Moss-Gathering

 - Theodore Roethke

To loosen with all ten fingers held wide and limber
And lift up a patch, dark-green, the kind for lining cemetery baskets,
Thick and cushiony, like an old-fashioned doormat,
The crumbling small hollow sticks on the underside mixed with roots,
And wintergreen berries and leaves still stuck to the top, --
That was moss-gathering.
But something always went out of me when I dug loose those carpets
Of green, or plunged to my elbows in the spongy yellowish moss of the marshes:
And afterwards I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,
As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;
Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,
By pulling off flesh from the living planet;
As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.

from: Collected Poems.

In Praise of Self-Deprecation

- Wislawa Szymborska

The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.
The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
live as they live and are glad of it.
The killer whale's heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in other respects it is light.
There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun.

from: Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems, Copyright 1981.

Quote of the Day

Anxiety’s like a rocking chair.

It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far.

                                                                                                                        - Jodi Picoult

The Progress of the Soul

 - Thomas McGrath

Where once I loved my flesh,

That social fellow,

Now I want security of bone

And cherish the silence of my skeleton.

Where once I walked the world

Hunting the devil,

Now I find the darkness and the void

Within my side.

First to be good, then to be happy I

Worked and prayed.

Before the midnight, like the foul fiend,

I killed my dear friend.

Hope unto hope, dream beyond monstrous dream

I sought the world.

Now, at the black pitch and midnight of despair,

I find it was always here.

 

from: The Movie at the End of the World: Collected Poems. Copyright 1972.

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

Kids Who Die

- Langston Hughes

This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.

Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi
Organizing sharecroppers
Kids will die in the streets of Chicago
Organizing workers
Kids will die in the orange groves of California
Telling others to get together
Whites and Filipinos,
Negroes and Mexicans,
All kinds of kids will die
Who don’t believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.

Of course, the wise and the learned
Who pen editorials in the papers,
And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names
White and black,
Who make surveys and write books
Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die,
And the sleazy courts,
And the bribe-reaching police,
And the blood-loving generals,
And the money-loving preachers
Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,
Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets
To frighten the people—
For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people—
And the old and rich don’t want the people
To taste the iron of the kids who die,
Don’t want the people to get wise to their own power,
To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together

Listen, kids who die—
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field,
Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come—
You are sure yourselves that it is coming—
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky—
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.

It's A Garden Party! - Snow in California!

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

Beautiful, isn't it? The bane of my existence, Oxalis, is actually quite lovely in the beginning. But it grows wild and smothers everything in sight that is the least bit weaker. Then it gets gangly and ugly, and finally it dies back covering everything. It is almost impossible to stop.

Here it is trying its darnedest to smother a Lavender plant.

But on the bright side, the Snow Drops are blooming beautifully.

Snowdrops
- Louise Gluck

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

Hey! Glad You Made It!

And may all your stories have happy endings.