You make a poem with words – but you also build an interior place when you write, a place where your intuitive voice may awaken and thrive
John Fox
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An interior place
Tag: poetry
Like a cloud
My name is Happiness.
Today I feel like a cloud
floating in the sky.
Sometimes I am a storm.
But always I am ethereal.
I ask the world, ‘and you?’
And the answer is: ‘ha! –
I feel like a cloud, too.’
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To understand you
‘Tomorrow Is Beautiful: The perfect poetry collection for anyone searching for a beautiful world …’
remember, you do not have to understand any of these poems to engage with them; in fact the converse is true: the job of these poems is to understand you
Sarah Crossan
from her anthology
Tomorrow Is Beautiful
Earlier today I held this lovely anthology in my hands and breathed ‘thank you.’ Thank you for the poems, of course. But thank you, a huge thank you, to the compiler, Sarah Crossan, for her introduction, and within it one of the best lines I’ve read about poetry: ‘the job of these poems is to understand you.’
Do you remember, at 4 or 5, ‘knowing’ that Tip and Mitten and Peter and Jane were your personal friends? And that, later, those adventures with ‘The Famous Five’ were liveable, breathable events in your own life? And mine? These stories existed to have something to do with, something to say to, something to understand about, you. And me. But, as they say, ‘time goes by’ – and sometimes we forget.
Today, between these covers lie working invitations to remember – and to do what ‘poetry’ means: ‘to create.’ Calls to continuing adventure – vivified by, and excited in the knowledge that these poems are celebrating us, engaging with and encouraging us, recognising and witnessing us. We are seen. And we know ourselves loved and appreciated by those who, by means we now find hard to fathom, ‘see us’.
We know ourselves growing and illuminated from within because others, because poems, seek to understand us. And we’re thereby able to see, in advance, that ‘Tomorrow’ – something, something about tomorrow – ‘is beautiful.’
related post In the corner
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Fantasies?
Do I ever choose to live in
a fantasy world you asked and
I replied without a second’s
hesitation that I suppose
I must – aware of my feeling
that the sky seems to speak to me
by day and night of a wide arc
and of light and dark and colourand vapour and warmth and ice and
art’s glad invitation to soar
to ever higher heights and leap
into untold depths of wondrous
encounter hitherto unknown –
yes I choose all of these and am
in this present stopped in my tracks:
are these choices mere fantasies?
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Warmth in my soul
… you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine
Mary Oliver
from
When I am among the trees
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I have a deep-seated need for times of stillness and silence – always have – but the need increases amid the cacophony of contemporary life. And death.
A lover of poetry, I nonetheless recognise that there are times when compassionate, listening silence has an equally important role in my own life, and in the life of society, and of nations.
I know of several friends who have distinct and affectionate relationships with particular trees. An Acer in my Lakeland garden has long been one of my friends in Nature, and today I have watched and watched some more, stunned at times by sunlight’s appearing as flames of fire amid her limbs. Soul warming. Peace-filled.
May we, that’s to say ALL humankind, learn to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.
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Hushed
more @gardenstudiogram | click photos to enlarge
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iPhone 11 Pro Max
Winter-Time
Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.
Before the stars have left the skies,
At morning in the dark I rise;
And shivering in my nakedness,
By the cold candle, bathe and dress.
Close by the jolly fire I sit
To warm my frozen bones a bit;
Or with a reindeer-sled, explore
The colder countries round the door.
When to go out, my nurse doth wrap
Me in my comforter and cap;
The cold wind burns my face, and blows
Its frosty pepper up my nose.
Black are my steps on silver sod;
Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;
And tree and house, and hill and lake,
Are frosted like a wedding cake.Robert Louis Stevenson
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A cloud of interests
more @gardenstudiogram | click photos to enlarge
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There wasn’t
time enough for all the wonderful things
I could think of to do
in a single day. Patience
comes to the bones
before it takes root in the heart
as another good idea.
I say this
as I stand in the woods
and study the patterns
of the moon shadows,
or stroll down into the waters
that now, late summer, have also
caught the fever, and hardly move
from one eternity to another.
Mary Oliver
From ‘Patience’
New and Selected Poems
Volume Two
Happy September! I’m having a quiet evening and feeling peaceful and mellow.
I’ve been thinking, too, about my automatically generated ‘tag cloud’ here, and of how it gives a pretty good account of some of my chief interests … inner life, contemplation, Edinburgh, poetry …
Autumn and winter will be warmed by an array of interests and occupations like these.
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Lingering at the Well
One thing is certain, and I have always known it – the joys of my life have nothing to do with age. They do not change. Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence, the goldfinches darting about …
May Sarton
Freesias, for me. For my desk. Peppery and colourful. And my best ever morning light? Two best ever! i – Sunrise over Galilee. ii – Normandy. Scented apple orchards and a golden mist hung a few feet above rolling fields, just after sunrise. Evening? In winter when it’s time for firelight. Music? Usually one piece at a time, silence before and aft to hold words, notation, resonance (!) and echo. Poetry? – my way of allowing the Universe to speak to me randomly: close my eyes and take down a volume – pot luck, usually followed by more of good fortune than anticipated. Silence? – why silence? William Stafford’s glorious ‘Listening’ suggests an answer more exquisitely than I’ve ever penned to date. And goldfinches? The ones who seem to enjoy my Japanese Acer as much as I do. Two little tininesses that fly-in disproportionate measures of duty-free joy from wherever they’ve been playing.
My father could hear a little animal step,
or a moth in the dark against the screen,
and every far sound called the listening out
into places where the rest of us had never been.
More spoke to him from the soft wild night
than came to our porch for us on the wind;
we would watch him look up and his face go keen
till the walls of the world flared, widened.
My father heard so much that we still stand
inviting the quiet by turning the face,
waiting for a time when something in the night
will touch us too from that other place.
William Stafford
Listening
from West of Your City
Talisman, 1960
Deep the wells that supply entire lifetimes.
And sang
Yes, Mary Oliver, yes. Thank you. Thousands upon thousands of us hear your singing, still. And thanks to @mypositiveoutlooks on Insta, too …
Vignettes and blossoms
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more @gardenstudiogram
Next to Canongate Kirk on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile is a little oasis of a garden, open to and enjoyed by the public, that, filled with birdsong, looked pretty as a picture this afternoon. It’s hard to imagine or describe the measure of tranquility to be enjoyed in this relatively small space in the heart of a busy city.
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The Church (1688) and the Kirkyard are themselves beautiful, and home to a Mercat Cross dated 1128. Calton Hill can be seen from behind the Kirk, and just across the road there’s easy access to Holyrood Park, Salisbury Crags, Arthur’s Seat and – presently – a million Spring blossoms.
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Nearby, too, there’s a distinctive meeting between ancient and modern: the ruins of Holyrood Abbey stand next to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Abbey Strand and the Queen’s Gallery; all of these opposite the strikingly different modern architecture of the new Scottish Parliament buildings, (link) the walls of which bear tablets inscribed with some of Scottish history’s poetry. Photographers like me wax lyrical about Edinburgh’s ever-changing skyscapes and the city’s distinctive skyline.
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The five (clickable / swipeable) galleries in this post, each containing ten photos, are the result of just a couple of hour’s encounter with Edinburgh beauty and history in a single afternoon. And of course, as Jiminy Cricket would say: ‘there’s more!’
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Honestly!
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‘Where nature’s wild forces collide with rugged landscapes, we are inspired to create …’
Honestly – all you need to do is pen a few poetic lines and you can just reel me in! Possessed of a lifetime allergy to alcohol, this may offer a soothing winter’s evening chest-warming. I hope so. I’ve just ordered a (gorgeous looking) bottle. Photos and report-back to follow (obviously 😉). Now to look for some more Scottish poetry …
more at gardenstudiogram
Proportion
sometimes the tiny
gifts of nature help create
huge transformations183
Human awakening
together always
together always – all ways
together always177
Borborygmi
borborygmi — the
sounds of this digestion — and
Sharon Olds tells moresee onbeing.org
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Evening comes
evening comes and breathes
another prayer by way
of nature’s fine art174