On the verge of flame

>>>>++<<<<

S m o k e   a n d   M i r r o r s

Looking Up

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

So much on the verge
of flame.
In a hot
wind anything
is tinder: paper, sage

feverish with bees,
your auburn
hair, my hand
that glows with a thought.
Sunset

or sleepless dawn,
nothing is sure
but what’s already burned --
water that’s ash, steel
that has flowed and cooled,

though in the core
of a star, they too
would fuse and rage,
and even volcanic
glass and char,

and the cold seas,
and even    
what we once were
might burn again --
or in the heart.

> James Richardson <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Wednesday

Every new and beautiful light

>>>>++<<<<

S o n i c   a n d   S u m m e r   S k y

From the Passenger Window

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

I am going to fail.
I’m going to fail cartilage and plastic, camera and arrow.
I’m going to fail binoculars and conjugations,
all the accompanying musics: I am failing,
I must fail, I can fail, I have failed
the way some women throw themselves
into lovers' arms or out trains,
fingers crossed and skirts billowing
behind them. I’m going to fail
the way strawberry plants fail,
have dug down hard to fail, shooting
brown runners out into silt, into dry gray beds,
into tissue and rock. I’m going to fail
the way their several hundred hearts below surface
have failed, thick, soft stumps desiccating
to tumors; the way roots wizen in the cold
and cloud black, knotty as spark plugs, cystic
synapses. I’m going to fail light and stars and tears.
I’m going to fail the way cowards only wish they could fail,
the way the brave refuse to fail or the vain fear to,
believing that to stray even once from perfection
is to be permanently cast out, Wandering Jew
of failure, Adam of failure, Sita of failure; that’s the way
I’m going to fail, bud and creosote and cloud.
I’m failing pet and parent. I’m failing the food
in strangers’ stomachs, the slender inchoate rings
of distant planets. I’m going to fail these words
and the next and the next. I’m going to fail them,
I’m going to fail her -– trust me, I’ve already failed him --
and the possibility of a we is going to sink me
like a bad boat. I’m going to fail the way
this strawberry plant has failed, alive without bud,
without fruit, without tenderness, hugging itself
to privation and ridiculous want.
I’m going to fail simply by standing in front of you,
waving my arms in your face as if hailing a taxi:
I’m here, I’m here, please don’t forget me,
though you already have, I smell it, even cloaked
with soil, sending out my slender fingers for you,
sending out all my hair and tongue and brain.
I’m going to fail you
just as you’re going to fail me,
urging yourself further down to sediment
and the tiny, trickling filaments of damp;
thirsty, thirsty, desperate to drown
if even for a little while, if even for once:
to succumb, to be destroyed,
to die completely, to fail the way I’ve failed
in every particular sense of myself,
in every new and beautiful light.

> Paisley Rekdal <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Tuesday

A give and get

>>>>++<<<<

L e   B e a u   G e s t e

Laurelwood Cemetery

Rock Hill, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

I sing the will to love:
the will that carves the will to live,
the will that saps the will to hurt,
the will that kills the will to die;
the will that made and keeps you warm,
the will that points your eyes ahead,
the will that makes you give, not get,
a give and get that tell us what you are:
how much a god, how much a human.
I call on you to live the will to love.

> Alfred Kreymborg <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Monday

Thou my soul's shelter

>>>>++<<<<

R e a c h

St. Helena's Parish Church Cemetery

Beaufort, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle shield, sword for the fight;
Be Thou my dignity, Thou my delight;
Thou my soul’s shelter, Thou my high tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my treasure Thou art.

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my vision, O Ruler of all.

> Dallan Forgaill <

>>>>++<<<<

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good;

and what doth the LORD require of thee,

but to do justly, and to love mercy,

and to walk humbly with thy God?

Micah 6:8

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Sunday

But what of that

>>>>++<<<<

B e   I t   E v e r   S o   H u m b l e

Backyard Fence

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

I reason, Earth is short --
And Anguish -- absolute --
And many hurt,
But, what of that?

I reason, we could die --
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?

I reason, that in Heaven --
Somehow, it will be even --
Some new Equation, given --
But, what of that? 

