How many years has it been now . . . somewhere around 200?

( I couldn't find an attribute for this image when I posted it, but I have since found it's owner.)

If you go to Etsy, you will find a shop called ButterTogether, 
belonging to a very talented Kim Keitner. 
She offers an assortment of sweet greeting cards with hand drawn designs.

Please . . .

Let America Be America Again 
- Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

As true today as ever . . .

Quote of the Day

A tragedy has taken place on our land, and even though it did not take place on our watch, we are its inheritors, and the earth remembers.

 - Dan, Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

If only we could learn by example . . .

How happy is the little Stone 
- Emily Dickinson

How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn't care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears -
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity -

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

They say . . .

It's A Garden Party! - Super!

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've had a super bloom of native wild flowers all over the state this year. 

My California Poppies started blooming before Spring was actually here, and they are still going strong. In fact, we actually had to pull some that were getting trampled under the Plum tree and some that were filling in my herb patch.

A Cradle Song

- William Blake

Sweet dreams form a shade,
O'er my lovely infants head.
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams,
By happy silent moony beams

Sweet sleep with soft down.
Weave thy brows an infant crown.
Sweet sleep Angel mild,
Hover o'er my happy child.

Sweet smiles in the night,
Hover over my delight.
Sweet smiles Mothers smiles,
All the livelong night beguiles.

Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,
Chase not slumber from thy eyes,
Sweet moans, sweeter smiles,
All the dovelike moans beguiles.

Sleep sleep happy child,
All creation slept and smil'd.
Sleep sleep, happy sleep.
While o'er thee thy mother weep

Sweet babe in thy face,
Holy image I can trace.
Sweet babe once like thee.
Thy maker lay and wept for me

Wept for me for thee for all,
When he was an infant small.
Thou his image ever see.
Heavenly face that smiles on thee,

Smiles on thee on me on all,
Who became an infant small,
Infant smiles are His own smiles,
Heaven & earth to peace beguiles.

I find myself using this sentiment more & more everyday.

Quote of the Day

Let us put our minds together and see what kind of life we can make for our children.

 - Sitting Bull I, 

as qtd. in: Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder, 

by Kent Nerburn, 

Poetry & Politics . . . a familiar pairing

Habeas corpus
And that pesky Bill of Rights
Who needs ’em? Wink. Wink.

- Jean Hall, Norwood, MA.

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

 

My favorite Sunday activities . . .

It's A Garden Party! - and . . . We're back (I hope)

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.

My garden has never been one to follow along with the crowd, and this year is no different. 

So, from my garden to you:

Happy Easter, 2017!

Factory of Souls

- Eric Gamalinda

 

It takes just two people to bring the world

to ruin. So goes the history of love.

At the end of the day we tally the casualties

of war, victory for the one who gets wounded

 

the least. You say it’s time for a change

but I don’t know to what end, change being

just the skin of some incandescent creature

whose grotesque beauty is what we adore,

 

whom some people call love, whom we

venerate because it consumes us, slim pickings

for its huge soul. My people say, don’t look

or you’ll go blind. You say the end was always

 

just around the bend. I say all we have

is unconditional surrender to the future.

So unreliable is the past that I feel compelled

to leave unmourned the blind, relentless loves

 

that may have scorched into our hearts

the way the saints accepted stigmata. My people say,

look back or lose your way. Or, walk backwards,

if you can. So I found myself on a bus to New York City

 

to lose myself completely. Past Hunters Point

we hit the factory of souls—a thousand tombstones

from which a silk-like canopy of smoke rose to meet

God knows what—a spacious emptiness, the end.

 

I’ve heard the world’s never going to end.

I’ve heard it will go on and on, and we will be

as nebulous as Nebuchadnezzar, our live

not worth a footnote, our grandest schemes

 

no more than feeble whispers, all memory

shifting like the continental plates. In the future,

all science will finally come around; genetic

engineering, I’ve been told, will be all the rage,

 

and we will be a super race in a world

infallibly perfected, where trains run on time,

love never dies, and hope can be purchased

by the pound. It’s called immortalization

 

of the cell lines. We will choose what will survive.

Our destiny made lucid, we will find the world

contemplating itself, like the young Narcissus,

one hand about to touch the pool, his body

 

lurched towards that marvelous reflection.

I suppose we’ve always felt compelled

to desensitize our failures. My people say,

to go unnoticed, you play dead. I myself

 

may have chosen to forget a face, a name,

some cruel word uttered carelessly, but not,

after all the harm is done, intending any pain.

And many others may have chosen to forget me.

 

It works both ways. My people say, nasa huli

ang pagsisi: regret is the final emotion.

It’s what you see when you look back.

It’s what’s no longer there.

from: Zero Gravity, Copyright 1999.

I just top up in the morning . . . and periodically throughout the day . . .

Quote of the Day

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Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.

- Attributed to George Orwell 

(Post by: Robert Reich)

For your contemplation. . .

Summer night -
even the stars
are whispering to each other.

- Isaa

(photo)

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

A wonderful way to start the day . . . Tea in the Garden

(Photo)

This poem is rattling around on fb, but I can't find much on the author.

(Erin Hanson)

The Philosopher Did Not Say

- Jennifer Franklin

What secret had Nietzsche discovered
when he walked the Turin streets
before he flung his arms around
a horse being beaten and collapsed
into a decade-long coma? Clinging
to the cowering brown beast, he said
Mother, I am stupid. Wild hair and a three-
piece tweed suit constrained the body
that held the mind that knew too much.
Why am I mining dead men for answers
when they were all as mad as I am?
The horse, his eyes hollow as those
of the Burmese elephant that Orwell shot
decades later, had the look of every
betrayed creature. Perhaps Nietzsche
saw the shock in the animal’s eyes—
how every human contains the capacity
to inflict cruelty. The look that turns
to recognition, to resignation, to an eye
reflecting a field full of fallen horses.

Copyright © 2016 Jennifer Franklin

Posted . . .

(Photo source)

Quote of the Day

Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - 
not in pity or patronizingly, 
but as human beings
 who have learnt how to turn our common suffering 
into hope for the future. 

- Nelson Mandela

hate blows a bubble of despair

- e.e. cummings

hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
-fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young
 
pleasure and pain are merely surfaces
(one itself showing,itself hiding one)
life's only and true value neither is
love makes the little thickness of the coin
 
comes here a man would have from madame death
nevertheless now and without winter spring?
she'll spin that spirit her own fingers with
and give him nothing (if he should not sing)
 
how much more than enough for both of us
darling.  And if i sing you are my voice.

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

 

 

Won't you join me in the garden for a nice cupa

Grief

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;

That only men incredulous of despair,

Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air

Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access

Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,

In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare

Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare

Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express

Grief for thy dead in silence like to death—

Most like a monumental statue set

In everlasting watch and moveless woe

Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.

Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:

If it could weep, it could arise and go.

Spring to Summer

Beauty and Beauty
- Rupert Brooke

When Beauty and Beauty meet
   All naked, fair to fair,
The earth is crying-sweet,
   And scattering-bright the air,
Eddying, dizzying, closing round,
   With soft and drunken laughter;
Veiling all that may befall
   After—after—
Where Beauty and Beauty met,
   Earth’s still a-tremble there,
And winds are scented yet,
   And memory-soft the air,
Bosoming, folding glints of light,
   And shreds of shadowy laughter;
Not the tears that fill the years
   After—after—

Sometimes hard to do . . .