My brain has been so focused of late on forms of speech other than poetry. This one will have to be a place holder, I think, so that I can come back to the subject of that blue. I know poets have written of blue before. Still, I need to find my own words for this blue. It’s not the blue of sadness, though it holds sadness deep within it. It’s too simple, somehow, to say that it represents love. Love is too broad for one color. But that is in there, too. I need to go to an art museum this winter, and look for it, or go back to that little chapel with the Chagall windows near the Hudson River and let the blue light wash me.
there will need to be more poems
more poems about the blue
the Samaritan’s clothes
as he lifts the dying man
on van Gogh’s mountain
the welling glow
of any Chagall window
where you stand in the shine
and blue surrounds you
while angels and ordinaries
float in the ether
or Mary’s cloak
the blue of the world
which was borne within her
Gratitude List:
1. My family is fed. Jon cooks wonderful meals. Mom and other friends have shared food with us. We’re finding our way into this new rhythm.
2. Elderberries and sleep: magic healing duo. Crossing my fingers that they will continue to hold this cold at bay.
3. Another student story: Yesterday as I was tidying up the room during my planning period, a student that I know mostly by sight stopped by on her way somewhere else and started to tell me about the Peace Fellowship group that she is a part of. She began speaking very articulately about justice and compassion and love, about working together in intergenerational groups, about encouraging diversity, about how she believes the work of peace is intimately bound up with the work of caring for the earth. I held her words tenderly and thanked her and told her I would look up her peace group, and all the while I was hearing the words of Miranda in The Tempest, “Oh brave new world, that has such people in it!” There’s hope. So much hope in this next generation.
4. This beautiful rock that Suzy brought me: red sandstone-looking bits, black lave-like bits, and shiny, sparkly twinkles all throughout.
5. I am not necessarily grateful that I am no longer finding a daily feather, but I am grateful that the transition is occurring. I have made the leap. My wings have held in the winds, for the most part. No I need to find my feet on earth. Now is the time to move from feathers to stones. Roots. Solidity.
May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 