Loneliness, Sadness, The Meaning Of Life and Everything.

• Gluten-Free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe.

• another Gluten-Free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.

• A Raft Of Grief.

• Pasta With Pea Sauce recipe.

• Fig And Almond Cake recipe.

• Wanna Be On Your Mind:

• Silver Dollar Pancakes recipe:

The first thing that's kind of killing me: most of these tabs come with multiple thoughts/ideas attached to them.  

For example, the gummy bears recipe...

~~~I've been wanting to decrease the kids' sugar intake~~~they might like these~~~ooh the molds are on sale at Think Geek~~~I'll order a bunch of stuff to get free shipping~~~the Think Geek box arrived days ago and remains unopened~~~I spent a long time looking for other stuff to order~~~if I had just gotten the molds and paid for shipping I would have spent $50 less~~~I shouldn't have spent all that money~~~are the kids going to even like these~~~when am I going to make these~~~

Exhausting.  Stupid.  Unstoppable.

Well, seemingly unstoppable.

The second thing that's kind of killing me: this current reality of my desktop (in/arguably a virtual environment) totally mirrors the current reality of my home/body/mind (in/arguably my actual environments).  Lots of thoughts and ideas, intentions and dreams, converted into STUFF that PILES and GATHERS.

Sparks happy and bright devolve into dusty lumps forgotten-in-plain-sight.

This brings me down.  Not in the good-for-me grounding way described here, but in a pulled under into the doldrums way.

And yet, and yet, I push through...through these moments that are not comfortable (unfortunately, they are not comfortable for my little family, either), but are simply a part of my life.

Peace and love.

Tuesday tidbits

The Poetry Foundation dropped a gem in my Reader this morning.  Magnificent.

The book I am reading has really picked up.  I have been reading it rather than addressing holiday cards.  Realizing, again, how I march to my own rhythm.

I do love this cover.  This is my last Instagram photo.  They overhauled their terms and conditions and I decided to delete my account.  I recently bought a photo app...guess I will start playing around with it more.

Peace.

Bits

Jet lag continues...though I am less draggy, my mind less mushy, with each passing day. 

I am exploring my new phone, digging Dragon's Way class which started last night, chipping away at bills-y kind of paperwork, getting back into the saddle of the schedule, etc.

I have Louise Erdrich's new book from the library for eight days.  Have not had the wherewithal to start it...

I read a poem I liked this morning.  You can read it here.

After Comic Con we walked from the Javits Center to Midtown Comics and from there to my mom's.  It was cool to be on foot passing the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel...new perspective of a familiar landscape.

Peace and love.

One more (a good one)

The urge to get offline (and move onto the next less virtual thing) brought to mind a jumble of words that I realized were, in essence, "do not go gentle into that good night"...so here it is, the poem, in full.

Peace.

The River of Bees (link to poem)

Sag went to bed streppy, but Gem was the one up between 2 and 6 with a bad GI bug.  It was a Florence Nightingale kind of night.  Within an hour of Gem's falling back asleep, Sag was suffering from a high fever.  Thankfully, the fever responded well to medication.

Havoc was wrought sleep-wise.

I am not planning on doing much today.  Sag has a doc appointment this afternoon and I am hoping to see Vinny after that.  Keeping my fingers crossed that Cap stays healthy...he has a conference later this week out-of-state.

As is the way of poetry, this one was a balm to me today.

Peace and love and the everlasting battles waged by immune systems.

P.S.  And speaking of bees...

Flutters

This morning, as Gem and I walked into the cold front edged with bitter, we rejoiced in the flurries.

He used to call this "fluttering".  Which made my heart melt every single time.

These flutters haven't been enough to stick.  But, we cling strongly to hope.

First Snow by Mary Oliver

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain---not a single
answer has been found---
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

Burning the old year

Just read a delicious poem.  You can read it here.

New-to-me cummings

Yum.

[love is more thicker than forget]

love is more thicker than forget

more thinner than recall

more seldom than a wave is wet

more frequent than to fail

it is more mad and moonly

and less it shall unbe

than all the sea which only

is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win

less never than alive

less bigger than the least begin

less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly

and more it cannot die

than all the sky which only

is higher than the sky

 

e.e. cummings

Lyrical langston

April Rain Song

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night---

And I love the rain.

Langston Hughes

Reading to the kids today.  From Caroline Kennedy's A Family of Poems.

Such Singing in the Wild Branches

It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves---
then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness---
and that's when it happened,

when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree---
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing---
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky---all, all of them

were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn't last

for more than a few moments.
It's one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you've been there,
you're there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then---open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

Mary Oliver

(thanks to SouleMama for posting about this poem today)

Five miracles

Five Miracles

by Thylias Moss

                    1.

We were cutting corn from cobs,

separating pied kernels

into red piles, yellow, black.

We weren’t told to do this.

We took it upon ourselves

to make distinctions,

showing off our mother wit:

red into bowls,

yellow into jars with dated labels,

black into the scuttle

by the stove.

                      2.

Lutie Watson swallowed a snake

when she drank at the creek

that lynchers sank Jo-jo’s stone-filled

body last year;

that snake must have been   

his soul transformed

because now she’s pregnant again,

way past the age of possibility.

                      3.

Went to a gypsy.

Gypsy had never seen a lifeline so long.

Stretches from my thumb to my shoulder.

                      4.

He may be a buck-toothed

ugly dude

but he ain’t a sawed-off runt.

Shoulders so broad

looks like his head

sits on a boxcar.

I go walking with him

through them I-talian sections,

them Polish and what-have-you sections,

people damn near bow.

His T-shirt (special made) says:

Home-grown in Darkest Africa.

                      5.

What’s a nice colored girl like you

doing in New England?

Thinking about changing my reputation.

Territory

Territory

Every one of us has a sparrow
underneath her tongue,
bouncing back and burrowing.

On the crest of a spared mountain,
we can barely say, Sleep well,
to the full night of open obsidian and owls.

We long gone tree-leaners
raised on poison oak and poppies
make our way to the creek bed.

We come to lie down again,
our flightless selves in the river rocks,
to bear witness.

What impossible longing.
Black oak and manzanita looming
in the nest of this natural home.

Cowbird and grackle, black phoebe.
Every one of us with a bear inside
(a scorpion, a rattlesnake).

Our danger is calmed
by our watermelon sun,
by instinct.

(Acknowledge the dirt
beneath us, expect nothing.)

We are vine and hummingbird,
eucalyptus root and centipede,
junco and blue-belly lizard.

(And sometimes the drowned deer,
and sometimes the trapped opossum,
the wayward dog, the wayward dog.)

But a little tree dust on the mountain
and the chest finds its bird again,
laughing loud on its juniper and wisteria.

And listen, even we non-fighters
know what a precious territory is
when we see it. Soon, we'll say,

Tongue-sparrows, flinting
like well-carved arrows,
fly into the yellow foxtail 

and rye we were raised on.
Alluvial soil, this claim we call
our own, take us back in.
 
Ada Limón

Djinn

by Rae Armantrout

Haunted, they say, believing

the soft, shifty

dunes are made up

of false promises.

Many believe   

whatever happens   

is the other half

of a conversation.

Many whisper

white lies

to the dead.

"The boys are doing really well."

Some think

nothing is so

until it has been witnessed.

They believe

the bits are iffy;

the forces that bind them,

absolute.

Source: Poetry (June 2008).

Nether

Mmm.  I like today's "poem of the day" over at The Poetry Foundation.

Nether

by Leila Wilson

The equilibrium of any particular aspect of nature rests on the equivalence of its opposites. —Piet Mondrian

Some land lives

so water can comb

it into grids. This

is why lowlands

tilt still toward

the sea. This so

we call our canal

leaning horse,

hat tempting wind,

somewhere a tear

in linen where

the loom bent

a heddle. We plant

lapis in the middle

of begonia boxes

hung from our

houseboat’s sills.

At night the eels

snug against

our houseboat’s hum,

water’s warm hem.

We hear them slip

itch into our floor.

Our houseboat lilts

when the bigger boats

slide us waves.

Our concrete floats.

We’re mostly moored

to stay. In the damp

bank where the ducks

hedge weeds,

our bikes sleep.

We lean toward wind.

Our pant legs thin

from all the rain

on our knees.

From here the horizon

gauzes above us.

We are half hidden

by light. We are folds

in fog. We stand

open on the deck

and beckon the silt

to settle. We wait

for a balance so grand

that any flicker

of inverse could

pull us up to spires.

September

September 

by Mary Oliver

I walk through a grove of pines and startle the nighthawk

from the limb where it has been lying, resting or sleeping.

The bird is similar in color to the gray limb, and lies along

not across it, so it is almost invisible.  On its hawk-like wings

it rises into the sky, and vanishes.

The nighthawk doesn't nest there but only stops  a few days

on its long travels.  I know this one must be tired of flight,

and I am sorry to have disturbed it.

The next day, walking in the same woods, I approach with

care.  The bird is again resting on the limb, its eyes shut.  I

back away and do not disturb it.

The following year, almost to the day, I enter the

pinewoods and remember the nighthawk just in time --- in

time to be cautious and silent.  And the bird is there, in the

same tree, on the same limb, in the pinewoods that is so

pretty and restful, apparently, to both of us.

The sound of the sun

Eleanor's companion, Paul, just linked to a cool poetry website on Facebook. I found this poem via their "Poem A Day" feed.

The Sound of the Sun

by George Bradley

It makes one all right, though you hadn’t thought of it,
A sound like the sound of the sky on fire, like Armageddon,
Whistling and crackling, the explosions of sunlight booming
As the huge mass of gas rages into the emptiness around it.
It isn’t a sound you are often aware of, though the light speeds
To us in seconds, each dawn leaping easily across a chasm
Of space that swallows the sound of that sphere, but
If you listen closely some morning, when the sun swells
Over the horizon and the world is still and still asleep,
You might hear it, a faint noise so far inside your mind
That it must come from somewhere, from light rushing to darkness,
Energy burning towards entropy, towards a peaceful solution,
Burning brilliantly, spontaneously, in the middle of nowhere,
And you, too, must make a sound that is somewhat like it,
Though that, of course, you have no way of hearing at all.

A dream of trees

A Dream of Trees by Mary Oliver

There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company.
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere.

There is a thing in me still dreams of trees,
But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
Half the world’s artists shrink or fall away.
If any find solution, let him tell it.
Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation
Where, as the times implore our true involvement,
The blades of every crisis point the way.

I would it were not so, but so it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?

Favorite poem

I discovered last night, after posting, that there's a website devoted to NaBloPoMo. And there are suggested daily writing prompts. Which is handy because I was wondering what the heck I was going to write about everyday.

Today's prompt is to write about your favorite poem. And if you don't have one, to write about why.

My earliest full memory of a poem is Casey At The Bat. I was in fourth grade, or maybe sixth, and our class had to memorize the poem and recite it during a school assembly. I did not enjoy the exercise. Nor did I connect with the material. But, there were sparks. Which is why I remember it so clearly.

I love taking part in choral expression. I've known this about myself in respect to singing, but until now, I didn't realize the same goes for recitation. The idea extends itself and I recognize my affection for chanting in a group.

In the thirty plus years since Casey At The Bat touched my life, I have not sought out poetry, for the most part. But, poems (and poets) have found me.

One such poem is Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver. I tend to like poems, songs and non-fiction writing that carry on its shoulders the mantle of the natural world. It's a vital point of arrival and departure. Of connection.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.