The last day of March!

 Has this month seemed long to anyone else?   I guess it's because I am yearning for my garden to wake up.

and this:  

Always the sky keeps expanding

 

artist: Venus Alzouohu

Here's a poem by Eugene Gloria:

Palm Sunday

BY EUGENE GLORIA

Always the sky keeps expanding.

Wide as America’s brave margins,

wide as my loneliness in the Middle West.

I lean against a dust cloud behind us,

the glory sinking into a muted timberline.

I am drunk with longing. The wind is singing—

 

my drunken friend, the wind, hurls

sweet curses at my face.

We have learned to love

this road, which lies down like pythons,

refuses to forgive our excesses,

refuses to consider us kin. Our driver’s

 

sign overhead reads, Jesus is my co-pilot.

Jesus who crossed the city

gates of his ancestors

on a road carpeted by palms.

Our goodtime driver must know this—

he drives with abandon,

 

despite our fragile cargo: scholars and accountants,

prophets and exiles all the same to him.

The road, which suggests things, is tired of ceremony.

It lies down to sleep like the snow.

Lie down TallMountain, lie down

Serafin Syquia, lie down Li-Young, lie

down Divakaruni, lie down Eman Lacaba,

lie down pilgrims of the open road.

Shameless, we gather our light

jackets in balls. We rest our heads,

our faces upturned to a squall of stars.

I near the end, my soul recites.

 

O loneliness, my body responds.

This empty road is a house

where no one lives. What strange fire

we bring when we come to this house.

 

Eugene Gloria, "Palm Sunday" from Drivers at the Short-Time Motel. Copyright © 2000 by Eugene Gloria.  Reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House. Used by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: Drivers at the Short-Time Motel (Penguin Random House, 2000)

Wind Advisory

 A very blustery March day.  I am hoping the blossoms on the Star Magnolias don't blow away.

Here's a photo of them from last March:

Here's a poem by Rilke:

 

"Harshness vanished. A sudden softness

has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.

Little rivulets of water changed

their singing accents. Tendernesses,

 

hesitantly, reach toward the earth

from space, and country lanes are showing

these unexpected subtle risings

that find expression in the empty trees."

-  Rainer Marie Rilke, Early Spring 

 

My lips will sing Your praise

 Here are some of my favorite artists images of the Annunciation:

artist:  Henry Tanner

Today is the feast of the Annunciation -  when the angel of the Lord gave Mary the message, and she said yes.

Today my Sisters and I said our Annual Vows during the morning Mass.

I love this psalm from Morning Prayer:

Psalm 63

God, my God, for you I long

my soul thirsts for you

my body aches for you

Like a dry weary land without water

So I gaze on you in the sanctuary

a vision of strength and glory.

For your love is better than life,

my lips will sing your praise

I give you a lifetime of worship,

my hands raised in your name.

I feast at a rich table,

my lips sing of your glory.

On my bed I remember you

On you I muse through the night

for you have been my help

In the shadow of your wings

I rejoice.

Yes, I cling to you.

Your right hand holds me fast.

Annunciation      artist:  John Collier

Annunciation      artist  Brigid Martin

Annunciation      artist:  Fra Angelico

Spring Rain

 It's a lovely rainy day.  I am "in Retreat" with my other Sisters as we prepare to renew our vows tomorrow.

Here's a lovely picture of March:

artist: Angie Lathem

And another:

Artist: Janae Olsen

Today is the day when daffodils bloom

 

Here's a poem by Robert McCracken:

"Today is the day when bold kites fly,

When cumulus clouds roar across the sky.

When robins return, when children cheer,

When light rain beckons spring to appear.

 

Today is the day when daffodils bloom,

Which children pick to fill the room,

Today is the day when grasses green,

When leaves burst forth for spring to be seen."

-  Robert McCracken, Spring

 

Bright Minstrel

 

Here's a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne:

"Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell,

       and the splendor of winter had passed out of sight,

The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger

       than dreams that fulfill us in sleep with delight;

The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops

       and branches that glittered and swayed

Such wonders and glories of blossom like snow

       or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade

That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land,

       nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night,

Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring:

       such mirth had the madness and might in thee made,

March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms

        that enkindle the season they smite."

-  Algernon C. Swinburne, March: An Ode

 

 Facts about March from the Pagans:

Gwyl Canol GwenWynol or Eostre: (pronounced E-ostra, also known as Ostara, Spring Equinox etc.), March 21-23. Time of equal day and equal night. This is often celebrated with eggs (beginnings) and rabbits (fertiity) ... see the theme? It is now time to lay the seeds of new projects and new directions that you have meditated on throughout the cold months. Now is the time to start taking action. (A lot of traditions use this particular sabbat for initiations. New roads, a new breath.) Colours for this sabbat: Purple and Yellow. The Spring Equinox defines the season where Spring reaches it's apex, halfway through its journey from Candlemas to Beltane.   Night and day are in perfect balance, with the powers of light on the ascendancy.   The god of light now wins a victory over his twin, the god of darkness.  In the Welsh Mabinogion, this is the day on which the restored Llew takes his vengeance on Goronwy by piercing him with the sunlight spear.  For Llew was restored/reborn at the Winter Solstice and is now well/old enough to vanquish his rival/twin and mate with his lover/mother.  And the great Mother Goddess, who has returned to her Virgin aspect at Candlemas, welcomes the young sun god's embraces and conceives a child. The child will be born nine months from now, at the next Winter Solstice. And so the cycle closes at last to begin anew.  The customs surrounding the celebration of the spring equinox were imported from Mediterranean lands, although there can be no doubt that the first inhabitants of the British Isles observed it, as evidence from megalithic sites shows. But it was certainly more popular to the south, where people celebrated the holiday as New Year's Day, and claimed it as the first day of the first sign of the Zodiac, Aries. However you look at it, it is certainly a time of new beginnings, as a simple glance at Nature will prove."
-  Spring Equinox  

 

The first day of Spring!

The snow is gone here, but it's still below freezing at night

And it's the Spring Equinox!

 

 

"Equal dark, equal light

Flow in Circle, deep insight

Blessed Be, Blessed Be

The transformation of energy!

So it flows, out it goes

Three-fold back it shall be

Blessed Be, Blessed Be

The transformation of energy!"

-   Night An'Fey, Transformation of Energy

 

What they tell me is their story

 

Here's a wonderful poem by Gabriela Mistral:

The Teller of Tales

Gabriela Mistral

translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

   When I’m walking, everything

on earth gets up

and stops me and whispers to me,

and what they tell me is their story.

And the people walking

on the road leave me their stories,

I pick them up where they fell

in cocoons of silken thread.

    Stories run through my body

or sit purring in my lap.

So many they take my breath away,

buzzing, boiling, humming.

Uncalled they come to me,

and told, they still won’t leave me.

    The ones that come down through the trees

weave and unweave themselves,

and knit me up and wind me round

until the sea drives them away.

    But the sea that’s always telling stories,

the wearier I am the more it tells me...

    The people who cut trees,

the people who break stones,

want stories before they go to sleep.

    Women looking for children

who got lost and don’t come home,

women who think they’re alive

and don’t know they’re dead,

every night they ask for stories,

and I return tale for tale.

    In the middle of the road, I stand

between rivers that won’t let me go,

and the circle keeps closing

and I’m caught in the wheel.

The riverside people tell me

of the drowned woman sunk in grasses

and her gaze tells her story,

and I graft the tales into my open hands.

    To the thumb come stories of animals,

to the index fingers, stories of my dead.

There are so many tales of children

they swarm on my palms like ants.

    When my arms held

the one I had, the stories

all ran as a blood-gift

in my arms, all through the night.

Now, turned to the East,

I’m giving them away because I forget them.

    Old folks want them to be lies.

Children want them to be true.

All of them want to hear my own story,

which, on my living tongue, is dead.

    I’m seeking someone who remembers it

leaf by leaf, thread by thread.

I lend her my breath, I give her my legs,

so that hearing it may waken it for me.

 

 

A Hundred Million Miracles

 

I still love this song from the Broadway musical "Flower Drum Song:"

My father says
That children keep growing
Rivers keep flowing too
My father says
He doesn't know why
But somehow or other they do
They do
Some how or other they do

A hundred million miracles
A hundred million miracles
Are happ'ning ev'ry day
And those who say
They don't agree
Are those
Who do not hear or see
A hundred million miracles
A hundred million miracles
Are happ'ning ev'ry day

Miracle of changing weather
When a dark blue curtain
Is pinned by the stars
Pinned by the stars to the sky
Ev'ry flow'are
And tree is a treat to see
The air is very clean and dry

Then a wind comes blowing
The pins all away
Night is confused and upset
The sky falls down
Like a clumsy clown
The flowers
And the trees get wet
Very wet

A hundred million miracles
A hundred million miracles
Are happ'ning ev'ry day
And when the wind
Shall turn his face
The pins
Are put right back in place
A hundred million miracles
A hundred million miracles
Are happ'ning ev'ry day

In ev'ry single minute
So much is going on
Along the Yangtse Kiang
Or the Tiber or the Don
A hundred million miracles

A swallow in Tasmania
Is sitting on her eggs
And suddenly
Those eggs have wings
And eyes and beaks and legs
A hundred million miracles

A little girl in Chungking
Just thirty inches tal
Decides that she
Will try to walk
And nearly doesn't fall
A hundred million miracles

A hundred million miracles
A hundred million miracles
A hundred million miracles
Are happ'ning ev'ry day

My father says the sun
Will keep rising over
The eastern hill
My father says
He doesn't know
Why but somehow
Or other it will
It will
Somehow or other it will

Miracle of making music
When an idle poet
Puts words on a page
Writes on a page
With his brush
A musical friend
Writes the notes to blend
Suggested
By an idle thrush

Then a young soprano
Reads what they wrote
Learns every note
Every word
Puts all they wrote
In her lovely throat
And suddenly
A song is heard
Very pretty

A hundred million miracles
A hundred million miracles
A hundred million miracles
Are happ'ning ev'ry day

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Richard Rodgers / Oscar Hammerstein

All Things that are

 

Truth!

Here's a poem by Iona Lee  at transpoesie:

ALL THINGS THAT ARE

 

“All things that are,
are equally removed from being nothing”
                                            - John Donne

We leave our indoor ecosystem,
follow the map to where there is the promise
of trees and rushing water. I’ve missed them.

Only had a few square feet of world for weeks.

I want to see something far away, the sun
stride out in glittering ripples,

hear how the chatterbox forest speaks.

We whirlpool with people
and pause for every passerby:
                              a shiny little green beetle,
                              families out for today’s designated slice of the sky.

                              Everyone is saying
                              when this is over.
                              I will, when this is over.
                              When will this be over?

The water is awake with fresh cloud,
dark with waterlogged light.

Sunbathing, my eyes are left ajar.
I watch a dandelion clock as a breeze blows time away.
We have no map for tomorrow - things just are.

 

 

The things we do not know

 

 

 

"March is the month of expectation,

The things we do not know,

The Persons of Prognostication

Are coming now.

We try to sham becoming firmness,

But pompous joy

Betrays us, as his first betrothal

Betrays a boy."

-  Emily Dickinson, XLVIII

 

A Mild March Afternoon

 

artist: Jo Grundy

Here's a poem by Antonio Machado:

 

"The afternoon is bright,

with spring in the air,

a mild March afternoon,

with the breath of April stirring,

I am alone in the quiet patio

looking for some old untried illusion -

some shadow on the whiteness of the wall

some memory asleep

on the stone rim of the fountain,

perhaps in the air

the light swish of some trailing gown."

-  Antonio Machado, 1875-1939

Anticipation

 

We've had the first mild days yesterday and today; temperatures go down again by the weekend. But the daffodils are up 4 inches, and the lilies are emerging.

Quarantine, Week 53

 It was during this week in 2020 that COVID19 was declared a pandemic, and the shutdown began in earnest in the USA. My University closed and sent everyone home, and we conducted our classes  remotely for the rest of the semester.

So much has happened since then, and in another way, so little.

I just read an article on the Atlantic Monthly online called 

Late-Stage Pandemic Is Messing With Your Brain

We have been doing this so long, we’re forgetting how to be normal.

ELLEN CUSHING

MARCH 8, 2021

 
                                                                                                                           
                                  Here is an excerpt:

"Jen George, a community-college teacher from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, told me she is losing her train of thought in the middle of a sentence more and more often. Meanwhile, her third grader, who is attending in-person school, keeps leaving his books, papers, and lunch at home. Inny Ekeolu, a 19-year-old student from Ireland, says she has found herself forgetting how to do things she used to do on a regular basis: swiping her bus pass, paying for groceries. Recently she came across a photo of a close friend she hadn’t seen since lockdown and found that she couldn’t recognize her. “It wasn’t like I had forgotten her existence,” she told me. “But if I had bypassed her on the street, I wouldn’t have said hi.” Rachel Kowert, a research psychologist in Ottawa, used to have a standing Friday-night dinner with her neighbors—and went completely blank when one of them recently mentioned it. “It was really shocking,” Kowert told me. “This was something I really loved, and had done for a long time, and I had totally forgotten.”

This is the fog of late pandemic, and it is brutal. In the spring, we joked about the Before Times, but they were still within reach, easily accessible in our shorter-term memories. In the summer and fall, with restrictions loosening and temperatures rising, we were able to replicate some of what life used to be like, at least in an adulterated form: outdoor drinks, a day at the beach. But now, in the cold, dark, featureless middle of our pandemic winter, we can neither remember what life was like before nor imagine what it’ll be like after.

To some degree, this is a natural adaptation. The sunniest optimist would point out that all this forgetting is evidence of the resilience of our species. Humans forget a great deal of what happens to us, and we tend to do it pretty quickly—after the first 24 hours or so. “Our brains are very good at learning different things and forgetting the things that are not a priority,” Tina Franklin, a neuroscientist at Georgia Tech, told me. As the pandemic has taught us new habits and made old ones obsolete, our brains have essentially put actions like taking the bus and going to restaurants in deep storage, and placed social distancing and coughing into our elbows near the front of the closet. When our habits change back, presumably so will our recall."

I can certainly identify with this.

Hopeful Words

 The approach of Spring helps, too.

Artist:  Kevin Mortimer

A Clear Conscience

 

Artist: Laura Paulson

Here's a poem by Wislawa Szymborska,  Nobel-winning Polish poet:

 

In Praise of Self-Deprecation

 

by Wislawa Szymborska

 

The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.

Scruples are alien to the black panther.

Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.

The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.

The self-critical jackal does not exist.

The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly

live as they live and are glad of it.

The killer whale’s heart weighs one hundred kilos

but in other respects it is light.

There is nothing more animal-like

than a clear conscience

on the third planet of the Sun.

 

 

Newer Every Day

 

Artist: Edward Willis Redfield

Today is my mother's birthday; she would be 106.  She died at 95, very disabled for her last five years.

She always recognized me, though.

The pearl of great price

 

artist: George Henry

Here's a poem by R.S.Thomas:

 

The Bright Field

 

by R. S. Thomas

 

I have seen the sun break through

to illuminate a small field

for a while, and gone my way

and forgotten it. But that was the pearl

of great price, the one field that had

treasure in it. I realize now

that I must give all that I have

to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after

an imagined past. It is the turning

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush, to a brightness

that seemed as transitory as your youth

once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

 

Source: “The Bright Field” from Collected Poems 1945-1990, by R.S. Thomas

I love sleep

 This is a quote that I certainly affirm!

art: Sir John Lavery

In love with the forest

 

I like that word!

 

"Each leaf,

each blade of grass

vies for attention.

Even weeds

carry tiny blossoms

to astonish us."

- Marianne Poloskey, Sunday in Spring

 

Open Up Felicity

 

Artist: Emile Klaus

Here's a poem by Jessica Powers:

Prayer

by Jessica Powers

Prayer is the trap-door out of sin.

Prayer is a mystic entering in

to secret places full of light.

It is a passage through the night.

Heaven is reached, the blessed say,

by prayer and by no other way.

One may kneel down and make a plea

with words from book or breviary,

or one may enter in and find

a home-made message in the mind.

But true prayer travels further still,

to seek God’s presence and God’s will.

To pray can be to push a door

and snatch some crumbs of evermore,

or (likelier by far) to wait,

head bowed, before a fastened gate,

helpless and miserable and dumb,

yet hopeful that the Lord will come.

Here is the prayer of grace and good

most proper to our creaturehood.

God’s window shows his humble one

more to the likeness of His Son.

He sees, though thought and senses stray,

the will is resolute to stay

and feed, in weathers sweet or grim,

on any word that speaks of Him.

He beams on the humility

that keeps it peace in misery

and, save for glimmerings, never knows

how beautiful with light it grows.

He smiles on faith that seems to know

it has no other place to go.

But some day, hidden by His will,

if this meek child is waiting still,

God will take out His mercy-key

and open up felicity,

where saltiest tears are given right

to seas where sapphire marries light,

where by each woe the soul can span

new orbits for the utter man,

where even the flesh, so seldom prized,

would blind the less than divinized.

Source: “Prayer” from The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, edited by

Regina Siegfried, ASC, and Robert F. Morneau. Kansas City, MO: Sheed &

Ward, 1989.