stars

3 a.m....or is it 4?
nobody knows,
'cept the wee creature
who is wailing,
protesting Daddy's too-long absence

i step outside
and there above me
shines every star in the universe
sparkling like gems
across the heavens

did God turn down the lights
on this sleepy town?
there are stars
i've never seen before
i close my eyes, they are still there

this night is made
for vibrations of love, word made flesh,
what needs to be said
utterances of greater
truths, silence brightened up

it's 4 a.m.
he settles at last
but i am awake now, in
parts long slumbered
insides spilling forth like stars


acs
10.2.13

garden tender

can you love a woman
just from watching her garden?
how does she know
  what to plant, when to
  rotate, which will come up next?

all summer, and now late September,
always something popping up to delight.
i see her diligent
  with her Rototiller
  tending, loving, tender-loving.

Subaru, hatch open,
tools ready at the hand.
it is Fall.
  all the gardens are drooping, dying
  sunflowers surrendered, kale overgrown

chard long past, too high,
no longer gentle for eating.
weeds, straw grass have overtaken sweet harvests
  but Mary's garden, full of jewels--
  deeps reds, gold bursts and blush globes.

sometimes i think she plants
just for my amusement.
she knows i loiter, linger.
  does she think of my attention?
  i think this might be love.


acs
9/25/13

So beautiful...and I have always loved Rita Dove

Borderline Mambo
by Rita Dove
 

As if the lid stayed put on the marmalade.
As if you could get the last sip of champagne 
out of the bottom of the fluted glass.
As if we weren't all dying, as if we all weren't 
going to die some time, as if we knew for certain 
when, or how. As if the baseball scores made sense 
to the toddler. As if the dance steps mattered, or there's a point 
where they don't. For instance wheelchair. Heart flutter. 
Oxygen bottle mounted on the septuagenarian's back 
at the state ballroom competitions--that's Manny, 
still pumping the mambo with his delicious slip 
of an instructor, hip hip hooray. Mambo, for instance,
if done right, gives you a chance to rest: one beat in four. 
One chance in four, one chance in ten, a hundred, as if
we could understand what that means. Hooray. Keep
pumping. As if you could keep the lid on a secret
once the symptoms start to make sense. A second
instance, a respite. A third. Always that hope.
If we could just scrape that last little bit 
out, if only it wouldn't bottom out 
before they can decode the message 
sent to the cells. Of course it matters when, even though 
(because?) we live in mystery. For instance
Beauty. Love. Honor. As if we didn't like
secrets. Point where it hurts. Of course we'll tell.

About This Poem

"I'm a fanatic ballroom dancer, and Latin rhythms are usually invigorating. But I find mambo simultaneously joyous and poignant for two reasons: first, the pause in the rhythm (stop!-2-3-4) suggests that something's always missing--a hole in the fabric of celebration, perhaps. And, secondly, the memory of Manny dancing with his beautiful young instructor, oxygen tank on his back, suggests a way to plug that hole, even though we know that some patterns--disease, age--are relentless and will grind on long after the dance is done." 

--Rita Dove

Your 50th

"For Your Birthday"
by, John O'Donohue

Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day
The blueprint of your life
Would begin to glow on earth,
Illuminating all the faces and voices
That would arrive to invite
Your soul to growth.

Praised be your father and mother,
Who loved you before you were,
And trusted to call you here
With no idea who you would be.

Blessed be those who have loved you
Into becoming who you were meant to be,
Blessed be those who have crossed your life
With dark gifts of hurt and loss
That have helped to school your mind
In the art of disappointment.

When desolations surrounded you,
Blessed be those who looked for you
And found you, their kind hands
Urgent to open a blue window
In the gray wall formed around you.

Blessed be the gifts you never notice,
Your health, eyes to behold the world,
Thoughts to countenance the unknown,
Memory to harvest vanished days,
Your heart to feel the world's waves,
Your breath to breathe the nourishment
Of distance made intimate by earth.

On the echoing-day of your birth,
May you open the gift of solitude
In order to receive your soul;
Enter the generosity of silence
To hear your hidden heart;
Know the serenity of stillness
To be enfolded anew
By the miracle of your being.

Summertime meals, by England's greatest chef, Sweet Marie

Crispy Chicken, Sugar Snaps, and Spinach Salad.

Looks delicious, Marie (as always)! Now, if you will just come by and cook it for me...

~Ally

Beauty, for a rainy Thursday

Wow. Check out this website for absolutely gorgeous prints and cards, and original artwork.

www.teezerz.co.uk/

I especially love many pieces in the KOI and FLORAL galleries. Mmmm, beauty! Does the heart good.

~Ally

poem for a blessed Wednesday

He Stood  
by Aaron Shurin
 

He stamped his feet and opened the door, stood on the threshold, turned around. The desert light shrank his eyes, sun slammed his face--he almost lost his breath--blond shiny grasses, ring of distant mountains pinking in the haze, the scorched but somehow fertile earth--he wiped his brow--he couldn't go in, he couldn't move, he couldn't say why--as if he too were a thing dried in sunlight, stopped in his tracks in the heat that fixed him in its gaze--rattlesnake Medusa--where he breathed the stinging dusty winds as though a rock inhaling rock--his proper evolution?--and fed on silence as it flowered and fell--the fierce clarity, the fierce restraint--front door behind him hanging open like a thrown shadow as he blazed in place... a man inside the view... the zooming arc... and edge to edge the blue absolute...