Month: April 2011

HEY BABY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

Hey, Baby, it’s cold outside!
We can say that again, fully expecting a warmer clime by this time.

So, time is doing its own thing. I say, ‘thanks a lot !’, turning to a
voice from another time:

” Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

and summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st,

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

………………. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

as found quoted in a delightful small book called
‘A Dream of Summer, Poems for the Sensuous
Season’, selected by Robert Atwan.
……………………………………………………………………..

I share this as a promise of what’s to be, given a certain
amount of patience and the quirky choice of Nature.
Weekend after next, it’s May !

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

AT HOME

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

Oatmeal at 4 a.m., the best. Time to pick up the thick
volume of a man’s record of a life, and wander in:

“I walk toward
the kitchen
door as if walking
toward the
door of a recognized
heaven

and see the
simplicity
of shelves and
the blue dishes
and the
vaporing

steam rising
from the kettle
that called me in.

Not just this
aromatic cup
from which to drink
but the flavor
of a life made whole
and lovely
through the
imagination
seeking its way.

Not just this
house around me
but the arms
of a fierce
but healing world.

Not just this line
I write
but the
innocence
of an earned
forgiveness
flowing again
through hands
made new with
writing.

And a man
with no company
but his house,
his garden,
and his own
well peopled solitude,

entering
the silences
and chambers
of the heart
to start again.”

part of a poem by DAVID WHYTE,
titled At Home.
……………………

It seems as if always some one of my dearly beloveds
is at any moment away, at school, sudden vacation,
just on a trip, finishing or becoming.

This is for you.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

GARDENS

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

As a child, I grew up reading “A Child’s Garden of Verses”,
familiar and wonderful. Now grown up considerably, I read
“A Mystic Garden, Working with Soil, Attending to Soul” by
Gunilla Norris. The familiar words never fail to become
new each year at this time. Just look:

“Daylight comes earlier now that it’s spring. Birds sing
even in the dark. Dormant life stirs in the garden. Inside,
I am stirring, too, waking up from something sleepy and
inert, something that’s held me quiet in the cold.

After a long winter we may feel a new permission.
Isn’t this when the gardening begins to begin? It’s time to
raise the blinds and open the windows as well, to let air in,
even if it’s cold. It’s time for new life to touch our faces
and our inward being.

The light is there. We can ask now to really be awakened.”

……………….. GUNILLA NORRIS, 2006

The tree outside my window has loved these few days of
mist and rain, and the first greenish leaves are pushing
through!

We have new “green” windows that bring in such light,
and frame each morning magically. Will I remember,
next year, that this year the leaves opened on April
Sixteenth? Will I remember that that’s when I really
got myself outside and walked for blocks? Will I be
the new person I long to be, from this spring, beginning
now?

Not a question, just a note.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

PAGES BECOME A BOOK

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

This book, “Count Me the Stars” by Kylie Johnson, is very curious.
I’ve become accustomed to poems that start and end on a page.
They don’t have to take up a whole page, but I can see the shape
of the poem, and in reading it, experience things made whole.

Very satisfying. Most times thought-provoking. I become alert.

This book, however, is one long poem, experienced in novel
twists of changing type sizes, last lines dropped down to the
bottom of the page, leaving spaces full of empty or full.

There you have it, that last sentence above, a play on words.
Then, maybe not! Here’s a sample page:

” sideways

you speak to me

in the silence of the midnight rain ”
……………………………………………..

I DID turn the book sideways to read it, placed far to the right,
in the upper right corner, uneven spaces between the lines.

I happened to read this and it held my attention because the
night before, (Tuesday into Wednesday) we’d had a huge
rainstorm, trees swaying, rain pounding on my windowpane.

At that time, I’d sleepily gone right back to sleep.
This poem recalled for me that brief moment of awareness,
given no particular importance.

Yet, in the effort to read the poem, I could return to the
pure and lovely experience of awaking to the passion of
the storm, and to just let it be.

Very curious.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

TIMING….

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

A brand new poem, written less than a month ago, surfaced.
I was so struck by it when I received it from my friend that I
made notes and let it be until I could read it anew. I share it
with you today:

U N E A S I N E S S

“The silent hum of uneasiness drones on …
where does it come from, this
upsetting of spirit?

I run and hide, away from myself, doubting
my own existence
Where are you, really, give me some tangible
place to rest.

My hands reach out in the darkness, there must
be some THING to feel,
Some part of my soul, I ache to come home.

Long ago, pieces of me drifted away, where
have they gone, I call them back from
deep within.

I look inside, a flicker of awareness, then gone,
the day passes, fragmented, what
will a new day bring?”

…………..CINDY MARCUS. 3/13/11

Questioning is important. Reaching for the exact words, this
writing on the computer is easier than pencil slashing, notes
over erased areas.

What the new day brought for the poet was the awareness that
not all aspects of one’s own questioning need be examined at
one time. The right question can be asked, masked in darkness,
only to arise another day in quite a different light.
…………………………………………………………………..

I haven’t figured out how to use lower case slanted (there is
another word for that which escapes me right now). Tech stuff
is not my strong suit. Hence the word ‘thing’ in caps.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

EQUANIMITY

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

“Summers are still warm,” is part of a sub-title for an article called,
‘It Would Be a Pity to Waste a Good Crisis’. Right now I am
concerned that Spring is not a bit warmer! While I am waiting for
real evidence of a change of season, I can entertain myself with
some thoughts from that article to try on for size:

“If you lose everything, you may also be lucky enough to lose

who you thought you were, along with any fear and despair

that goes with that identity. It might be that what we have to

learn is to play in the world like someone who really did run

away to join the circus when she thought about it as a child.

We are part of something vast, and generosity is an effortless

consequence of discovering that. We give away, in our turn,

what we have discovered and what we have been given.

It’s important not to discount the idea that in a crisis, one

might be having the time of your life.”

…………. JOHN TARRANT, in Shambala Sun, January, 2011

Having quoted that, let me hope for you that in any crisis you
may be undergoing, let there be someone who can run away
to that circus with you. OOPS! Figuratively, that is.

After all, we ARE all of us in this together.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette