A sheer ocean of sky

>>>>++<<<<

V i r t u e   I s   A   P a t i e n c e

Detail :: Basilica of St. Lawrence

Asheville, North Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

This morning’s raucous quiet: din of a lawnmower
Pulse-like swell of cicadas chattering in the brush
Trucks grumbling along a nearby highway.

Under a sea of high thin clouds, a sheer ocean of sky
The dead are islands: an archipelago
Of mute echoes, of resonant silence 

Their voices still within this gorgeous commotion --
Crow call, water burbling, wind rough in trees --
In a weed’s play, against skin, in the heart’s vibrations.

Under the racket of this day’s distractions
Under the birds’ clamorous singing
Under lapping waves of noise

Their stopped tongues their stilled voices speaking.

> Edward Falco <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Thursday

A kind of gold that speaks

>>>>++<<<<

L i g h t i n g   t h e   W a y

Autumn Decorations

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

NIGHT THINKS IT'S CRYING AGAIN

and I keep listening to a song about autumn

where an apple tastes like longing and every leaf

in the maple tree tries to explain loss

through a series of colors -- hectic orange,

indifferent red, a kind of gold that speaks

directly to God or moonbeams and in the dark

as I drive down wet roadways watching for deer

the only things I can see clearly

are the yellow leaves christening

my windshield and I think how we are taught

not to love too many, too much, the night,

the darkness, and I believe I am crying but it is

only rain.

> Kelli Russell Agodon <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Wednesday

A hankering for the dust-light

>>>>++<<<<

F a l l i n g

Front Yard White Oak

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

October, and leaves fall down. One feels the world go by.

First frost. And a licking sound

Just under the earth,

great wheels, or a sluice of some sort.

Sunlight thin as Saran Wrap.

A licking sound, the suck and bump of something against something.

One lives one's life in the word,

One word and a syllable, word and one syllable.

As though ice and its amulets could rise and rest us.

Whatever it is we look for is scattered, apart.

I have a thirst for the divine,

a long drink of forbidden water.

I have a hankering for the dust-light, for all things illegible.

I want to settle myself

Where the river falls on hard rocks,

where no one can cross,

Where the star-shadowed, star-colored city lies, just out of reach.

> Charles Wright <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Tuesday

Our season is now

>>>>++<<<<

D r e a m l i k e   S t a t e

Old Brick Church Grounds

Jenkinsville, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

One time I was almost ready to be born

before I had begun to remember

the palms of my hands had not yet unfurled

on the one tree of the whole of darkness

the tree before waiting the hearing tree

the left hand had not yet told the right hand

This is our time our season is now

the only time and you must wake and begin

to remember and to know who you are

you will come to remember but forgetting

comes on its own and you will try to tell what cannot be

told and you will have only

the old words and will try to use them

for the first time but the beginning

has gone from the words and there is no way

now to bring it back to them again

the right hand learns but the left hand is the prophet

Pain was waiting that time with her one key

long before the first daylight had appeared

> W.S. Merwin <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Monday :: Happy November

The whispering year is gone

>>>>++<<<<

L i g h t   B a n t e r

Heritage Park

McDonough, Georgia

>>>>++<<<<

I speak this poem now with grave and level voice
In praise of autumn, of the far-horn-winding fall.

I praise the flower-barren fields, the clouds, the tall
Unanswering branches where the wind makes sullen noise.

I praise the fall: it is the human season. Now
No more the foreign sun does meddle at our earth,
Enforce the green and bring the fallow land to birth,
Nor winter yet weigh all with silence the pine bough,

But now in autumn with the black and outcast crows
Share we the spacious world: the whispering year is gone:
There is more room to live now: the once secret dawn
Comes late by daylight and the dark unguarded goes.

Between the mutinous brave burning of the leaves
And winter’s covering of our hearts with his deep snow
We are alone: there are no evening birds: we know
The naked moon: the tame stars circle at our eaves.

