Cold slide through the dark

>>>>++<<<<

W a f f l e   H e a r s e

Exit Seventy-Seven

Rock Hill, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.
Moon-fingers lay down their same routine
On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.
Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.

I want to be bruised by God.
I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.
I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.
I want to be entered and picked clean.

And the wind says “What?” to me.
And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me.
And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.
And the gears notch and the engines wheel.

> Charles Wright <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Monday

The tears are wiped away

>>>>++<<<<

I n s u r r e c t i o n

Elmwood Cemetery

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

One sat alone beside the highway begging

His eyes were blind, the light he could not see

He clutched his rags and shivered in the shadows

Then Jesus came and bade his darkness flee.

When Jesus comes the tempter’s pow’r is broken
When Jesus comes the tears are wiped away
He takes the gloom and fills the life with glory
For all is changed when Jesus comes to stay. 

From home and friends the evil spirits drove him
Among the tombs he dwelt in misery
He cut himself as demon pow’rs possessed him
Then Jesus came and set the captive free. 

“Unclean! unclean!” the leper cried in torment
The deaf, the dumb, in helplessness stood near
The fever raged, disease had gripped its victim
Then Jesus came and cast out every fear. 

Their hearts were sad as in the tomb they laid him
For death had come and taken him away
Their night was dark and bitter tears were falling
Then Jesus came and night was turned to day. 

So men today have found the Savior able
They could not conquer passion, lust and sin
Their broken hearts had left them sad and lonely
Then Jesus came and dwelt, Himself, within.

When Jesus comes the tempter’s pow’r is broken
When Jesus comes the tears are wiped away
He takes the gloom and fills the life with glory
For all is changed when Jesus comes to stay.

> Oswald Jeffrey Smith <

>>>>++<<<<

Being then made free from sin,

ye became the servants of righteousness.

Romans 6:18

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Sunday

Remorse is cureless

>>>>++<<<<

W o r k i n g   A n   A n g l e

Elmwood Cemetery

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Remorse -- is Memory -- awake --

Her Parties all astir --

A Presence of Departed Acts --

At window -- and at Door --

Its Past -- set down before the Soul

And lighted with a Match --

Perusal -- to facilitate --

And help Belief to stretch --

Remorse is cureless -- the Disease

Not even God -- can heal --

For 'tis His institution -- and 

The Adequate of Hell --

> Emily Dickinson <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Saturday

No day copies yesterday

>>>>++<<<<

L i g h t   R e i g n

Tiger Lilies 2017

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,
if you’re the planet’s biggest dunce,
you can’t repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with precisely the same kisses.

One day, perhaps some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you’re here with me,
I can’t help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It’s in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we’re different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.

> Wislawa Szymborska <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Friday :: Happy Weekend

Luxuriant spontaneities

>>>>++<<<<

A s   A   L i t t l e   C h i l d

Bonaventure Cemetery

Savannah, Georgia

>>>>++<<<<

WHITE LOBELIA

Little megaphones,
we hang out in the garden center and gossip
with the petunias three seasons a year.

With leaves too small to resemble
thumbs or hands or hearts, too soft
for any parts
of our threadable stems to grow thorns,
we prefer to pretend we are horns,
cornets and alto sax, prepared to assemble
in studios and sightread any charts.

We are of course for sale
to generous homes. Some of us have become
almost overfamiliar with ornamental
cabbage, with the ins and outs of kale.
Others have lost our voice
in a painstaking effort to justify our existence
as a perennial second choice.

Like you, we dismiss whatever comes easiest
to us and overestimate what looks hard.
In our case that means we admire
our neighbors’ luxuriant spontaneities
and treat the most patient preparers with disregard.

We strive for contentment in our
hanging baskets once
we know we will not touch ground.
We tell ourselves
and one another that if you listen
with sufficient
generosity, you will be able
to hear our distinctive and natural sound.

> Stephen Burt <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Thursday

Only the things I didn't do

>>>>++<<<<

B u s y   B u s i n e s s

Greyhound Bus Station

Savannah, Georgia

>>>>++<<<<

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.

> Naomi Shihab Nye <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Wednesday

These and the like reasons

>>>>++<<<<

C a s s i e   H i l l

Elmwood Cemetery

Memphis, Tennessee

>>>>++<<<<

The world is full of mostly invisible things,
And there is no way but putting the mind’s eye,
Or its nose, in a book, to find them out,
Things like the square root of Everest
Or how many times Byron goes into Texas,
Or whether the law of the excluded middle
Applies west of the Rockies. For these
And the like reasons, you have to go to school
And study books and listen to what you are told,
And sometimes try to remember. Though I don’t know
What you will do with the mean annual rainfall
On Plato’s Republic, or the calorie content
Of the Diet of Worms, such things are said to be
Good for you, and you will have to learn them
In order to become one of the grown-ups
Who sees invisible things neither steadily nor whole,
But keeps gravely the grand confusion of the world
Under his hat, which is where it belongs,
And teaches small children to do this in their turn.

> Howard Nemerov <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Tuesday

Those far things

>>>>++<<<<

W i n d o w   D r e s s i n g

Countryside

Union, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

As from dark orchard leaves, from quiet scripts
where each shape sends its tendril reaching --
circle and line, the swaddled bud, the petiole
sprung, an envelope tendered.

By a window, the infant
turns, rooting
toward the breast,
sun-lit,
the mother humming.
(Those far things, sources
of power and
regret,
cliffs and waves,
continue
at a distance.)

Here you’ll find
a name scrawled in the bark --
last words, left to chance
and strangers.
There, the black ant, burdened
by a crumb, and the weight
of her lacquered armor,
crossing -- climbing,
switching, doubling
back -- gnarl and crevice and
cul de sac. 

Pinch-waisted,

driven on, and trembling,
does she have a notion
of her own, or is it
only species
memory -- so
fearless, so abstract?

because it is winter everywhere,
I spin my cocoon
I dig my heart a grave

Indifferent, a blossom
drifting, the knob swelling,
the leaf turned to
shadow: filigree, smudged.
The petiole now brittle in
the first cold nights.
The burden, relieved,
weighs all the more
from the guilt
of its release.

Too light, too light, like a sudden
waking, the sun in your eyes:
you cannot see for it.

How long will we live
in this leaf-strewn place,
thinking we belong
to the sky?

> Susan Stewart <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Monday

Watched by every human love

>>>>++<<<<

P o w d e r   P o w e r

Anshai Sfard Hebrew Cemetery

Rossford, Ohio

>>>>++<<<<

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit’s carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

> W.H. Auden <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Friday :: Happy Weekend

It isn't mine to give

>>>>++<<<<

I r o n   W i l l e d

Harry Easterling Bridge

Peak, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

It was winter, near freezing,

I'd walked through a forest of firs

when I saw issue out of the waterfall

a solitary bird.

It lit on a damp rock,

and, as water swept stupidly on,

wrung from its own throat

supple, undammable song.

It isn't mine to give.

I can't coax this bird to my hand

that knows the depth of the river

yet sings of it on land.

> Kathleen Jamie <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Wednesday