Each morning. New. Possibility. Always….
always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette
I’m back in the saddle! I’ve missed sharing my morning musings with you all. So today marks the new incarnation of my DALIES. I will rise and allow a HAIKU to form, send it to my daughter Elizabeth, who will then – create an image to accompany any additional words that may or may not flow. I hope it reaches your inbox. If not -it will also be posted on my Facebook pages.
My windows are open and I’m smiling broadly – happy to welcome you back into my mornings.
always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette
While Antoinette is taking some time away from her ‘Dailies’ – she continues to wax poetic in all her conversations with me (Lizzie, her daughter). I have a notion to keep track of the momentary inspirations she shares – and share them, via her blog – until she returns to the keyboard.
Here’s one from two years back – which somehow slipped through the cracks – unpublished. Since this week – she talked about how she spoke to the trees saying: “Please green, yes green again” – this post is perfect.
Just 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
I’ve always loved the title of that small Shambala Pocket Classic,
written 30 years ago. My dog-eared copy shows those years!
The sub-title, “Freeing the Writer Within” is what hooked me in the
beginning, and since then has proven its worth.
Consider this on page 87:
“I say all writers, no matter how fat, thin, or flabby have good figures.
The are always working out. Remember this. They are in tune, toned up,
in rhythm with the hills, the highway and can go for long stretches and
many miles of paper. They move with grace in and out of many worlds.” ~ Natalie Goldberg
Yes! tomorrow I may have a poem but this is my ode to urge you to
pick up a pencil or pen and just write your heart out. No erasures,
no crossed out lines, just go for it, and leave it to continue another day.
always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette
To celebrate the return of the early sun is a kind of wonder.
What do we say to each other?
How about this:
“I wish for you that when you awake
You emulate the leaf and the bird;
That like them, touched with grace, you take
Note of the wind. You have not heard
Its low-voiced billows yet, nor seen
( Lost in your less elated rest)
The empty light upon the green,
The leaves and tumbling birds that gave
The wind its due, and then redressed
That small excess, each bounding spray
A boat that dances on the wave,
A whip that tingles in the day.”
……………..DANIEL DAVIE, 1922-1995
from an Anthology of the Best Poetry Since 1900,
edited by Michael Schmidt
Very much like the view from my window this April morning.
Celebrate the day.
always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette
I pick up a poetry book and notice that there are times when a poem looks very long, let’s just skip paragraphs here and there.
So I tried that.
No go.
So, here it is in all its wonder and grace:
“AT THE TIME OF GREATEST DARKNESS”
“At the time of greatest darkness
there is the greatest felt need
for celebration,
for the flickering illumination
of candles reaching into the world’s
dark places,
for the ordinary, homely miracles that
stand against disaster, destruction
and despair,
for the small, sturdy symbols
of inextinguishable hope that
encourage us
not to mistrust the strength
of the gentle, the decent,
the comic, the kind,
for ritual words that give shape
to shared memory, carrying with them
believable promise,
for laughter that snuffs out fear,
and for an irrepressible merriment
obliterating darkness.”
………….CAROL A. ARMSTRONG,
from the book, Everything Waits To Be Noticed
Let this be a good day.
always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette.
It’s still dark, not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse.
I opened my computer and up popped Chris Williamson’s “Waterfall“,
filling up and spilling over.
everything’s goin’ to be all right…
The gift of 2015 is in this poem from David Whyte’s “River Flow”:
“All these years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.
And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.
Silence and winter
have led me to that
otherness.
So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.”
………………………………………………….
May your giving and receiving be miraculous
and lovely and fun.
always love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette
Like the lines of a song, you want to hear, sing it one more time.
So it can be with poems: a sense that it was saying more than it simply seemed.
Like this one:
” SOMETIMES”
Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories,
who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound,
you come
to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.”
……………….DAVID WHYTE, from his book,
River Flow, New & Selected Poems, 1984-2007
I recall being 11 years old, new to Norwalk, CT, where roads and hills
were still open and growing. Part of this new life was the experience of
learning to walk the woods around a local lake exactly as the poem
says, breathing like the ones in the old stories, without a sound.
Dears, that was 85 years ago. I have learned how to listen to my body’s
memories as new and curious experiences guide me through this changing world.
I like the idea of treating these new ways as a way to walk without disturbing
the leaves.
always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette
This poem was sitting in a special pile near my computer and it’s time to share it. with you all.
I’m calling it ‘summer wind’ because now in November it carries the inner warmth of discovery:
” I KNOW HER
She stands there, eyes wide, outside herself
vulnerable, what do they see… fearful, cowering,
exposed
From a distance, I watch myself, empathy
rises up
She doesn’t remember me, yet I have known
her oh so well
From the very beginning, and now, can she
look at me?
Can she embrace, trust, how far have we come?
Silently I say…
‘I am here to stay’.
………………………….CINDY MARCUS, 9 August 2015
May we all embrace love, always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette