Fields that no one tends

>>>>++<<<<

P i c k   A   S i d e

Train Tracks

Hudson, North Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Why not? The mouths of the ginger blooms slide open,
The willows drag their knuckles across the earth;
Each year has its fields that no one tends.

Our days, unlike the long gasps of the wind,
Stay half in love with the rushes, and half with the water reeds.
Outside the body, all things are encumbrances.

> Charles Wright <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Friday :: Happy August

Sing and the hills will answer

>>>>++<<<<

F l o w e r   P o w e r

Above a Tiny Downtown Graveyard

Lexington, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Laugh, and the world laughs with you

Weep, and you weep alone;

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

But has trouble enough of its own.

Sing, and the hills will answer;

Sigh, it is lost on the air;

The echoes bound to a joyful sound,

But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;

Grieve, and they turn and go;

They want full measure of all your pleasure,

But they do not need your woe.

Be glad, and your friends are many;

Be sad, and you lose them all, --

There are none to decline your nectared wine,

But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;

Fast, and the world goes by.

Succeed and give, and it helps you live,

But no man can help you die.

There is room in the halls of pleasure

For a large and lordly train,

But one by one we must all file on

Through the narrow aisles of pain.

> Ella Wheeler Wilcox <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Thursday

We go on saying thank you

>>>>++<<<<

F e l i n e   F i n e

Poe House

Baltimore, Maryland

>>>>++<<<<

LISTEN

with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

> W.S. Merwin <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Friday

Ethereal gauze

>>>>++<<<<

T r e e l i n e   S k y l i n e

From the Passenger Window

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Woof of the sun, ethereal gauze,
Woven of Nature’s richest stuffs,
Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea,
Last conquest of the eye;
Toil of the day displayed, sun-dust,
Aerial surf upon the shores of earth,
Ethereal estuary, frith of light,
Breakers of air, billows of heat,
Fine summer spray on inland seas;
Bird of the sun, transparent–winged
Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned,
From hearth or stubble rising without song;
Establish thy serenity o’er the fields.

> Henry David Thoreau <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Thursday

Say not of beauty

>>>>++<<<<

D a g n y   C l a r e

A Distant July

Lexington, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Say not of Beauty she is good,
Or aught but beautiful,
Or sleek to doves’ wings of the wood
Her wild wings of a gull.

Call her not wicked; that word’s touch
Consumes her like a curse;
But love her not too much, too much,
For that is even worse.

O, she is neither good nor bad,
But innocent and wild!
Enshrine her and she dies, who had
The hard heart of a child.

> Elinor Wylie <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Wednesday

Living sea of waking dreams

>>>>++<<<<

T h o u g h   t h e   S t o r m   C l o u d s   G a t h e r

Old Glory and South Carolina Flag

Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

I am -- yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes --
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange -- nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below -- above the vaulted sky.

> John Clare <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Tuesday

Too much to bear

>>>>++<<<<

L i g h t   G a r d e n

John Hancock Plaza

Chicago, Illinois

>>>>++<<<<

To be in love
Is to touch things with a lighter hand.

In yourself you stretch, you are well.

You look at things
Through his eyes.
A cardinal is red.
A sky is blue.
Suddenly you know he knows too.
He is not there but
You know you are tasting together
The winter, or light spring weather.

His hand to take your hand is overmuch.
Too much to bear.

You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.

When he
Shuts a door --

Is not there --
Your arms are water.

And you are free
With a ghastly freedom.

You are the beautiful half
Of a golden hurt.

You remember and covet his mouth,
To touch, to whisper on.

Oh when to declare
Is certain Death!

Oh when to apprize,
Is to mesmerize,

To see fall down, the Column of Gold,
Into the commonest ash.

> Gwendolyn Brooks <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Monday

Hallelujah anthem of the free

>>>>++<<<<

A   S u r e   T h i n g

Green Mount Cemetery

Baltimore, Maryland

>>>>++<<<<

Deep within, the heart has always known

that there was freedom

Somehow breathed into the very soul of life

The prisoner, the powerless,

the slave have always known it

There's something that keeps reaching for the sky.

And even life begins because a baby fights for freedom

And songs we love to sing have freedom's theme

Some have walked through fire and flood

to find a place of freedom

And some faced hell itself for freedom's dream.

Let freedom ring wherever minds know what it means

to be in chains

Let freedom ring wherever hearts know pain

Let freedom echo through the lonely streets

where prisons have no key

We can be free and we can sing

Let freedom ring.

God built freedom into every fiber of creation

And He meant for us to all be free and whole

When my Lord bought freedom

with the blood of His redemption

His cross stamped pardon on my very soul.

I'll sing it out with every breath

I'll let the whole world hear it

The hallelujah anthem of the free

The iron bars and heavy chains can never hold us captive

The Son has made us free and free indeed.

Let freedom ring down through the ages

from a hill called Calvary

Let freedom ring wherever hearts know pain

Let freedom echo through the lonely streets

where prisons have no key

We can be free and we can sing

Let freedom ring.

> Gaither / Gaither <

>>>>++<<<<

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,

and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Galatians 5:1

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Sunday

My feet have further goals

>>>>++<<<<

F o u r   F e e t   D e e p

Poolside :: 2016

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

 I could not prove the Years had feet --

Yet confident they run

Am I, from symptoms that are past

And Series that are done --

I find my feet have further Goals --

I smile upon the Aims

That felt so ample -- Yesterday --

Today's -- have vaster claims --

I do not doubt the self I was

Was competent to me --

But something awkward in the fit --

Proves that -- outgrown -- I see --

> Emily Dickinson <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Saturday

Smiles full of teeth

>>>>++<<<<

C l o u d   F u n d i n g

Palmer Street

Ridgeway, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.

> Ezra Pound <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Friday