HEADING HOME

What to do with awaking too soon, too alert to rest,
and so many hours until dawn? I do have nights in
which I sleep 5 hours at a stretch, and can also
return for more. Not so, right now. So, I pull out
the poetry books and look for a light.

And I found one:

“W I L D G E E S E

(it’s alright,
it’s familiar, that helps, so, one more time):

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, 1992

Yes, ‘harsh & exciting’, and an inappropriate time of
year to look up, for the geese have long fled south,
or are currently on their way.

Tonight I read these words out loud, and the world’s
call is clear. Once known, once experienced, there is
a fresh newness and sweetness each time.

Wow!

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Drawing by Rachel Olson Awes (find her beautiful art on Etsy)

VERY UNLIKELY

It’s very unlikely that you or I have ever known
the sounds and scents that make up this poem.
Well, maybe one or more? Let’s see:

“S O A K I N G U P S U N

Today there is the kind of sunshine old men love,

the kind of day when my grandfather would sit

on the south side of the wooden corn crib where

the sunlight warmed slowly all through the day

like a wood stove. One after another dry leaves

fell. No painful memories came. Everything was

lit by a halo of light. The cornstalks glinted bright

as pieces of glass. From the fields and cottonwood

grove came the damp smell of mushrooms, of

things going back to earth. I sat with my grandfa-

ther then. Sheep came up to us as we sat there,

the oily wool so warm to my fingers, like a strange

and magic snow. My grandfather whittled sweet

smelling apple sticks just to get at the scent. His

thumb had a permanent groove in it where the

back of the knife blade rested. He let me listen to

the wind, the wild geese, the soft dialect of sheep,

while his own silence taught me every secret thing

he knew.”
…………………….TOM HENNEN, from Good Poems,
selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor. Tom
Hennen was born in 1942 in Morris, MN, and is a
poet and former park ranger.

It’s curious how many of the people I know are
from the coastlines, east or west. Is there a dif-
ferent time frame experience for those living in
the great lands in between?

The dark outside is lightening now, soon the sun
will be up. Now that I think about that, what a
funny way to put that!

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

“…his own silence taught me every secret he knew.”

ON THE RIVER, OUT ON THE OCEAN

This Autumn there have been big winds. I see the
trees whirl with invisible currents that carry neither
snow nor rain. Very strange to one who used to be
out at the crack of dawn to run.

I remember my granddaughter getting up very early
to be out on the river and row. YES!

A poem can make it happen, even now:

“K A Y A K IV

From the northeast
undercurrents stirred by wind
ripple south
under the kayak
and with each rise
the boat lifts
to the dark clouds
covering Spieden,

with hips awash
and bow submerged,
each stroke
balanced on unseen pressures lives for a moment
in the shoulders

and with the first sound
of indrawn breath,
the heart begins to flow
and become liquid,
spinning through the arms
like molten glass,

out here
life is a vibrant wire
pulled tight
between two opposing limbs

and it sings to the touch of the ocean.”

………DAVID WHYTE, from his book,
River Flow, 1984-2007

It is just after 3 a.m., when all the trees are still.
Perhaps this poem has touched your dreaming.
It keeps me company and the night seems young.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

BEING LOVED

This morning I picked up a book that I’d cut my
spiritual teeth on! The poet, not of the ancients,
nor even one popularly quoted & noted, but surely
one who, once read, is truly remembered.

Let’s begin with this poem, quoted from that book:

“A N N U N C I A T I O N

Even if I don’t see it again — nor ever feel it
I know that it is — and that if once it hailed me
it ever does —

and so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as toward a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,

as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t — I was blinded like that — and swam
in what shone at me

only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.”

…………..MARIE HOWE, from the book,
Saved by a Poem written by KIM ROSEN

On the facing page there is this note:
” The truth is, in the wake of every poem that
touches me, there is this uncanny sense of
being loved. Perhaps that is what it feels like
when the soul door swings ajar. Will I walk
through and dwell in the territory of wonder
for a while? Or will I turn away and launch
into the next task on my perpetually humming
to-do list?”

Always simply my choice, night or day, day or
night, the music hums within and I follow, even
if briefly. And so it is.

always with love,

Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

“a tilting within myself” – toward love….

CHRISTMAS, 2010

I have in my hand a small book, entitled
‘count me the stars’ .
On its back were the words that followed:
‘on your ceiling this night’.

When it’s after 3 a.m. and the leaves have begun
to move again, this is the kind of book to find.
For example, here’s a full page:

“in your unchartered journeys
I somehow knew you would visit me

if only for an hour.”

That was below the center of the page, and
separated by some silent lines. I like that.

….. the poet: KYLIE JOHNSON.

Last year I bought a line drawing with only one
splash of yellow color. It’s message:

“hello poppy, how nice
of you to arrive.”

If you happen to be in the neighborhood,
please stop by.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Art by Rachel Olson Awes. Find her on Etsy.

NO BIG WORDS

With the weekend approaching, it might be
apt to look at the pleasure of all five senses:

” Savoring,
tasting,
touching,
hearing,
seeing — these are the gates through which the
world pours in and through us. The wider we open
those gates, the more fully we shall know the
pleasures, unique to this embodied life, that are
passing even now as we speak.

And we shall come to this knowledge, not by
hurrying to cram it all in, but by slowing down,
so we may glimpse the vastness of every moment,
every mouthful,
every sight,
sound,
and touch of hand to hand
as it happens.”

…………….ROGER HOUSDEN, from his book,
Seven Sins for a LIfe Worth Living.

I could mention all the ‘big’ words, like
friendship, freedom, enough, that move us through
the days of our lives. I could do that and it would
be what I spend a lot of my time considering.

Housden is asking me, us, you, to get out of our
minds to just notice the simpler means we have
at hand to accomplish much.

There it is, that big word: accomplish.
I’m putting that aside until next Monday.
Time enough then.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Art by Rachel Olson Awes

MAY IT HAPPEN

Conventions parade faces and voices from other
parts of the USA into our living rooms. I have been
full of amazement as familiar political faces were
joined by so many unknown to me because their
papers had not been left at my door.

For the moment we can suspend choice and see
the beauty of the new young ones in all their hope
and strength, now being heard.

As the poet says:

“Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost, green thrives, the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen, may it happen to you.”

………………SHEENAGH PUGH, from Cardiff, Wales.
in Good Poems , selected by Garrison Keillor.

These “Dailies” are generally written as the sun comes
up, or before. I leave you to take what you will from
their content, sometimes sending me back your take
on what I have sought to share.

Thank you so much, each time you do.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

“The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow that seemed hard frozen, may it happen to you.” Art by Lucy Campbell

A GARDEN

The end of Summer seems to fall around Labor Day,
part of our cultural homage to change of season.

I went to my bookcase this morning, pulled out
Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, then recent poems by
Mary Oliver, and lastly, Gunilla Norris’s book,
A Mystic Garden.

What the summer has brought up for us all has
been sudden, often unexpected, yet hugely
meaningful. Here, from A Mystic Garden, are
today’s words:

“Any time we make a garden, even a tiny one, we
are in the work of remembering. Working the soil,
cultivating our inner ground, we have a chance to
appreciate and praise the great gift of life and the
earth that sustains us.

We are held by something so beyond our ken
and so essentially unknowable. We call it God
though no word can name it.

Humming through us, through the ground, through
all things, it asks us to be particular, to be living
expressions, to be sons and daughters of earth
and to care for life itself.

It asks us to be fruitful — to tend the garden,
to protect the garden, to share the garden,
to be the garden.”

……..GUNILLA NORRIS.

While the glorious colors of gardens are still with us,
let’s fill our senses with beauty, and share the gifts..

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

“We are held by something so beyond our ken and so essentially unknowable…”

JOURNEY

The dawn is a pale blue through the silhouetted
darkness of the trees. I cannot see the sky from
here, yet the poet tells me more is there than
eye can see.

“THE JOURNEY

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
enscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes
of your life.

You are not leaving,
even as the light
fades quickly.
You are arriving.”

………….DAVID WHYTE, from his book of poems,
River Flow. (1984-2997)

A new week begins. May I be awake to that!

always with love, Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

“Someone has written something new in the ashes of your life.”
Art by Amanda Cass

OUT OF SEASON

I have gotten out of the habit of awaking and reaching
for a poem. Lately, I have chosen to simply go back
to sleep. Tonight, or rather this very early morning,
I got up and reached for a poem:

LESTER TELLS OF WANDA & THE BIG SNOW

“Some years back I worked a strip mine
Out near Tylesburg. One day it starts
To snow and by two we got three feet.
I says to the foreman, “I’m going home.”
He says, “Ain’t you stayin’ til five?”
I says, “I got to see to my cows,”
Not telling how Wanda was there at the house.
By the time I make it home at four
Another foot is down and it don’t quit
Until it lays another. Wanda and me
For three whole days seen no one else.
We tunneled the drifts and slid
Right over the barbed wire, laughing
At how our heartbeats melted the snow.
After a time the food was gone and I thought
I’d butcher a cow, but then it cleared
And the moon come up as sweet as an apple.
Next morning the ploughs got through. It made us sad.
It don’t snow like that no more. Too bad.”

……PAUL ZIMMER,(1934, Canton,OH) ran university presses
at Pittsburgh, Georgia,and Iowa, then retired to his farm
near Soldiers Grove, WI. Author of many collections, he is
known to have said, “Some people view life as food served
by a psychopath. They do not trust it.” But Zimmer expects
always to be happy. Puzzled by melancholy, he pours a
reward and loves the world relentlessly.

Although I am alone here, I laugh out loud at that remark
noted in Garrison Keillor’s book, Good Poems.(2002)

Good morning to you all.

always with love, Mom/Mimi/Antoinette/Toni

“…laughing…. At how our heartbeats melted the snow.”