Who knows where

>>>>++<<<<

T h e   T r a c k l e s s   P a t h

Campbell's Covered Bridge above Beaverdam Creek

Landrum, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Why not wake at dawn? Why not break
From the coffin of night, whose nails
Are the only stars left. Why not follow
A tear like a comet’s tail, and trail
The grief of a year until it ends --
Who knows where. Why not wake
At dawn, after all is gone, and go on?

> Phillip Levin <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Monday

In the disenchanted field

>>>>++<<<<

B l o o m   W h e r e   Y o u ' r e   P l a n t e d

Chestnut Hill Cemetery

Salisbury, North Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones,
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was over.

Already the iron door of the north
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.

> Stanley Kunitz <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Thursday

O hushed October

>>>>++<<<<

G o i n g   G r e e n

Chestnut Hill Cemetery

Salisbury, North Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost --
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

> Robert Frost <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Wednesday

The moment of surprise

>>>>++<<<<

M a c k e r e l   S k y

Sears Tower

Chicago, Illinois

>>>>++<<<<

An old mortality, These evening doorways into rooms,
this door from the kitchen and there’s the yard
the grass not cut and filled with sweetness
and in the thorn the summer wounding the sun.
And locked in the shade the dove calling down.
The glare’s a little blinding still but only
for the moment of surprise, like suddenly
coming into a hall with a window at the end,
the light stacked up like scaffolding. I am
that boy again my father told not to look
at the ground so much looking at the ground.
I am the animal touched on the forehead, charmed.
In the sky the silver maple like rain in a cloud
we’ve tied: and I see myself walking from what looks like
a classroom, the floor waxed white, into my father’s
arms, who lifts me, like a discovery, out of this life.

> Stanley Plumly <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Tuesday

The mind has spread its embrace

>>>>++<<<<

W e e p i n g   E n d u r e s   f o r   a   N i g h t

Kensico Cemetery

Valhalla, New York

>>>>++<<<<

Nothing is lost! the white
shellwhite
glassy, linenwhite, crystalwhite
crocuses with orange centers
the purple crocus with
an orange center, the yellow
crocus with a yellow center --

That which was large but
seemed spent of
power to fill the world with
its wave of splendor is
overflowing again into every
corner --

Though the eye
turns inward, the mind
has spread its embrace -- in
a wind that
roughs the stiff petals --
More! the particular flower is
blossoming ...

> William Carlos Williams <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Monday

Grace dissolved in place

>>>>++<<<<

G o i n g   U n d e r

Wrightsville Beach

Wilmington, North Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter.

Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
Death
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning
Death
Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning
Death
Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
Death

Are become insubstantial, reduced by a wind,
A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
By this grace dissolved in place

What is this face, less clear and clearer
The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger --
Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye
Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet
Under sleep, where all the waters meet.

Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
Between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.

What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers
And woodthrush calling through the fog
My daughter.

> T.S. Eliot <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Friday

How high that highest candle

>>>>++<<<<

B l u e   B l o o d s

Wacker Drive from the River

Chicago, Illinois

>>>>++<<<<

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one ...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

> Wallace Stevens <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Thursday

Hearing the noise of birds

>>>>++<<<<

L e a v i n g   I t   A l l   U p   T o   Y o u

Green-Wood Cemetery

Brooklyn, New York

>>>>++<<<<

Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.

Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.

Behind a post of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.

Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.

Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.

Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make of you the heartless words.

The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.

By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

> Dylan Thomas <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Wednesday

In their own dust

>>>>++<<<<

H o l d   M e

Green Mount Cemetery

Baltimore, Maryland

>>>>++<<<<

Stars are dropping thick as stones into the twiggy
Picket of trees whose silhouette is darker
Than the dark of the sky because it is quite starless.
The woods are a well. The stars drop silently.
They seem large, yet they drop, and no gap is visible.
Nor do they send up fires where they fall
Or any signal of distress or anxiousness.
They are eaten immediately by the pines.

Where I am at home, only the sparsest stars
Arrive at twilight, and then after some effort,
And they are wan, dulled by much traveling.
The smaller and more timid never arrive at all
But stay, sitting far out, in their own dust.
They are orphans. I cannot see them. They are lost.
But tonight they have discovered this river with no trouble;
They are scrubbed and self-assured as the great planets.

The Big Dipper is my own familiar.
I miss Orion and Cassiopeia's Chair. Maybe they are
Hanging shyly under the studded horizon
Like a child's too-simple mathematical problem.
Infinite number seems to be the issue up there.
Or else they are present, and their disguise so bright
I am overlooking them by looking too hard.
Perhaps it is the season that is not right.

And what if the sky here is no different,
And it is my eyes that have been sharpening themselves?
Such a luxury of stars would embarrass me.
The few I am used to are plain and durable;
I think they would not wish for this dressy backcloth
Or much company, or the mildness of the south.
They are too puritan and solitary for that --
When one of them falls it leaves a space,

A sense of absence in its old shining place.
And where I lie now, back to my own dark star,
I see those constellations in my head,
Unwarmed by the sweet air of this peach orchard.
There is too much ease here; these stars treat me too well.
On this hill, with its view of lit castles, each swung bell
Is accounting for its cow. I shut my eyes
And drink the small night chill like news of home.

> Sylvia Plath <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Tuesday

Dear tasks of continuance

>>>>++<<<<

G o l d i n g   F a s t

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Sleepy Hollow, New York

>>>>++<<<<

It is hard sometimes to drag ourselves
back to the love of morning
after we've lain in the dark crying out
O God, save us from the horror ...

God has saved the world one more day
even with its leaden burden of human evil;
we wake to birdsong.
And if sunlight's gossamer lifts in its net
the weight of all that is solid,
our hearts, too, are lifted,
swung like laughing infants;

but on gray mornings,
all incident - our own hunger,
the dear tasks of continuance,
the footsteps before us in the earth's
beloved dust, leading the way -- all,
is hard to love again
for we resent a summons
that disregards our sloth, and this
calls us, calls us.

> Denise Levertov <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Monday