My father, a WWII Lieutenant Colonel Marine and commanding officer who served for almost three years straight in the South Pacific, would never talk about his life during the war. Despite not knowing what he saw and endured, I will remember his and others’ service with gratitude.
Month: November 2013
Bare November
My Sorrow, when she’s here with me…
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days…
~Robert Frost from “My November Guest”
November,
month of darkening,
now transformed
to a recounting of gratitude
of daily thanksgiving and blessings~~
it is good to dwell on our gifts,
even so,
I invite Sorrow
to sit in silence with me,
her tears blending with mine.
These deepening days
of bare stripped branches
feed my growing need
for the covering grace
of His coming light.
Moments of Awe
Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.
~John Milton
From my front yard looking north~
an epiphany of snowy peaks
barely earthbound,
transcending dawn,
revering a Creator
who awes by His every day light
and everlasting love.
Moody Dusk
I’m out here in the dusk…
There is no one home but me—
and I’m not at home; I’m up here on the hill,
looking at the dark windows below.
Let them be dark…
…night has silenced
the last loud rupture of the calm.
~Jane Kenyon from “Frost Flowers”
A Hand Full of Pearls
My poems start the way an oyster does, with an aggravation…
~Kay Ryan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 2010
If I can remember how often
inspiration starts with irritation~
a bit of sandy grit that hurts and aggravates
becomes something beautiful
if I surround it,
build on it,
smooth it to a shine
and lose myself inside.
A dozen times a day
I can choose to be angry
for imperfection
or be grateful
for nagging aggravations that
lead me beyond mere comfort seeking,
to transcend the mundane
and by grace,
touch the heavenly.
Vapoury Air
Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapoury air,
Ere, o’er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o’er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.
~William Cullen Bryant “A Sonnet –November”
Frost-crisp
Listen.
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.
~Adelaide Crapsey “November Night”
The Stream of Life
Oh Stream of Life! the violet springs
But once beside thy bed;
But one brief summer, on thy path,
The dews of heaven are shed.
Thy parent fountains shrink away,
And close their crystal veins,
And where thy glittering current flowed
The dust alone remains.
~from William Cullen Bryant’s last poem “The Stream of Life”
A seed may land in lush green
or a narrow crack of the pavement.
Only a dewy touch from above
will yield blooms from dry rock.
May my dusty soul be bathed
and blossom.
Tattered and Tumbling Skies
The rain and the wind, the wind and the rain —They are with us like a disease:
They worry the heart,
they work the brain,
As they shoulder and clutch at the shrieking pane,
And savage the helpless trees. What does it profit a man to know
These tattered and tumbling skies
A million stately stars will show,
And the ruining grace of the after-glow
And the rush of the wild sunrise?
~William Ernest Henley from “The Rain and the Wind”
Yesterday a calm and steady rain
made more sodden a sullen gray dawn
when unbidden, a sudden gust
ripped loose remaining leaves
and sent them spinning,
swirling earthbound
in yellow clouds.
The battering of rain and wind
left no doubt
summer is done for good —
the past is past.
I hunker through the turbulenceto await a clear night when once again
heaven empties itself into
a fragile crystalline dawn.
A Melancholy Nature
A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn.
The sky was hung with various shades of gray,
and mists hovered about the distant mountains
– a melancholy nature.
Every landscape is,
as it were,
a state of the soul,
and whoever penetrates into both
is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.
~Henri Frederic Amiel
What is melancholy
at first glance
glistens bejeweled
when studied up close.
It isn’t all sadness~
there is solace in knowing
the landscape and I share
an inner world of tears.
