Kilt-O-Ween Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

#670 (Ms Dickinson Always Chose Such Catchy Titles.)

- Emily Dickinson

One need not be a Chamber - to be Haunted -
One need not be a House -
The Brain has Corridors - surpassing
Material Place -

Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting
External Ghost
Than its interior Confronting -
That Cooler Host.

Far Safer, through an Abbey gallop,
The Stones a'chase -
Than Unarmed, one's a'self encounter -
In lonesome Place -

Ourself behind ourself, concealed -
Should startle most -
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror's least.

The Body - borrows a Revolver -
He bolts the Door -
O'erlooking a superior spectre -
Or More -

Sonnet VII

- John Keats

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

{Photo Ivan Vasiliev}

Have You Ever Wondered What Goes On In Your Fridge When the Lights Are Off?

Quote of the Day

The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.

- Ray Kroc

Talisman

- Marianne Moore


Under a splintered mast,
torn from ship and cast
              near her hull,
a stumbling shepherd found
embedded in the ground,
              a sea-gull
of lapis lazuli,
a scarab of the sea,
            with wings spread—
curling its coral feet,
parting its beak to greet
            men long dead.

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

Serenity

- Edward Rowland Sill

Brook,
Be still,—be still!
Midnight’s arch is broken
In thy ceaseless ripples.
Dark and cold below them
Runs the troubled water,—
Only on its bosom,
Shimmering and trembling,
Doth the glinted star-shine
                  Sparkle and cease.
                  Life,
Be still,—be still!
Boundless truth is shattered
On thy hurrying current.
Rest, with face uplifted,
Calm, serenely quiet;
Drink the deathless beauty—
Thrills of love and wonder
Sinking, shining, star-like;
Till the mirrored heaven
Hollow down within thee
Holy deeps unfathomed,
Where far thoughts go floating,
And low voices wander
              Whispering peace.

It's A Garden Party! - Winter & Roses

This feature, originally known as Saturday Farmer's Market, was created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and was then hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

If anyone would like to share their own gardening adventures with me

- large or small, inside or out -

I would love to see them.

Just leave a link to your post in the comments.

~

We had rain several days this week and everything in the garden seems happy about it. Well, as happy as you can be when dying or going dormant.

The chickens are gone.

They had found a cozy spot deep under the Cape Honeysuckle and settled in to escape the rain. (Here's a lousy picture of them heading under.) I thought no more about them until two days later when I realized that I didn't hear them anymore.

Someone must have decided they wanted to go into business & picked up a ready made inventory. We have a lot of people raising chickens around here so I'm sure they found a nice home.

The Roses are still blooming. Just a few blossoms here and there, but they're plugging along.

O, Gather Me the Rose
- William Ernest Henley

O, gather me the rose, the rose,
While yet in flower we find it,
For summer smiles, but summer goes,
And winter waits behind it!

For with the dream foregone, foregone,
The deed forborne for ever,
The worm, regret, will canker on,
And time will turn him never.

So well it were to love, my love,
And cheat of any laughter
The death beneath us and above,
The dark before and after.

The myrtle and the rose, the rose,
The sunshine and the swallow,
The dream that comes, the wish that goes,
The memories that follow!

Friday Snow

- Reginald Gibbons

Something needs to be done—like dragging a big black plastic sack through the upstairs rooms, emptying into it each waste basket, the trash of three lives for a week or so. I am careful and slow about it, so that this little chore will banish the big ones. But I leave the bag lying on the floor and I go into my daughter’s bedroom, into the north morning light from her windows, and while this minute she is at school counting or spelling a first useful word I sit down on her unmade bed and I look out the windows at nothing for a while, the unmoving buildings—houses and a church—in the cold street.
       Across it a dark young man is coming slowly down the white sidewalk with a snowshovel over his shoulder. He’s wearing a light coat, there’s a plastic showercap under his dirty navy blue knit hat, and at a house where the walk hasn’t been cleared he climbs the steps and rings the doorbell and stands waiting, squinting sideways at the wind. Then he half wakes and he says a few words I can’t hear to the storm door that doesn’t open, and he nods his head with the kindly farewell that is a habit he wears as disguise, and he goes back down the steps and on to the next house. All of this in pantomime, the way I see it through windows closed against winter and the faint sounds of winter.
       My daughter’s cross-eyed piggy bank is also staring out blankly, and in its belly are four dollar bills that came one at a time from her grandmother and which tomorrow she will pull out of the corked mouthhole. (It’s not like the piggy banks you have to fill before you empty them because to empty them you have to smash them.) Tomorrow she will buy a perfect piece of small furniture for her warm well-lit dollhouse where no one is tired or weak and the wind can’t get in.
       Sitting on her bed, looking out, I didn’t see a bundled-up lame child out of school and even turned out of the house for a while, or a blind woman with burns or a sick bald veteran—people who might have walked past stoop-shouldered with what’s happened and will keep happening to them. So much limping is not from physical pain—the pain is gone now, but the leg’s still crooked. The piggy bank and I see only the able young man whose straight back nobody needs.
       When he finally gets past where I can see him, it feels as if a kind of music has stopped, and it’s more completely quiet than it was, an emptiness more than a stillness, and I get up from the rumpled bed and I smooth the covers, slowly and carefully, and I look around the room for something to pick up or straighten, and I take a wadded dollar bill from my pocket and put it into the pig and I walk out.

Reginald Gibbons, “Friday Snow” from Saints (New York: Persea Books, 1986). Copyright © 1986 by Reginald Gibbons. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

 

from: Saints. Copyright 1986.

Thursday

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

And if I loved you Wednesday,

Well, what is that to you?

I do not love you Thursday—

So much is true.

And why you come complaining

Is more than I can see.

I loved you Wednesday,—yes—but what

Is that to me?

Quote of the Day

The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.

- John Wooden

Haiku Ambulance

A piece of green pepper
       fell
off the wooden salad bowl:

       so what?

- Richard Brautigan

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

North Wind

- Lola Ridge

I love you, malcontent
Male wind -
Shaking the pollen from a flower
Or hurling the sea backward from the grinning sand.
Blow on and over my dreams. . .
Scatter my sick dreams. . .
Throw your lusty arms about me. . .
Envelop all my hot body. . .
Carry me to pine forests -
Great, rough-bearded forests. . .
Bring me to stark plains and steppes. . .
I would have the North to-night -
The cold, enduring North.
And if we should meet the Snow,
Whirling in spirals,
And he should blind my eyes. . .
Ally, you will defend me -
You will hold me close,
Blowing on my eyelids.

It's A Garden Party! - In the Jurassic!

This feature, originally known as Saturday Farmer's Market, was created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and was then hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

If anyone would like to share their own gardening adventures with me

- large or small, inside or out -

I would love to see them.

Just leave a link to your post in the comments.

~

Snow Drops are on their way!

I took some trash out to the can yesterday and saw an empty Crispy Kreme box on the ground.

I also saw something else.

I may have mentioned the chicken tearing up my garden. Well, here she is . . . along with a surprise. I only count ten in this picture, but there are eleven.

Here she is in front of the Cape Honeysuckle. What you can't see is that it's raining and and she is protecting her babies beneath her.

Here they are running in terror as I try to get a decent picture of them.

Why do I care about the prehistoric monsters who are tearing up my garden? I don't know.

All right. Yes. They're cute and I can't help it.

There. Are you happy now?

 And look!
The California Poppies are still hanging on.

Although it was afternoon when the picture was taken, this poppy is still sleeping. Since it was overcast and raining it felt no need to get up. I often feel the same way.

Woman Feeding Chickens

- Roy Scheele

Her hand is at the feedbag at her waist,

sunk to the wrist in the rustling grain

that nuzzles her fingertips when laced

around a sifting handful. It’s like rain,

like cupping water in your hand, she thinks,

the cracks between the fingers like a sieve,

except that less escapes you through the chinks

when handling grain. She likes to feel it give

beneath her hand’s slow plummet, and the smell,

so rich a fragrance she has never quite

got used to it, under the seeming spell

of the charm of the commonplace. The white

hens bunch and strut, heads cocked, with tilted eyes,

till her hand sweeps out and the small grain flies.

from: A Far Allegiance, Copyright 2010.

Burlesque

- Amaud Jamaul Johnson

 

Watch the fire undress him,

how flame fingers each button,

rolls back his collar, unzips him

without sweet talk or mystery.

See how the skin begins to gather

at his ankles, how it slips into

the embers, how it shimmers

beneath him, unshapen, iridescent

as candlelight on a dark negligee.

