Gratitude List:
1. Strawberry sorbet (I keep wanting to sing a Prince song with that: “She ate her Straaaaawberry sorbet!” Hey Weird Al! I’ve got an idea for you!)
2. That Alan Lomax Collection Sampler CD I got at the yard sale. No liner notes–glad I’ve got Google.
3. Early morning thunderstorm
4. Starting the day with energy
5. Balance
May we walk in Beauty!
“If you wish for light, be ready to receive light.” ~ Rumi
Gratitude List:
1. Unfolding
2. Uncertainty, and the way it draws me to trust, faith. The way it tilts me out of my comfort zone and throws me into a new space. (Six weeks ago, I would not have imagined being grateful for uncertainty. That shift, itself, is something I am grateful for.)
3. Bridging
4. Continuing the line, keeping the patterns going, but adding my own lines, my own colors.
5. That thing that happens when you talk to someone and you realize that you’ve both grabbed the same word or idea in the past week or day, that you’re in very similar places of creative shift or idea birthing, that you’re waking up to the same things at the same time. Synchronicity squared. A take-off-your-shoes-this-is-holy-ground sort of meeting. That.
May we walk in Beauty!
This isn’t really a poem. Not in any polished sense. More like a ramble that wanted to look like a poem. Consider it a scribble in the writer’s notebook, a placeholder for me to return to and flesh out at some later date.
The little ones wanted to know
at what moment on the bridge
we were in Columbia
instead of Wrightsville.
At what point have we gone
from there to here?
But the bridge is its own thing,
a place between places,
spanning the distance
between town and town,
and time to time.
Everywhere and everywhen
begins here, ends here.
Gratitude List:
1. So much to anticipate
2. Bridges.
3. The birds of Goldfinch Hollow. These weeks, it’s like the Keystone Kops out there. Cardinal chasing cardinal past the window. Then back again. And a third time. Next flyby is oriole chasing mockingbird. Then sparrow after chickadee. Never a dull moment.
4. Whatever brings relief. Ice packs. Cold nettle and mint tea. Antihistamines. Sleep. (This one is sort of a whiny gratitude, I realize. These days when the allergies are really bad, I tend to get wrapped up in my own misery. Whatever can give me a few moments of rest and calm, whatever can help me feel closer to baseline again–that I am truly grateful for. REALLY grateful.)
5. Community. Powerful personal healing stories. The dancing flames quilt banner. Pot luck.
May we walk in Beauty!
I am feeling a little uninspired, poetry-wise, these days. There’s lots going on in my head, but this is one of those times when I walk after a thought into the green mist of my brain, and everything scatters. When I get my hands on one rascally idea, another goes bleating by, and I lose my grip on the first while I reach to grab the next one. I’ve lost the sheep dog for my poet-brain during these days.
This is not a bad thing. I’ll call it incubation time, let things grow in their own way for a while, like that insufferable mile-a-minute weed out on the hillside behind the house. One of these days, I’ll wake up the sheep dog, or pull out the weed whacker, or whatever metaphor I need to open the next new poem.
Meanwhile, dream. Meanwhile, work and hope. Meanwhile, rage and grow, rest and mend, edit and nurture. Meanwhile, Love.
I have been thinking about love a lot lately. About the friends who say, “They’re all our children,” and then take children into their home, one after another, knowing that the better they do the work of loving and tending in the moment, the more their hearts will break when the time comes to say goodbye. And children come and find a haven. They receive at least one bright and shining period of love and care in their lives. These people are changing the world.
I have been thinking about the woman who opened her heart to grief, to the searing pain of listening to the way the Earth and her creatures are being destroyed. Because of Love. She turned all that tenderness and fierceness, that deep love and that deep rage, into powerful words. Words like needles and thread, to stitch up all our broken hearts together. The shattering grief has become a tool of mending and healing. She is changing the world.
I have been thinking about people who, when faced with a tragedy or a need or a loss or a hope, somewhere in their world or community–the ones who step forward without hesitation, knowing that they have love enough and heart enough to patch the gaps, to be part of the solution. Confidently they come forward, but humbly, too, to make the world a better place.
I wonder what difference it would make, were we to stand still in this moment, look back at the lives have lived up to this point, and call that Training. Every terrible thing, every mistake, every good choice, all of it–it has all gone into making us the exact people we are in this moment. We have been trained by our lives to be the people we are now. And we’ve been chosen, every one of us, for an important job. We have the best training life could supply. Now we have a job description: Love. And we might not know the exact tasks before us, but we know that we have this one skill, hard-won through our years of training, that we can apply to whatever is thrown in our path. Love and love and love. Though we know our hearts will break. Though we know we’ll make more mistakes (more training!). Though we don’t know in this moment the shape our loving will take. And I know that whatever work I am doing for Love, you are there, doing yours too. And I know that your work strengthens mine and gives it extra purpose, as I hope mine will do for you.
Let’s get to work!
Gratitude List:
1. The scent of wild honeysuckle and multiflora rose. I know they’re a little bossy, that they’re trying to take over the world, or at least the woods’ edge. But they smell so sweet.
2. Oriole. Yes, I know, I am still obsessed with him. In recent weeks, he’s been working on a family. More hidden in the green of the treetops. A little less vocal than he was when he was singing his courting songs. But here. And this morning while I have been writing, he came hunting through the little oak tree on the hill, a bright flicker of flame leaping from branch to branch, sun on his feathers, and then down through the viney patch on the hillside. That bird tends my heart.
3. Fresh Strawberries! I have waited all year for this.
4. Foraging on the compost pile. A garlic scape and a large handful of lamb’s quarter leaves.
5. The work ahead.
May we walk in Beauty!
Gratitude List:
1. Cracking black walnuts with my little buddy: “You be the nut cracker. I’ll be the nut eater.” And, “I’m going inside for a moment. Fill that bin up with the big pieces while I’m gone. You can have the little pieces.” Well, thank you very much.
2. Tidy work spaces. My studio room is again clean and tidy and ready to be my office. While I was cleaning, I found the beginnings of a children’s story that I started about 15 years ago–I might have to turn it into something now. And tidiness makes me want to work on projects. Plus, now I have a space to keep my supplies for teaching, and a quiet place to work.
3. The little red Japanese maple tree out back is almost big enough now for a child or two to hide beneath. Like the one at Grandma’s house, which is no more.
4. How one thing leads to another. This can be bad when the one thing is a negative thought that breeds another negative thought. But it can also be forcefully good when one finished project leads to another finished project, when one positive idea leads to another positive idea.
5. Summer morning breezes.
May we walk in Beauty!
This one comes out of my meditations about teaching this coming fall.
In five well-planned paragraphs
clear yet profound
concise yet detailed
answer one or all of these questions:
What will you do with your
(I’m stealing this one–
extra credit for the author’s name)
one wild and precious life?
What is the one thing
that you will do
(heads up, another theft–
more extra credit
for author and book title)
to make the world
a more beautiful place?
What I really mean to ask is,
how will you make a difference?
How will the world become
more marvelous,
more magical,
more whole,
more perfect,
because the one and only You
has been added to its equation?
Gratitude List:
1. Meeting up with an old friend after 24 years, and starting the conversation as though we’d been chatting all along. (Of course, FB has been part of the continuing conversation in recent years.)
2. Spending an evening in the city. Sometimes countryfolk need to become cityfolk for an evening.
3. Flatbread pizza at the Fridge. Delicious.
4. Today. What possibilities it holds!
5. Libraries. This one is painful, too, because I am aware of how local libraries are losing funding at a tremendous rate. Libraries are magical places, and they’re there for everyone, no matter the size of your bank account. Access to information and education and knowledge. And the people who run them are super-heroes. Really.
May we walk in Beauty!
Today is World Environment Day, declared by the United Nations Environmental Program. What will you do today, tomorrow, next week, to pr0tect the environment? Walk in the woods with a child and listen for the birds, plant a tree or a garden, refuse to buy that over-packaged thing that you really don’t need, don’t make that extra car trip to town, read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, open new doors in your heart and your brain for possibilities.
We owe it to ourselves and to the next generation
to conserve the environment
so that we can bequeath our children
a sustainable world that benefits all.
Gratitude List:
1. Schemes and dreams
2. Rain and more rain
3. Surprise and awe
4. The poplar and the sycamore
5. The penultimate day of school
May we walk in Beauty!
I can’t see through green,
through this pollen-misted air
to the other side.
These are the step by step days.
Meanwhile, I just keep breathing.
Gratitude List:
1. Communities of women. Light and gentle chat turns a corner into a story, a birth story, tears, smiles, oh-yesses, I-remembers.
2. The world feels washed clean this morning after that lovely rain. I’m still a little anxious about venturing outside while the poplar is in bloom, but breathing is a little easier this morning.
3. Poppies! Did I say poppies? I have a clear memory of being six years old, looking at a book of flowers of the world with a group of kids at boarding school, and everyone was saying their favorite flowers. I really liked the rose mallow. Then someone turned the page and there was a rich crimson bloom with a velvety black center. That one. And it has been my favorite ever since.
4. Ruby Bridges. I was talking about her story with a friend yesterday. There was a moment in our story when the world depended on the courage of a child to confront evil, to be the tide-turner.
5. Last night’s dreams. Reunions, balance, mysterious pathways, reconciliation.
May we walk in Beauty!
Gratitude List:
1. Mom’s cottage pudding with the last of last year’s frozen strawberries. How did they last all year without being devoured? Time to finish them up. Jon brought the first of this year’s berries down the hill for us last night.
2. Speaking of Jon, he brought me a lettuce yesterday. A beautiful, ruffly lettuce, which he put into a green mug like a bouquet and set on the table. The dining room and kitchen smelled gently of lettuce for the evening–cool, spring green.
3. You know that feeling when you’re talking to someone and they reflect back to you something you’ve said, and you know with a flash of delight that here is someone who “gets” you? That. My cousin Karen provided that for me yesterday, and it filled me. Sometimes when you meet someone out of the blue on the path, you get sweet little friendly chatter, and that is good, but this conversation left me with words and ideas to play with, to integrate, to ponder, and a comforting sense of being known.
4. It’s hard to live out of my deepest center sometimes. But I am grateful for that to strive for, to keep moving inward. But knowing how that inward journey is a journey outward as well. I don’t know if that quite makes sense when it finds its way into words, but I am grateful for it.
5. Somehow, when I see you striving for wholeness, it makes me more whole. That mystery. I am grateful for that.
May we walk in Beauty!
Gratitude List:
1. Shaggy white heads of peonies–family heirlooms passed down from Jon’s mother, and from his grandmother.
2. Deep red petals of poppy with its deep black center
3. Little yellow flags opening amidst the spikes of leaf
4. Buttercup and bladderwort
5. The shy, downward-facing blossoms of the comfrey.
May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 