and this I tried to understand

 

artist: Jessica Boehmann

 Here's a poem by James Hearst

In April

This I saw on an April day:

Warm rain spilt from a sun-lined cloud,

A sky-flung wave of gold at evening,

And a cock pheasant treading a dusty path

Shy and proud.

 

And this I found in an April field:

A new white calf in the sun at noon,

A flash of blue in a cool moss bank,

And tips of tulips promising flowers

To a blue-winged loon.

 

And this I tried to understand

As I scrubbed the rust from my brightening plow:

The movement of seed in furrowed earth,

And a blackbird whistling sweet and clear

From a green-sprayed bough.

artist: Tinyan Chan

A post from April 27, 1980

 

April 27,1980

Journal entry.  I am in Petersburg Virginia. I am 32 years old.

 

Excerpts:

…I think of thirty-one years without much physical pain. Thirty-one years of seeing – of being able to see all the beautiful things of th world… to see the faces of the people who have been such central figures in my life, the peole whose faces remain in my mind’s eye at this very moment : my mother and father.. Sister Stephanie… my cousin Dick… Debbie Cotter…. Debbie Carey… Sara Bardoe…Tom McNaney, ill Keaveney, Jim Wambold, Lynda Cywinski, Toni Lutz, Maureen McCauley, Maureen McDonough, Sister Maureen Daniel, Sister Ann Maureen, Frank Reilly, Frank Talbot, Barbra McCune, Sister Margaret John, Karen O’Callaghan, Rosalie Ayres, John Whelley, Mark Redwood, George Marks, Bo, Barney, Joe Gallagher, Paul Philibert, Josephine Jacobsen, Ralph Harper, Frances Jackson, Sister Linda, Mary Ann Taylor, Msgr. Newman, May Sill, Mike Hast, Patrick Finnegan, Scotch Kincaid, Charlotte Tancin, Greg King, Sister Marie Therese, Sister Eileen, Sister Claire, Sister Mary Clare and Anita Harvey,Joanne Cahoon, and son on, just naming gthem like a litany, Lord, I send their names up to you and pray for all of them and thank You for each one of them. It’s really incredible when I think of all those faces, and what each of them taught me about YOU and about myself, too.

…Yesterday I was at the sink, washing dishes and looking out the window at the beautiful green leave, the whole green and blue world looked like a party. All I could think of was that Dylan Thomas poem, “Fern Hill,” “…it was all shining… it as Adam and maiden”

…I remember that in 1971 I lived without hope, as though my life were over. Now, in 1980, I live thinking that my life may very soon be over – but not without hope- now, as Paul says, I’d be glad to stay and live, but I’ll be glad to go and see HIim… but I am still afraid. ( There was an Iranian crisis in 1980 which I barely remember)

Then, a little later, I quote the lyrics of a favorite song from a rock group called “Fever Tree”:

 

We follow the river down into the stream
That's where my dream began
I left my worries to the people who stare
And dream without a care

That i'd always be beside you to watch the day and night
And we'd listen to the sunrise and feel its growing light
And peace will come inside
So quiet

Whereever we're goin' i dont know
For million years our love keeps growin'
The mystery deepens day by day

But trust my love and hear me say

That i'll always be beside you to watch the day and night
And we'd listen to the sunrise and feel its growing light
And peace will come inside
So quiet

 

And peace will come inside

So quiet

 

Guess i'll always be beside you to watch the day and night

And we'd listen to the sunrise and feel its growin' light

And peace will come inside

So quiet

 

Yes peace will come inside

So quiet

 

I kept writing for at least another page.  I do recognize myself in that 31 year old person, but oh, so much has happened to me and my world and the larger world since that particular April birthday.

YOLO

 

I don't know if I believe that.   Maybe at 30, maybe at 50, but not at 74

Artist: Andrea Kowch    The Lighthouse Keepers

Here's a poem by  Mário de Andrade :

I counted my years

and realized that

I have less time to live by,

than I have lived so far.

I have more past than future.

I feel like that boy who got a bowl of cherries.

At first, he gobbled them,

but when he realized there were only few left,

he began to taste them intensely.

I no longer have time to deal with mediocrity.

I do not want to be in meetings where flamed egos parade.

I am bothered by the envious,

who seek to discredit the most able,

to usurp their places, coveting their seats,

talent, achievements and luck.

I do not have time for endless conversations,

useless to discuss about the lives of others

who are not part of mine.

I no longer have the time to manage

sensitivities of people who despite their chronological age, are immature.

I hate to confront those that struggle for power,

those that ‘do not debate content, just the labels’.

My time has become scarce to debate labels,

I want the essence.

My soul is in a hurry …

Not many cherries in my bowl,

I want to live close to human people, very human,

who laugh of their own stumbles,

and away from those turned smug

and overconfident with their triumphs,

away from those filled with self-importance.

The essential is what makes life worthwhile.

And for me, the essentials are enough!

Yes, I’m in a hurry.

I’m in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.

I do not intend to waste any of the remaining cherries.

I am sure they will be exquisite, much more than those eaten so far.

My goal is to reach the end satisfied

and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience.

And per Confucius “We have two lives

and the second begins when you realize you only have one.”

Like Candide,  I just want to tend my garden.

 

 

 

 

 

Again the woods are odorous

 

artist: Stephen McLoughlin

Here's a poem for today:
 

In April

Rainer Maria Rilke - 1875-1926

 

 

Again the woods are odorous, the lark

Lifts on upsoaring wings the heaven gray

That hung above the tree-tops, veiled and dark,

Where branches bare disclosed the empty day.

 

After long rainy afternoons an hour

Comes with its shafts of golden light and flings

Them at the windows in a radiant shower,

And rain drops beat the panes like timorous wings.

 

Then all is still. The stones are crooned to sleep

By the soft sound of rain that slowly dies;

And cradled in the branches, hidden deep

In each bright bud, a slumbering silence lies.

 

 

artist: Este MacLeod

Evanescent life's eternal

 

Happy Easter!     Here's a poem by Mathilde Blind:

A Spring Song   

 

Dark sod pierced by flames of flowers,

Dead wood freshly quickening,

Bright skies dusked with sudden showers,

Lit by rainbows on the wing.

Cuckoo calls and young lambs' bleating,

Nimble airs which coyly bring

Little gusts of tender greeting

From shy nooks where violets cling.

Half-fledged buds and birds and vernal

Fields of grass dew-glistening;

Evanescent life's eternal

Resurrection, bridal Spring!

 

art by Laivi Poder

And this, from John Forti, about the moon I watched last night:

The Full Moon in April is the Pink Moon (from the pink flowers – phlox – that bloom in the early spring). Other names for this Full Moon include Sprouting Grass Moon, Fish Moon, Hare Moon, and the Old English/Anglo-Saxon name is Egg Moon. It is also known as the Paschal Moon because it is used to calculate the date for Easter.

artist: Sue Wookey

the water touching its roots

 

Holy Saturday... we've had some lovely Spring weather, and the garden is coming to life.

Here is a poem by W.S. Merwin:

PLACE

On the last day of the world

I would want to plant a tree

 

what for

not for the fruit

 

the tree that bears the fruit

is not the one that was planted

 

I want the tree that stands

in the earth for the first time

 

with the sun already

going down

 

and the water

touching its roots

 

in the earth full of the dead

and the clouds passing

 

one by one

over its leaves

 

— W.S. Merwin, from his book The Rain in the Trees (1998, A.A. Knopf).

Copyright © 1988 by W. S. Merwin.  Used by permission of the publisher.

 

artist : Carlo Formara

Without breaking anything

 Temperatures reached 60 and the fierce wind died down.  Felt like Spring today.

Artist: Teresa Tanner

I love this poem by ee cummings.  Posting it here, even though he didn't use capitals.

Spring is like a perhaps hand

E. E. Cummings - 1894-1962

          III

Spring is like a perhaps hand

(which comes carefully

out of Nowhere)arranging

a window,into which people look(while

people stare

arranging and changing placing

carefully there a strange

thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps

Hand in a window

(carefully to

and fro moving New and

Old things,while

people stare carefully

moving a perhaps

fraction of flower here placing

an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

Artist: David Alderslade

Anniversaries

 

On this day in 1944, my father and mother were married.  The photo is of them on a trip to Quebec in 1945.    I was born in 1948.

Here are my mother's parents in an undated photo.  She died one hundred years ago , March or April of 1922.

I wrote this poem a while back:

How I missed knowing this grandmother who died so young.

When you are alone you will be all right

Artist: Carl Holsoe
 

It's been raining on and off all day, with periods of blue sky and sun in between.

I love this poem by W.S. Merwin:

RAIN LIGHT

All day the stars watch from long ago

my mother said I am going now

when you are alone you will be all right

whether or not you know you will know

look at the old house in the dawn rain

all the flowers are forms of water

the sun reminds them through a white cloud

touches the patchwork spread on the hill

the washed colors of the afterlife

that lived there long before you were born

see how they wake without a question

even though the whole world is burning

— W.S. Merwin, from his Pulitzer-Prize winning book The Shadow of Sirius (Copper

 

Artist: Leon Wyczolkowski - Spring in Goscieradz  1931

A Light Exists in Spring

 

Artist:  Hazel Manzel

Emily Dickinson always nails it:

A Light exists in Spring   by Emily Dickinson

 

A Light exists in Spring

Not present on the Year

At any other period —

When March is scarcely here

A Colour stands abroad

On Solitary Fields

That Science cannot overtake

But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,

It shows the furthest Tree

Upon the furthest Slope you know

It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step

Or Noons report away

Without the Formula of sound

It passes and we stay —

A quality of loss

Affecting our Content

As Trade had suddenly encroached

Upon a Sacrament.

 

 

Artist: Lucy Grossmith

A Color Only the Gardener Knows

 

Artist: John Sloane

It's a rainy April day - six days into April already.  Here's a wonderful poem by Timothy Liu:

Last Day   by Timothy Liu

 

With all the windows closed, I go on

Sleeping. Winter losing shape

Empty vases left in every room

of the house. Those backyard bulbs

releasing a company of spears –

each tulip’s guarded flame

a color only the gardener knows.

Will he wake me as he passes through?

Artist: Sue Fenlon