AWAKING

To step outside yesterday, today, this time of new life,
Spring! Some old memory of a time of shedding one’s
skin, emerging raw and new and shiny in a summons
to new hope, new energy, like walking through a
waterfall.

There is a sharpness to this call of spring-time.
Poets catch this and put out the call to us to hear, to
heed this opportunity:

“I don’t want you to just sit down at the table.
I don’t want you just to eat, and be content.
I want you to walk out into the fields
where the water is shining, and the rice has risen.
I want you to stand there, far from the white tablecloth.
I want you to fill your hands with the mud,
like a blessing.”

……..MARY OLIVER, an excerpt from her poem, RICE.

We each hear this call, we each ache to respond, to
find that simple step outside of our usual routine of
a day. Or the routine of a part of a week, well, how
about a month?

Let’s catch it while it’s here, now, today.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Some old memory of a time of shedding one's skin

A STRING OF WORDS

Gunilla Norris wrote a book, A MYSTIC GARDEN, Working
and Attending to Soul. For years I have opened this book
at the turn of the seasons to welcome the changes, and
to honor the passage of life during the previous time.

This book has lost its spine, and as I picked it up this
morning, it fell open to page 25, chapter title: SPRING.

I love books. I love the empty pages that face a new
chapter, and oft-times I have written notes therein.
Wow.
Here’s what I found noted there in pencil:

vulnerable
beautiful
dependent
dynamic
needy
bursting at the seams
humming
aching
……………………………

All of that is part of Spring. Could you stay a moment
with those words? No poem needed, just the hum of
feelings allowed and spurting up through the cracks.

It feels like an early Spring here in southwest Connecticut.
Let’s see what we take with us into this season.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

bursting at the seams
humming
aching

RENEWAL

This was written on the eve of the first day of Spring.

I think of each of you, joining me at odd hours for a
poem, a reminder, a thought with which to begin this
day, and the next.

We, in Southwestern Connecticut, have been spared the
weather harshness of a winter this year. Yet, for so
many the winter months have contained challenges as
bitter and demanding as ever.

Today, with Spring ‘arriving’ tomorrow, March 20th,
this winter has ended with a major shift in the lives
of my daughter Sandy and her husband,Cliff. Health
issues have inspired them to renew their marriage
vows, and to see them moving forward with renewed
intention and energy.

For them and and for others who may be experiencing
this opening to release the past and welcome today,
I offer this poem:

” W I N T E R C H I L D

Myself at my door
like Blake
at home in his
heaven
my own heart
newly opened
by the news
and my face
turned upward
and innocent
toward them.

All the stars
like a great crowd
of creation singing

above the blessed home.”

……………DAVID WHYTE, from new & selected poems,
1984-2007, also already shared with you before this
in January, 2010.

always with love,

Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

"my own heart
newly opened.."

NEVER REALLY ALONE

I’m back at the computer, it’s after midnight, sleep
escapes.
I know if I go pick up a book and find a poem I will,
somehow,
suddenly,
be able to slip back to bed and sleep.
Here goes:

POEM TO BE READ AT 3 A.M.

Excepting the diner
On the outskirts
The town of Ladora
At 3 A.M.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second-story room
A single light
Where someone
Was sick or
Perhaps reading
As I drove past
At seventy
Not thinking
This poem
Is for whoever
Had the light on.”

………..DONALD JUSTICE,
from Good Poems selected by
Garrison Keillor

Perhaps your light is on.
We are not alone.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

We are not alone..

ANCIENT WORDS

The silhouette of the bare branches of the tree outside
my window shows a lacy mist made up of new buds;
amazing to suddenly see that, to register that Spring
may, indeed, be at the threshold.

I can re-think how to approach my day, can I not?
A new wind, a sense of magic, for I have done nothing
to cause this to happen.

Because this makes me think of the days beyond
counting that this has been happening for us, I went
to the bookcase and pulled out an old classic:

“When a lawyer said, But what of our Laws,
Master?
And he answered:
You delight in laying down laws,
Yet you delight more in breaking them.
Like children playing by the ocean who
build sand-towers with constancy and then
destroy them with laughter,
But while you build your sand-towers the
ocean brings more sand to the shore,
And when you destroy them the ocean
laughs with you,
Verily the ocean laughs always with the
innocent.

But what of those to whom life is not an
ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-
towers,
But to whom life is a rock, and the law
a chisel with which they would carve it in
their own likeness? ….

What shall I say of these save that they
too stand in the sunlight, but with their
backs to the sun? ……

But you who walk facing the sun, what
images drawn on the earth can hold you?
You who travel with the wind, what
weather-vane shall direct your course?

People of Orphalese, you can muffle the
drum, and you can loosen the strings of the
lyre, but who shall command the skylark
not to sing?”

……… KAHLIL GIBRAN, from The Prophet,
written in English and published in 1923.

Those buds on the trees, revealed by the
lights of our parking lot before the day starts,
are a song. Seeing them is my heart’s song
for this day.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

"..but who shall command the skylark not to sing?"