It is the human season. On this sterile air
Do words outcarry breath: the sound goes on and on.
I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone.

I cry to you beyond upon this bitter air.

> Archibald MacLeish <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Friday

Earth's most radiant elements

>>>>++<<<<

B l a z i n g   a   T r a i l

Elmwood Cemetery

Charlotte, North Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

In ethics class many years ago

our teacher asked this question every fall:

If there were a fire in a museum,

which would you save, a Rembrandt painting

or an old woman who hadn't many

years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs

caring little for pictures or old age

we'd opt one year for life, the next for art

and always half-heartedly. Sometimes

the woman borrowed my grandmother's face

leaving her usual kitchen to wander

some drafty, half-imagined museum.

One year, feeling clever, I replied

why not let the woman decide herself?

Linda, the teacher would report, eschews

the burdens of responsibility.

This fall in a real museum I stand

before a real Rembrandt, old woman,

or nearly so, myself. The colors

within this frame are darker than autumn,

darker even than winter -- the browns of earth,

though earth's most radiant elements burn

through the canvas. I know now that woman

and painting and season are almost one

and all beyond the saving of children.

> Linda Pastan <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Wednesday

We must cross separately

>>>>++<<<

I   H a d   a   H a n d   I n   T h i s

Elmwood Cemetery

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,

I felt the life sliding out of me,

a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.

I was seven, I lay in the car

watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.

My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you're going to die?"

I begged my mother.

We had been traveling for days.

With strange confidence she answered,

"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,

the borders we must cross separately,

stamped with our unanswerable woes.

I who did not die, who am still living,

still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,

clenching and opening one small hand.

> Naomi Shihab Nye <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Tuesday

A stirring of wonder

>>>>++<<<<

H o w ' s   Y o u r   F o o t w o r k

Swan Lake Iris Gardens

Sumter, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Something is very gently,

invisibly, silently,

pulling at me -- a thread

or net of threads

finer than cobweb and as

elastic. I haven't tried

the strength of it. No barbed hook

pierced and tore me. Was it

not long ago this thread

began to draw me? Or

way back? Was I

born with its knot about my

neck, a bridle? Not fear

but a stirring

of wonder makes me

catch my breath when I feel

the tug of it when I thought

it had loosened itself and gone.

> Denise Levertov <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Monday

A place of comfort sweet

>>>>++<<<<

A r m e d   W i t h   A s s u r a n c e

Magnolia Cemetery

Augusta, Georgia

>>>>++<<<<

There is a place of quiet rest

Near to the heart of God

A place where sin cannot molest

Near to the heart of God.

O Jesus, blest Redeemer

Sent from the heart of God

Hold us who wait before Thee

Near to the heart of God.

There is a place of comfort sweet

Near to the heart of God

A place where we our Saviour meet,

Near to the heart of God.

There is a place of full release

Near to the heart of God

A place where all is joy and peace

Near to the heart of God.

O Jesus, blest Redeemer

Sent from the heart of God

Hold us who wait before Thee

Near to the heart of God.

> Cleland B. McAfee <

>>>>++<<<<

Come unto me,

all ye that labour and are heavy laden,

and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me;

for I am meek and lowly in heart:

and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Matthew 11:28-30

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Sunday

Blessed are our eyes

>>>>++<<<<

R e a l i t y   H i t s   H o m e

Front Yard White Oak in Autumn

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

It is something to have wept as we have wept,
It is something to have done as we have done,
It is something to have watched when all men slept,
And seen the stars which never see the sun.

It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,
Although it break and leave the thorny rods,
It is something to have hungered once as those
Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.

To have seen you and your unforgotten face,
Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray,
Pure as white lilies in a watery space,
It were something, though you went from me today.

To have known the things that from the weak are furled,
Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;
It is something to be wiser then the world,
It is something to be older then the sky.

In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire
In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.

Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.

> G.K. Chesterton <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Saturday