> Emily Dickinson <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Saturday

Till time and times are done

>>>>++<<<<

C h e r u b   N a t i o n

Christ Church Episcopal Cemetery

Greenville, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

> William Butler Yeats <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Friday

Great distances open above me

>>>>++<<<<

T a t t e r   T a l e

Harry Easterling Bridge

Peak, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Once when the lawn was a golden green
and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials
in the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed
with the chirr and murmur of insects, I lay in the grass,
feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered
what I would become and where I would find myself,
and though I barely existed, I felt for an instant
that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard
my name as if for the first time, heard it the way
one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off
as though it belonged not to me but to the silence
from which it had come and to which it would go.

> Mark Strand <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Thursday

The air is charged with blessing

>>>>++<<<<

D o n ' t   O v e r t h i n k   I t

Green Mount Cemetery

Baltimore, Maryland

>>>>++<<<<

I thought of happiness, how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours
And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:
The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,
White curtains softly and continually blown
As the free air moves quietly about the room;
A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall --
These are the dear familiar gods of home,
And here the work of faith can best be done,
The growing tree is green and musical.

For what is happiness but growth in peace,
The timeless sense of time when furniture
Has stood a life's span in a single place,
And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir
The shining leaves of present happiness?
No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,
But where people have lived in inwardness
The air is charged with blessing and does bless;
Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.

> May Sarton <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Wednesday

Enough to be a listener

>>>>++<<<<

I ' m   L i s t e n i n g

Rose Hill Cemetery

Macon, Georgia

>>>>++<<<<

"Nothing Is Really Hard but to Be Real -- "

-- Now let me tell you why I said that.

Try to put yourself into an experimental mood.

Stop right here and try to review everything

you felt about that line. Did you accept it

as wisdom? as perception? as a gem, maybe,

for your private anthology of Telling Truths?

My point is that the line is fraudulent.

A blurb. It is also relevant that I know

at least a dozen devoutly intellectual

journals that will gladly buy any fourteen

such lines plus a tinny rhyme scheme and

compound the felony by calling that a sonnet.

-- Very well, then, I am a cynic. Though, for

the record, let me add that I am a cynic with

one wife, three children, and other investments.

Whoever heard of a cynic carrying a

pack for the fun of it? 

It won't really do

I'm something else.

Were I to dramatize myself,

I’d say I am a theologian who keeps meeting

the devil as a master of make-up, and that

among his favorite impersonations he appears,

often as not, as the avuncular old ham who winks,

tugs his ear, and utters such gnomic garbage

as: “Nothing is really hard but to be real.”

I guess what the devil gets out of this -- if he is

the fool he seems to be -- is the illusion of

imitating heaven. If, on the other hand, he is no

fool, then his deceptions are carefully practiced

and we are all damned. For all of us, unless

we are carefully warned, will accept such noises

as examples of the sound an actual mind makes.

Why are we damned then? -- I am glad you asked that.

It is, as we say to flatter oafs, a good question.

(Meaning, usually, the one we were fishing for. Good.)

In any case. I may now pretend to think out the answer

I have memorized:

We are damned for accepting as

the sound a man makes, the sound of something else,

thereby losing the truth of our own sound.

                                                               

How do we

learn our own sound? (Another good question. Thank you.)

-- by listening to what men there have been and are

-- by reading more poets than jurists (without scorning

Law) -- and by reading what we read not for its

oration, but for its resemblance to that sound in which

we best hear most of what a man is. Get that sound into

your heads and you will know what tones to exclude.

-- if there is enough exclusion in you to keep the

pie plates out of the cymbals, the tin horns out of

the brass section, the baling wire out of the strings,

and thereby to let the notes roll full to the ear

that has listened enough to be a listener.

As for the devil -- when he has finished every impersonation,

the best he will have been able to accomplish

is only that sound which is exactly not the music.

> John Ciardi <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Tuesday

Send out your signals

>>>>++<<<<

W e   S p e a k   P u r p l e

Back Yard

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

The world’s
not wanton
only wild and wavering

I wanted to choose words that even you
would have to be changed by

Take the word
of my pulse, loving and ordinary
Send out your signals, hoist
your dark scribbled flags
but take
my hand

All wars are useless to the dead

My hands are knotted in the rope
and I cannot sound the bell
My hands are frozen to the switch
and I cannot throw it
The foot is in the wheel

When all is over and we’re lying
in a stubble of blistered flowers
eyes gaping, mouths staring
dusted with crushed arterial blues
barred with tiger-lily reds

I’ll have done nothing
even for you

> Adrienne Rich <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Monday