Month: May 2015

Emerging

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

imageI opened to a page without a number because it is an artist’ picture book.

Not for the coffee table, not for distraction, but as a beginning.
Look at this, have we not been here before?

” For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.

From within, I couldn’t decide what to do.

Unable to see, I heard my name being called…

Then I walked outside.”

Into the world of nature.
Into a world chosen for its silent solitary access to one’s own time. A retreat,
part of the great coming and going we have chosen as life.
This warm Spring morning, let it draw each of us outside and just nod,
if we happen to pass by.

The artist’s book is titled TRUE NATURE, written and drawn by BARBARA BASH.
The comment is mine.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Mornings

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

imageSomeone must have included me in their prayers, because
this morning I looked out my window at 5:20am, paused long
enough to really take it in, and felt deep in my bones the
sense of beginnIngs every day.

This poem is all about that:

” I HAPPENED TO BE STANDING

I don’t know where prayers go,
or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
half-asleep in the sun?
Does the opossum pray as it
crosses the street?
The sunflowers? The old black oak
growing older every year?
I know I can walk through the world,
along the shore or under the trees,
with my mind filled with things
of little importance, in full
self-attendance. A condition I can’t really
call being alive.
Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,
or does it matter?
The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way.
Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.

While I was thinking this I happened to be standing
just outside my door, with my notebook open,
which is the way I begin every morning.
Then a wren in the privet began to sing.
He was positively drenched with enthusiasm,
I don’t know why. And yet, why not.
I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe
or whatever you don’t. That’s your business.
But I thought of the wren’s singing, what could this be
if it isn’t prayer?
So I just listened, my pen in the air.”

…………MARY OLIVER, in her book, A Thousand Mornings,
a gift to me from a dear friend who knows about being
enthralled by mornings.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

First Yoga Lesson

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

IMG_3731So many returns to each day when I’ve gone back to yoga lessons.

Days  into weeks, and a year has passed.  Actually, sometimes decades.

Always the lure is new and it re-starts as lesson one.

Does this poem feel familiar?

” FIRST YOGA LESSON

“Be a lotus in the pond,” she said, “opening
slowly, no single energy tugging
against another but peacefully,
all together.”

I couldn’t even touch my toes.
“Feel your quadriceps stretching?” she asked.
Well, something was certainly stretching.

Stand impressively upright, she
raised on leg and placed it against
the other, then lifted her arms and
shook her hands like leaves.  “Be a tree,” she said.

I lay on the floor, exhausted.

But to be a lotus in the pond

opening slowly, and very slowly rising—

that I could do.”

………..MARY OLIVER, from her recent book,
Blue Horses, Poems. 2014

My take on that?  It’s worth it.

always with love,
Mom/MimiToni/Antoinette

Choose Your Title

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

IMG_3729A wind of words came billowing through my email, like birds
celebrating the first warm weather in a giddy mass. This poem
emerged:

“WAKING WONDERFUL WINNIE

Waking wonderful, wacky, Winnie the witch

involved, irksome issues, indubitably

naturally no one nudged nelly til noon

indulged, inebriated inertia, invariably

flopped feebly, a fallen flower

remaining rakish, rarely rising

enjoying exhausting everyone, the expert

dear, darling dame, daring dandies.
Many men mentioned marriage

always after amorous affairs

usually unwilling, she unwittingly

rejected requests. Requiring rather

exact, erroneous, exotic, entreaties;

enamored entourages, eagerly evaporated

nightly, nervously nodding, no-no.
Mollified momentarily, miraculous millie

offered obligingly , odd, original outbursts

rather righteous; she ridiculously ranted

rowdy ruffian, rude romantic rabble

intending, intellectual intensity, instead

supplying, silly superlative, suggestions.”

………..MAUREEN MORRIS, dated 3-12-84
in the archives of her poetry.

Let them be there, gathered in all their glorious gusts of grave departure
from the dowdy, dusty folders, enjoying nothing except their being.
The wonder of words, no single sense of intention, falling all over
each other.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Afternoon’s Bower

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

imageJust last week, the branches were bare.
I could see across the road to the next row of trees. Lots of sky
allowed the clouds their streaming promise of blossoms below.

And suddenly, it’s all here. Was it over-nght? Maybe. Anyhow,
those blossoms are here! Some reflection on that

” Not all poems seek
Permanence. Think of those
Lover’s couplets
That wove tall
Meadow grass
Into an afternoon’s bower.

Some forever;
Others, just one sweet hour.”

…………..GREGORY ORR, in his book, River Inside the River,
a part of three lengthy pieces exploring love.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

We Can Ask

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

IMG_3344It’s still dark enough to feel very, very early today.
Yesterday I got a ride around our roads to the beach, and found
such surprises springing up suddenly!

To catch the awareness of opening flowers and burgeoning trees
I pulled out an old familiar book and found this to share with you:

” L I G H T

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 wakened.”

…………….GUNILLA NORRIS, in her book, A Mystic Garden,
Working with Soil, Attending to Soul. (2006)

…so, this morning, I do ask.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette