{poem} & happy halloween

hist wist

ee cummings

hist whist
little ghostthings
tip-toe
twinkle-toe

little twitchy
witches and tingling
goblins
hob-a-nob hob-a-nob

little hoppy happy
toad in tweeds
tweeds
little itchy mousies

with scuttling
eyes rustle and run and
hidehidehide
whisk

whisk look out for the old woman
with the wart on her nose
what she’ll do to yer
nobody knows

for she knows the devil ooch
the devil ouch
the devil
ach the great

green
dancing
devil
devil

devil
devil

wheeEEE

poetry bombing the alley

In the Mama Scout e-lab I am facilitating this month (and next month too, if you want to register) we are working with ideas of parenting as performance art and doing little acts of public art. 

I live for this stuff. We have sent messages in bottles, left messages guerrilla style in public spaces,  and tried to be open to situations were we could spread kindness. 

Many nights I walk my old dog down the moonlit alley behind my house. 

There is a tree with such huge leaves, that when I am standing there waiting for my dog to pee, I always stare at them, transfixed.

They remind me of turning book pages when they blow in the breeze; they have such heft.

And they beg to have poetry written on them. 

On a piece of vellum, I wrote out the poem, All Things Pass by Lao-Tzu for all those who pass, and sewed it gently onto a branch. It was a windy day, and as soon as it was attached it began blowing around and fluttering like a leaf. A leaf poem that had married itself into the being of the tree.

This little, tiny act of art fueled me for the rest of the day. 

I am not sure what the affect on my son was other than he gets to grow up thinking it is normal to have a mom that sews beautiful words to her neighborhood.

i live now

spend wisely

how to live

The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer. 


How to live.


How to get the most of life...


How to extract its honey from the flower of the world.

-Thoreau

love taking a new form

"And there are moments when I think my heart just might break with the loss of what was, what's almost over. But then I realize: it's not breaking, it's overflowing. It's not grief, I feel, just love taking a new form. Love, stitching its own sturdy seam through all our souls."

Katrina Kenison

The Gift of an Ordinary Day

big girl as she was

"Big girl as she was, Laura spread her arms wide to the wind and ran against it. She flung herself on the flowery grass and rolled like a colt. She lay in the soft, sweet grasses and looked at the great blueness above her and the high, pearly clouds sailing in it. She was so happy that tears came to her eyes." 

Laura Ingalls Wilder

By the Shores of Silver Lake

We are deep into the last books of the Little House on the Prairie and they just keep getting better. I think I will need to revisit them every few years. Have you read them all? 

a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam

If you look at it, you see a dot. That's here.
 That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you 
ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, 
lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our 
joys and; sufferings, thousands of confident 
religions, ideologies and; economic doctrines, 
every hunter and; forager, every hero and; 
coward, every creator and; destroyer of 
civilizations, every king and; peasant, every 
young couple in love, every hopeful child, every 
mother and; father, every inventor and; 
explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt 
politician, every superstar, every supreme 
leader, every saint and; sinner in the history 
of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, 
suspended in a sunbeam

Carl Sagan (reminded of long ago by Kind over Matter)

don't do it!

twenty years from now...

how to waste wisely your monday

My meditation and intention for the day. (Along with stopping the homemade bagels).

To awaken each morning with a smile brightening my face; to greet the day with reverence for the opportunities it contains; to approach my work with a clean mind; to hold ever before me, even in the doing of little things, the ultimate purpose toward which I am working; to meet men and women with laughter on my lips and love in my heart; to be gentle, kind and courteous through all hours; to approach night with weariness that ever woos sleep and the joy that comes from work well done - this is how I desire to waste wisely my days. 
Thomas Dekker

Leisure

Leisure
W.H. Davies


What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?


No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.


No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.


No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies late at night.


No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.


No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.


A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Good Night

Carl Sandburg

Many ways to say good night.

Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July
      spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue
      and then go out.

Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar.

Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields to razorback hill.

It is easy to spell good night.
            Many ways to spell good night.

live in the sunshine

Live in the sunshine,

swim in the sea, 

drink the wild air.

Emerson

 

the days are nouns

Happy Mother's Day to you all! I love how this poem speaks about how what we do makes us who we are. Our lives are made up of the small, mundane and magnificent minutiae. 

Daily

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips

These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares

These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl

This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out

This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky

This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it

The days are nouns:  touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world

Naomi Shihab Nye

 

they are so much more

They look so small and frail

but they are so great and magnificent. 

They are born of the same womb 

that birthed the cosmos

and knitted together the galaxies. 

If you could see them as they truly are, 

you would be astounded.

You would not see little children, 

but dancing clouds of light, 

energy in motion, 

swimming in an ocean of love. 

They are so much more 

than what you see.

As are you.

William Martin, The Parent's Tao Te Ching