Come, look at him, at all his goods,

how his whole body becomes song,

an aria of light, a psalm’s kaleidoscope.

Listen as he lets loose an opus,

night’s national anthem, the tune

you can’t name, but can’t stop humming.

There, he burns brilliant as a blue note.

from: Red Summer, Copyright 2006. 

 

Bharatanatyam Dancer

- Sudeep Sen
                  for Leela Samson

Spaces in the electric air divide themselves

    in circular rhythms, as the slender

grace of your arms and bell-tied ankles

 describe a geometric topography, real, cosmic,

 one that once reverberated continually in

a prescribed courtyard of an ancient temple

in South India. As your eyelids flit and flirt, and

    match the subtle abhinaya in a flutter

of eye-lashes, the pupils create an

 unusual focus, a sight only ciliary muscles

 blessed and cloaked in celestial kaajal

could possibly enact.

The raw brightness of kanjeevaram silk, of

    your breath, and the nobility of antique silver

adorns you and your dance, reminding us of

 the treasure chest that is only

 half-exposed, disclosed just enough, barely —

for art in its purest form never reveals all.

Even after the arc-lights have long faded,

    the audience, now invisible, have stayed over.

Here, I can still see your pirouettes, frozen

 as time-lapse exposures, feel

 the murmuring shadow of an accompanist’s

intricate raag in this theatre of darkness,

a darkness where oblique memories of my

    quiet Kalakshetra days filter,

matching your very own of another time,

 where darkness itself is sleeping light,

 light that merges, reshapes, and ignites,

dancing delicately in the half-light.

But it is this sacred darkness that endures,

    melting light with desire, desire that simmers

and sparks the radiance of your

 quiet femininity, as the female dancer

 now illuminates everything visible: clear,

poetic, passionate, and ice-pure.

Copyright 2014.

Quote of the Day

I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.

    -Harold Kushner

I'm Trying Out A New Look. What Do You Think?

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

Viewers may think that they can process it all

- Stephanie Gray

but they are fooling themselves, if there’s a window open you might have a chance, if you hadn’t all gone to Holy Name, if the world didn’t change, if you only bent the laws of physics so much, if the tides weren’t so strong on the Hudson, if you didn’t have to go, if it wasn’t a dream you still believed in, if that different kind of memory didn’t take hold, if your muscle memory didn’t steady you, if you didn’t have orders you couldn’t ship, if you didn’t see what you saw, if the crawl wasn’t always hungry, if there weren’t celebrities in every sphere, if you didn’t know all the criminals in the neighborhood, if nothing ever happened here, if it wasn’t a country club, if there wasn’t magic in actuality, if you didn’t dislocate the phrase, if you didn’t grind the blue sky, if it hadn’t been a downward trajectory, if the shadow didn’t undo itself, if you all weren’t all on break, if everyone didn’t shut down, if Canada wasn’t in the escape plans, if the future wasn’t sparkling with nostalgia

from: A Country Road Going Back in Your Direction, Copyright 2015.

It's A Garden Party!

This feature, originally known as Saturday Farmer's Market, was created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and was then hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

If anyone would like to share their own gardening adventures with me

- large or small, inside or out -

I would love to see them.

Just leave a link to your post in the comments.

~

This Bud's for you!

Experts tell us that a combination of drought, fires, and changing weather patterns may make this winter a rough one for us this year. We are due for a wet fall/winter/spring, and may end up with serious flood issues. Winter storms have already started hitting in some areas of the East coast and Mid West, and people who know these things say this storm season promises to be a rough one.

So wherever you are, take care of yourselves.

Bleak Weather

- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Dear love, where the red lillies blossomed and grew,

The white snows are falling;

And all through the wood, where I wandered with you,

The loud winds are calling;

And the robin that piped to us tune upon tune,

Neath the elm—you remember,

Over tree-top and mountain has followed the June,

And left us—December.

Has left, like a friend that is true in the sun,

And false in the shadows.

He has found new delights, in the land where he's gone,

Greener woodlands and meadows.

What care we? let him go! let the snow shroud the lea,

Let it drift on the heather!

We can sing through it all; I have you—you have me,

And we’ll laugh at the weather.

The old year may die, and a new one be born

That is bleaker and colder;

But it cannot dismay us; we dare it—we scorn,

For love makes us bolder.

Ah Robin! sing loud on the far-distant lea,

Thou friend in fair weather;

But here is a song sung, that’s fuller of glee,

By two warm hearts together.

The Soul has Bandaged moments #360

- Emily Dickinson

The Soul has Bandaged moments –
When too appalled to stir –
She feels some ghastly Fright come up
And stop to look at her –
Salute her, with long fingers –
Caress her freezing hair –
Sip, Goblin, from the very lips
The Lover – hovered – o’er –
Unworthy, that a thought so mean
Accost a Theme – so – fair ­–
The soul has moments of escape –
When bursting all the doors –
She dances like a Bomb, abroad,
And swings opon the Hours,
As do the Bee – delirious borne –
Long Dungeoned from his Rose –
Touch Liberty – then know no more,
But Noon, and Paradise –
The Soul’s retaken moments –
When, Felon led along,
With shackles on the plumed feet,
And staples, in the song,
The Horror welcomes her, again,
These, are not brayed of Tongue –

from: The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Copyright 1998.

For Joe

- Sandra Simonds

Locked in the beauty of the pearl, far from frail,
         these people who claim to love us still
they don’t give up much, do they, sealed? To eradicate class—
      the looking glass of it, the complex glare: “Let me introduce
xxx, impoverished poet.” Winter let up
     like a terrible religion. In its wake, a politics came,
      profane. You were on a train
from Philly to Mass. Winter let up like bands and globes
      and globules and I could feel the trade ships
in my bloodstream, the blood that made me,
        and I wanted to kill it
       really bad like a war path. They said my poems
         were a mess. Well, if that’s the case, then, go ahead.
Strike one match and the mansion will go up in its own ash,
in its obsession with accumulation against the glint of trees.

from: Poem-a-Day. Copyright 2016.

Quote of the Day

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

 - Voltaire

Nothing Is Far

- Robert Francis

 

Though I have never caught the word

Of God from any calling bird,

I hear all that the ancients heard.

 

Though I have seen no deity

Enter or leave a twilit tree,

I see all that the seers see.

 

A common stone can still reveal

Something not stone, not seen, yet real.

What may a common stone conceal?

 

Nothing is far that once was near.

Nothing is hid that once was clear.

Nothing was God that is not here.

 

Here is the bird, the tree, the stone.

Here in the sun I sit alone

Between the known and the unknown.

 

 

from: Collected Poems, 1936-1976  Copyright 1976.

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

Pertinent, No?

But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under then.

- Fahrenheit 451.

It's A Garden Party! - Winding Down

This feature, originally known as Saturday Farmer's Market, was created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and was then hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

If anyone would like to share their own gardening adventures with me
- large or small, inside or out -
I would love to see them.

Just leave a link to your post in the comments.

~
This is one of our new neighbors that has been spending a lot of time in our garden these days.
Don't get me wrong, I like chickens, but these little ones have been tearing the place apart.
Stay tuned.

The yellow Lantana took off quite well this year.

 And the Roses are still doing well.

Gardening season is ending, but planning for next year is just getting started. Happy planning to you all.

The Definition of Gardening

- James Tate

Jim just loves to garden, yes he does.

He likes nothing better than to put on

his little overalls and his straw hat.

He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim."

But then doubt begins to set in.

He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"

And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden

begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve.

He stands in the driveway a long time.

"Horticulture is a groping in the dark

into the obscure and unfamiliar,

kneeling before a disinterested secret,

slapping it, punching it like a Chinese puzzle,

birdbrained, babbling gibberish, dig and

destroy, pull out and apply salt,

hoe and spray, before it spreads, burn roots,

where not desired, with gloved hands, poisonous,

the self-sacrifice of it, the self-love,

into the interior, thunderclap, excruciating,

through the nose, the earsplitting necrology

of it, the withering, shriveling,

the handy hose holder and Persian insect powder

and smut fungi, the enemies of the iris,

wireworms are worse than their parents,

there is no way out, flowers as big as heads,

pock-marked, disfigured, blinking insolently

at me, the me who so loves to garden

because it prevents the heaving of the ground

and the untimely death of porch furniture,

and dark, murky days in a large city

and the dream home under a permanent storm

is also a factor to keep in mind."

from: Shroud of the Gnome,Copyright 1997.