Daily Rounds

imageThere is a book of prayers that invites us to become aware

of the prayers we are already praying.

For example:

“D U S T I N G

Time to dust again.
Time to caress my house,
to stroke all its surfaces.
I want to think of it as a kind of love-making
… the chance to appreciate by touch
what I live with and cherish.

The rags come out –old soft pajama legs,
torn undershirts, frayed towels.
They are still of use.
It is precisely because they have exhausted
their original use that they have come
to this honorable task.

Rag in hand, I feel along each piece
of furniture I live with, and the luster returns
to the old sideboard, to the chair legs
and the lamp stands. It is as if by touch
they are revealed and restored to themselves.
Strange that in the dumbness of inanimate things
we can feel so much silent response.
What then of us animate creatures?

We are so many-surfaced: bumpy, smooth,
prickly, rough, silky, hairy, spiny, soft, scaly,
furry, feathery, sharp, and so on and on.
And don’t we all want to be stroked in some way
… to be restored to ourselves by touch
as much as by sight or smell or sound?

I want to be a lover of surfaces all day today.
Let this be the prayer:
that my hands not be ashamed
to give and to receive a passionate exchange
… to luster and to be lustered…
and so come to feel Your inward touch.”

………….GUNILLA NORRIS, from her book of poems,
Being Home ( 1991), illustrated with photos by Greta D. Sibley.

It is easy to be house-bound due to so much wintry snowy weather
here in the north-east. This poem does more than warm the rooms,
it warms my heart.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Recognizing Seasons

imageYou know I have been awakened to find a poem
for this day. I could distract us by leading up to what was found.

What I’ve found is simply strange and wonderful enough
to stand on its own:

“H U R R I C A N E

It didn’t behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.

The back of the hand
to everything. I watched

the trees bow and their leaves fall

and crawl back into the earth.

As though, that was that.

This one hurricane

I lived through, the other one

was of a different sort, and

lasted longer. Then

I felt my own leaves giving up and falling.

The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened

to the actual trees;

toward the end of that summer they

pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.

It was the wrong season, yes,

but they couldn’t stop. They

looked like telephone poles and didn’t

care. And after the leaves came

blossoms. For some things

there are no wrong seasons.

Which is what I dream of for me.”

…………….MARY OLIVER,
from her book of poetry, A Thousand Mornings.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Basic Essentials

imageSometimes I have to reduce my philosophic wandering

to what I basically know to be true.

It’s very simple.

Take, for example, this short poetic bit:

“Cat curled asleep
On my lap —
Beloved
As love-sponge.

Dog gazing up
From the floor—
All calm
And liquid eyes —
All fountain.”

…………GREGORY ORR, from his book,
River Inside the River.

So, for my Christmas doll house, I will find a cat
to sit on the windowsill on the porch, and
I will find a dog to sit at the open door of that
porch.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette