by the snow

we took a walk this morning up our backyard mountain. a big snow is coming in, and I wanted to get a walk in before snow fell high enough to cover our boots. the path is muddy, from melting/freezing every day. the deer had been on the path recently. we walked in their prints. and now, looking out our west window, I can see the snow coming up the valley.

as I commented on how the landscape looks different with so much having died down, D., commented on how it all looked in the cold blue/grey light. 

libby has moved her naps to a wool blanket on the couch. my moccasin slippers no longer keep my feet warm, and I've changed to a pair that is lined in lambswool. 

Water, is taught by thirst.
Land--by the Oceans passed.
Transport -- by throe --
Peace -- by its battles told --
Love, by Memorial Mold --
Birds, by the snow.

-Emily Dickinson

watching, feeling fall

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

-Emily Dickinson

Found the prickly pears shining in purple after the last rain.

This poem inspired me to realize that my recent desire for a lovely red (&blue or purple or yellow or orange) plaid wool scarf is just my need to counteract the fading color all around me.

...Also, one disadvantage to heating a house by wood stove is burning your finger, while still groggy early in the morning, by touching the inside of the stove when trying to perfectly place in a new a log.

Last night we ate chicken/red chile sauce tacos. And I baked this applesauce cake, which is delicious (earthy, light & spicy), even without the caramel glaze (I just did a simple sugar glaze, poured all over the cake while still warm).

Samhain
(The Celtic Halloween)

-Annie Finch

In the season leaves should love,
since it gives them leave to move
through the wind, towards the ground
they were watching while they hung,
legend says there is a seam
stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil
earth from the sky in one last pale
wave, as autumn dies to bring
winter back, and then the spring,
we who die ourselves can peel
back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.
Tonight at last I feel it shake.
I feel the nights stretching away
thousands long behind the days
till they reach the darkness where
all of me is ancestor

I move my hand and feel a touch
move with me, and when I brush
my own mind across another,
I am with my mother's mother.
Sure as footsteps in my waiting
self, I find her, and she brings

arms that carry answers for me,
intimate, a waiting bounty.
"Carry me." She leaves this trail
through a shudder of the veil,
and leaves, like amber where she stays,
a gift for her perpetual gaze.

love & equality

coneflowers 

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.
-Pablo Neruda


I'm lucky that if I were to marry my partner, we'd have no legal barriers in our way. I'm a woman who loves a man, so my country would be cool with us marrying. (though why we have to legally marry to prove to our government or our community that we're in a committed partnership, is a whole other topic) 

I have long felt the legal institution of marriage in this country is a farce, when it has only been allowed to certain people, and not to all people. But our country made steps today, towards changing that. By allowing Americans an equal right, under law, to marry who they love, despite their sexuality, the Supreme Court has given the institution of marriage new a level of dignity. (only 37 states to go!)

What a beautiful, simple thing.  And it came about in a culture that is evolving in its own way to accept this kind of change. Letting people spend their lives with who they love. 

Days like these make me think of my niece & nephew, and how wonderful it is, to think that as they come-of-age, they may be living in a country that will treat them equally, no matter who they love. It brought me to tears. 

friday

angelou

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours--your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,

Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,

Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

-excerpt from, On the Pulse of the Morning, by Maya Angelou, 1993

(poet, author, survivor, activist, playwright & teacher, Dr. Maya Angelou was born April 4, 1928)

in time of daffodils

my first daffodils this spring.
I was beginning to fear they wouldn't show up in this high desert town.
I don't see them in people's yards.
Though so many people's yards are hidden by tall adobe walls. so maybe they are there.
but in kansas, they are a part of the spring landscape. growing everywhere like weeds.
and I was missing them.

I used to smile at how silly it was, to buy bunches of daffodils at the grocery store.
I didn't know how spoiled I was to have them growing in my own yard.

today, I felt so happy when I saw them in the florist section of the store.
and bought myself two bunches.
they smell sweet & soft. and they bring a welcome sunshine-y brightness to our home.


......

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me 

e.e.cummings

root of the root

post-snowball fight

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

-by e.e.cummings

i've been on many different journeys of the heart, but it wasn't until I accepted, truly accepted, that I deserved true, equal & honest love in a partner, that I was able to find this love I have now.

kansas day

 

 

Flat Waters of the West in Kansas
by Carl Sandburg

After the sunset in the mountains
there are shadows and shoulders
standing to the stars.
After the sunset on the prairie
there are only stars,
the stars standing alone.


...
ad astra per aspera. happy kansas day.

seemed like the kind of day that needed to end with a few candles lit, and some silence. the snow that has fallen all day has been beautiful & serene. the tragic news from a school in Connecticut has been painful & terrifying.

"Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul."
-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

into the snow

snowy morning. and a decision to warm up the house by baking lemon bread for ourselves & the neighbors.

snowy cat feet. (she was shocked but curious)

snowy night.

reminded me of the wonderful book,  A Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats,

crunch crunch crunch his feet sank into the snow
he walked with his toes pointing out, like this.
he walked with his toes pointing in, like that.
then he dragged his feet s-l-o-w-l-y to make tracks.

light for the dark

November Night
by Adelaide Crapsey

Listen ..
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees,
and fall.

And I am called pumpkins.

Theme in Yellow
by Carl Sandburg

I SPOT the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.

All Hallows

my lovingly carved pumpkin

my lovingly scary nephew

All Hallows
by Louise Gluck


Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here 
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

i took a few pictures this weekend too.

found this that I like, a little bit of a poem
by Bobbi Katz, October:


October is
when night guzzles up
the orange sherbet sunset
and sends the day
to bed
before supper

young and old

i'm looking for the face I had 

before the world was made.

-Yeats

in motion

 

in motion

you walk,

you get muddy.

water in motion

will not see the stars.

you walk,

you go blank.

you stop walking,

you dream.

-federico garcia lorca

selected

The sunlight in a
yellow plaque upon the
varnished floor

-William Carlos Williams

february silence

gift

you tell me that silence

is nearer to peace than poems

but if for my gift

I brought you silence

(for I know silence)

you would say

   This is not silence

   This is another poem

and you would hand it back to me.

-Leonard Cohen

neruda's chickens

picture from one of my windows last night.

this morning woke up to a cold, gray, dingy January morning.
And this poem was inside my head. A friend once read it to me.
I suppose that means I was also thinking about that friend this morning too.


A Certain Weariness

I am weary of chickens:
no one knows what they are thinking,
and they look at us with dry eyes
and consider us unimportant...

Pablo Neruda

the snow, again

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, behold

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

-Wallace Stevens