Month: May 2012

ON BEING GOOD

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

This morning I had the pleasure of roaming through a few poems that were good, but not right for this particular morning.  Just a feeling.

Until I happened on this one which forever calls to me and you may already know it, too:

” W I L D   G E E S E

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.”

……………. MARY OLIVER

What will the sun offer us today, when it rises above the

horizon?  Can I stir this warm soft animal of my body to

really love what it loves?

The poet in each of us is calling, not waiting for the weekend.

Today might be just the right one for feeling totally at home

in our bodies, and let the imagination soar.

always with love,

Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Today might be just the right one for feeling
totally at home in our bodies,
and let the imagination soar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THERE’S TIME

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

Just 4 a.m. on the nose.  There’s time to share this poem:

“And it was at that age … Poetry arrived

in search of me.  I don’t know, I don’t know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don’t know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

 

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names,

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire,

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets

palpitating plantations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.

 

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

felt myself a pure part of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind.”

 

……PABLO NERUDA,

translated by Alastair Reid. as I read it

in Kim Rosen’s book, Saved by a Poem’.

 

I look out my window, not a leaf moving.

In this stillness I can look at this poem,

go over it again and say, ‘yes, there’s time.’

Always with love,

Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Yes there’s time…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

476 PAGES

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

Four Hundred and Seventy-Six pages and in the middle
a section called “LOVERS”. Until this morning I had had
no idea this book was divided into groups describing
the diverse ways we have of sharing our lives, our
thoughts, out dreams.

I might deem this coincidence, were it not for the small
yellow post-it that drew my attention to page 127.

The first coffee of the day was hot and delicious, and
I did not want to spill it over my computer equipment.
So, I started to read the page before, and the page before
that and so on, before beginning this Daily to you.

Enough. Here is the poem on page 127:

“since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you,

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis”

…………e e cummings
a selection in the book, Good Poems, by
Garrsion Keillor.

I just might stay in this section for a while.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

“wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world”

TO STAY IN TOUCH

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

I want to stay in touch, in spite of a sticky mouse.

A while back I spilled some liquid all over the desk

top here, and thus I have had to use only a few words

to stay in touch.

Ah, Emerson, of course.  Are Easterners the only ones

who retreat into the wondrous meandering writing that

is Emerson?  Pay it no mind, I have a short one here:

” I

pluck

golden fruit

from rare meetings

with wise men.

I

can well

abide alone

in the intervals,

and

the fruit

of my own tree

shall have

a better flavor.”

…… Written in May,1837,  when Ralph Waldo Emerson

was 33 years old.  From the book, EMPHATICALLY

EMERSON, selected and arranged by Frank Crocitto.

And so it is ever thus, simplicity allowing room for all

that each of us would simmer down to the core as we share.

always with love,

Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Painting by Katie Kindilien.