Lights on a Ground of Darkness

I recently discovered Ted Kooser, former  US Poet Laureate, Iowa native, Presidential Professor of U of Nebraska - whatever honor that may be.  He wrote a lovely little book on his family in Iowa, sixty pages of nostalgia, reminiscing and the lingering presence of the irises that followed his family from home to home, a Midwestern and Southern tradition, sharing flowers from the home place.

In the preface, a quote from Edwin Muir:

  'Time wakens a longing more poignant than all of the longings caused by the division of lovers in space, for there is no road back into its country.  Our bodies were not made for that journey; only the imagination can venture upon it; and the setting out, the road, and the arrival:  all is imagination.
  Our memories of a place, no matter how fond we were of it, are little more than a confusion of lights on a ground of darkness.'

Lady Darkwing

The dawn Raven flies
to where the sun sleeps

before departing, she shakes the shadow
from her wings

Ora Pro Nobis

We, who have lost our innocence
and our youthful dreams,
pray for us

We, who have lost our mothers,
our brothers, our sisters and fathers,
who have lost our way,
pray for us

We, who have lost our eyesight,
our fine creamy breasts,
and our waistlines,
pray for us.

We, who have kept faith,
pray.

Young Girls

Young girls can't
wear red red lipstick
(even Scarlett
Johanson
they look as if
they're trying too hard

or manage a cigarette
gracefully,
having not grown up
with Joan Crawford

young girls
fresh and sweet
Lolitas perhaps


but young girls can't
ever be

The Older Woman

A French Woman's Fondness

Marguerite Duras said, "You have to be very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise they're simply unbearable."

Duras was born in French Indochine (near present-day Saigon), and fell in love with a wealthy, older Chinese gentleman who was the subject of most everything she wrote.

from William Wordsworth

Glad sight wherever new with old

by William Wordsworth

Glad sight wherever new with old
Is joined through some dear homeborn tie;
The life of all that we behold
Depends upon that mystery.
Vain is the glory of the sky,
The beauty vain of field and grove
Unless, while with admiring eye
We gaze, we also learn to love.

et cum spirit 220

you never know what you have in a child, what is yours, what is god's; what is learned, what is the world's gift. you may look on a familiar countenance, observe a common gait, admire a trait you do or don't possess. or a weakness, for all that. what is your gift? what is the world's? the only certainty is that the child does not belong to you. she is of the wide world, consubstantial with the wind, the breath of god.

time and tide

I have learned, finally,
to slow down, if not to smell the roses,
at least to rest
between trips to the curb with heavy trashcans;

to pace myself, if not to
savor every moment,
at least to save my breath, which
along with the rest of me, is shorter now.

I realize that time is infinite, but it does not
tarry,

and there is nothing worth dying for

but love.

Memento Mori

A bow to Billy Collins' poem of this title - I'll have to come up with another one, but it's a common enough phrase.

It doesn't take much to remind me
that all is dross and my coffee
will cool into a weak shadow
of its formerly robust self

while I, in my big, soft armchair
rot from the inside out even as I
pen these few lines and consider
the mortality of every living thing:

my loyal black dog, and yes,
eventually that old fat bastard cat
although I suspect he may have found
the key to eternal life

the exuberance of the crocus along
the sidewalk will fade and blossoms drop
onto the fickle ground which
too will someday cradle us each and all

and as the coffee cools and the crocus
shyly greet one more sunrise, I believe
I will survive this day in surprise and gratitude

and that the inexorable rhythms of
an indifferent world will spare me:
another day, another sunrise,
another prayer