Something awkward in the fit

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F o u r   F e e t   D e e p

Poolside :: 2016

Columbia, South Carolina

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 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 =

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Happy Saturday

Sober toward truth

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W i t h   O p e n   A r m s

Julia Westall Wolfe's Old Kentucky Home

Asheville, North Carolina

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Who am I worthless that You spent such pains
and take may pains again?
I do not understand; but I believe.
Jonquils respond with wit to the teasing breeze.

Induct me down my secrets. Stiffen this heart
to stand their horrifying cries, O cushion
the first the second shocks, will to a halt
in mid-air there demons who would be at me.

May fade before, sweet morning on sweet morning,
I wake my dreams, my fan-mail go astray,
and do me little goods I have not thought of,
ingenious & beneficial Father.

Ease in their passing my beloved friends,
all others too I have cared for in a travelling life,
anyone anywhere indeed. Lift up
sober toward truth a scared self-estimate.

= John Berryman =

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Happy Friday

Intangible and never to be scaled

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Y o u   R e d   M e   R i g h t

Semi-Rural

South Carolina

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Old Age, on tiptoe, lays her jeweled hand
Lightly in mine. Come, tread a stately measure,
Most gracious partner, nobly poised and bland;
Ours be no boisterous pleasure,
But smiling conversation, with quick glance,
And memories dancing lightlier than we dance --
Friends, who a thousand joys
Divide and double, save one joy supreme
Which many a pang alloys.
Let wanton girls and boys
Cry over lovers' woes and broken toys.

Our waking life is sweeter than their dream.
Dame Nature, with unwitting hand,
Has sparsely strewn the black abyss with lights,
Minute, remote, and numberless. We stand
Measuring far depths and heights,
Arched over by a laughing heaven,
Intangible and never to be scaled.
If we confess our sins, they are forgiven;
We triumph, if we know we failed.

Tears that in youth you shed,
Congealed to pearls, now deck your silvery hair;
Sighs breathed for loves long dead
Frosted the glittering atoms of the air
Into the veils you wear
Round your soft bosom and most queenly head;
The shimmer of your gown
Catches all tints of autumn, and the dew
Of gardens where the damask roses blew;
The myriad tapers from these arches hung
Play on your diamonded crown;
And stars, whose light angelical caressed
Your virgin days,
Give back in your calm eyes their holier rays.
The deep past living in your breast
Heaves these half-merry sighs;
And the soft accents of your tongue
Breathe unrecorded charities.

Hasten not; the feast will wait.
This is a master-night without a morrow.
No chill and haggard dawn, with after-sorrow,
Will snuff the spluttering candle out
Or blanch the revelers homeward straggling late.
Before the rout
Wearies or wanes, will come a calmer trance.
Lulled by the poppied fragrance of this bower,
We'll cheat the lapsing hour
And close our eyes, still smiling, on the dance.

= George Santayana =

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Happy Independence Day

Part of the meaning, part of the mind

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M a k i n g   t h e   M o s t   o f   M o i s t

Crown Fountain

Chicago, Illinois

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The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

= Wallace Stevens =

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Happy Wednesday

Silence rings in their place

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W i n g s   A n d   W i n d o w s

Birds on a Roof on the Square

Newberry, South Carolina

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The children were asking
a thousand questions about why
the sky was blue and grass was green
when suddenly their tongues
were stilled by an answer they
never saw. Now silence rings
in their place so loud a stone
can hear it in Arkansas.
So why not the men inside
the sky who only hear the roar
beneath their wings that rip
the clouds? Who believe the distance
is theirs for the way it turns
the heavens into a high of feeling
nothing at all? In which
they have everywhere to turn
as excellent pilots -- really
superb -- with nowhere to go.

= Chard deNiord =

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Happy Tuesday