Month: September 2009

I shared a poem at a celebration last night of the end of summer and the start
of Autumn, when daylight and nighttime are equal, the Equinox. I quoted only
a portion of the poem, for the sake of brevity, so here it is now in its entirely:

MOCKINGNBIRDS

“This morning
two mockingbirds
in the green field
were spinning and tossing

the white ribbons
of their songs
into the air.
I had nothing

better to do
than listen.
I mean this
seriously.

In Greece,
a long time ago,
an old couple
opened their door

to two strangers
who were,
it soon appeared,
not men at all,

but gods.
It is my favorite story —
how the old couple
had almost nothing to give

but their willingness
to be attentive —
but for this alone
the gods loved them,

and blessed them —
when they rose
out of their mortal bodies,
like a million particles of water

from a fountain,
the light
swept into all the corners
of the cottage,

and the old couple,
shaken with understanding,
bowed down —
but still they asked for nothing

but the difficult life
which they had already,
And the gods smiled, as they vanished,
clapping their great wings.
Wherever it was
I was supposed to be
this morning —
whatever it was I said

I would be doing —
I was standing
at the edge of a field —
I was hurrying

through my own soul,
opening its dark doors —
I was listening. ”
……………………..MARY OLIVER
………………………………………….

‘seriously’, ‘hurrying’, ‘I was listening’, all these important
words. In my recovery, these four months since surgery,
I have made huge strides back to health.

However, ( serious pause here) I have always to re-learn
to allow space for listening to my body and taking note of
what it needs next to give us both the means of carrying on.

I do not always have the patience for that.
Well, that’s one script I may just have to drop away,
because here I am, listening.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

This is just to say a few words that let you know I’m still around.

Actually, as I wrote that my mind did that playful thing of a rhyming
word, popping up and taking over like, around, and the word that
came on its heels was ABOUND, shortened immediately to >>> BOUND!

AND (in my mind) I’M OFF, OUT OF MY CHAIR, very much like A.A. Milne’s
lines in his children’s book, When We Were Six. Such desire to move with
ease and speed, to soar across the lawn, or jump into the water as the tide
comes in.

The facts are that I’m working ferociously at strengthening my body
and learning to walk with balance again. Do you know that the exercises
I do for that leave me dripping with sweat in just a half-hour?

So, just a line from an interview with the poet, Donald Hall:

“Curiously, or frustratingly, the greatest happiness is not to know
you are happy, is not to know what time it is, is to be lost in the hour.”

I’ll be back more regularly, very shortly.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Gosh, do I love that word! RECKLESSLY .

It stirs up my blood, I am no age I can recall, just spirit, flying free.
Well, that said, you know I would not have lasted this long if I had
allowed that to dominate my choices.

So, let’s look at a poet’s message to us:

“Submit to love

without thinking,

as the sun

this morning

rose recklessly

extinguishing our

star-candle minds.”

….JELALUDDIN RUMI, 13th Century poet,
translation by ColemanBarks.

What a cool breeze for a Monday afternoon.
The whole week ahead can now reflect a release of
all usual caution and permission to entertain
some sense of summer, still, when we can glimpse
clouds of galleons, sailing seas in the sky.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette