April 2014 • You Are Seen

SPRING’S RUMBLINGS

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Antoinette Martignoni

Each morning, recently, I have awakened hoping to see buds

bursting green on the branches of my trees. Well, I call them

my trees because they greet me every day, rain or shine.

In the afternoon the sun casts a glow on those trees, the promise of coming

sunny days, yet the branches remain stark against the sky.

Maybe, after some rain, a tomorrow soon will bring that promise.

Until then:

“BEING COUNTRY BRED

Being country bred, I am at ease in darkness;

Like everything that thrives

In fields beyond the city’s keep, I own

Five wooden senses, and a sixth like water.

These things I know

Before they set their mark upon the earth:

Chinook and snow,

Mornings of frost in the well, of birth in the barns.

Sweet world,

Think not to confuse me with poems or love beginning

Without a sigh or sound:

Here at the edge of rivers hung with ice

Spring is still miles away, and yet I wake

Throughout the dark, listen, and throb with all

Her summoning explosions underground.”

……………MARY OLIVER, from New & Selected Poems,

Volume One, 1992

They are predicting weather in the 70’s for the weekend.

Just in time.

always with love,

Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

RICH REFLECTION

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Antoinette Martignoni

My friend Barry Guthertz and four other photographers had
an opening yesterday at a Gallery in Norwalk and the beauty
blew my mind. Figure of speech, but the deep, dramatic color
of our planet’s places call for that.

I sit here and wonder at seeing color so out of one’s usual realm
and can return to see it again in my mind’s eye. I found this poem
in a book called, “Everything Waits To Be Noticed” and want to
share it with you:

“ARARAT

Still seeking
the tallness of a tree
on which to alight,
the promised olive

emerging from the
vast turbulent waters
of God’s disappointment
slowly, too slowly
receding,

the released bird
of our headlong hope
pierces the air
in its searching flight.

Yet again it returns
exhausted
failing to find footing.

Again we revive it,
tend it,
sing to it of our
yearning for a
long-imagined peace

and with an absurdly
irrational patience
launch it once more
into the blue air,
probing for possibilities.

The rainbow signified
there would be
no more all-cleaning
all-renewing floods

so we shall have
to work piecemeal,
make it on our own,
one dove-delivered
branch at a time.”

……………CAROL A. ARMSTRONG, in her book
of poems, Everything Waits To Be Noticed. 2011

Always love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Photo by Barry Guthertz. "Valley of the Gods" http://www.barryguthertz.com/index.html — Photo by Barry Guthertz. “Valley of the Gods”
http://www.barryguthertz.com/index.html

A GOOD OLDIE

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Antoinette Martignoni

Six years ago I shared this poem with you in October,’08. Curious
that when I pulled this book out just now that I opened to it
without planning to. We were then looking at a winter coming, and now
we are looking at a Spring and Summer on the brink of being here.

That may sound like a declaration. Yes, it is. When we have a sudden snow
on the last day of March, we have to put forward our requests clearly.

Here is such a request:

“may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
wherever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile”

……………………. e e cummings,
#53 from his book 100 Selected POEMS.

humbly submitted…

Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette