Poetry

March 9, 2015

Evidence



“I want to write something
so simply
about love
or about pain
that even
as you are reading
you feel it
and as you read
you keep feeling it
and though it be my story
it will be common,
though it be singular
it will be known to you
so that by the end
you will think—
no, you will realize—
that it was all the while
yourself arranging the words,
that it was all the time
words that you yourself,
out of your heart


had been saying.”

Evidence – Mary Oliver

November 10, 2013

Dew Drop

leaf1r
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Wild Geese – a poem by Mary Oliver
Dew Drop – iPhoneograph by me
October 13, 2013

Don’t you imagine…

treesviaandroid

Song for Autumn

by Mary Oliver

In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

——

*Cellphone image (taken through car window) and later altered in Pixlr-o-matic (Android app).

October 10, 2013

Starting Here

solitary room 

“You Reading This, Be Ready”

“Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life.

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?”

– William Stafford

I took this image a few years ago.

Its a ‘space’ I created with foam core, tape and dollhouse furniture.

If I let my mind wander a bit, I can almost imagine its a room in the Olson House in Cushing, Maine.

September 2, 2013

Twilight Beach

twilight beachTwilight on the Beach

by: Mary Dow Brine (1816-1913)

 

The crimson glory of the setting sun

Hath lain a moment on the ocean’s breast,

Till twilight shadows, gathering one by one,

Bring us the tidings, day is gone to rest.

 

Far out upon the waters, like a veil,

The mists of evening rise and stretch away

Between the horizon and the distant sail,

And earth and sea are clothed in sombre gray.

 

The tide comes higher up the smooth, wide beach,

Singing the song it has for ages sung;

Recedes, and carries far beyond our reach

The freight my idle hands have seaward flung.

 

Over the white-capped waves the seagulls soar

With heavy-flapping wing and restless cry,

As darkness spreads its deeper mantle o’er

The changing shadows of the twilight sky.

 

No voice but mine to mingle with the sound

Of ocean’s melody–as one by one

The stars light up the vast concave around,

And live the glory that is never done.

 

Still higher creeps the tide with subtle power,

And still the waves advance with sullen roar;

But with the last faint gleam of twilight hour

I turn me homeward from the lonely shore.

*Acrylic painting on paper- 9×11

August 4, 2013

Loon Moon

moon lake

The Loon
By Mary Oliver

Not quite four a.m., when the rapture of being alive
strikes me from sleep, and I rise
from the comfortable bed and go
to another room, where my books are lined up
in their neat and colorful rows. How

magical they are! I choose one
and open it. Soon
I have wandered in over the waves of the words
to the temple of thought.

And then I hear
outside, over the actual waves, the small,
perfect voice of the loon. He is also awake,
and with his heavy head uplifted he calls out
to the fading moon, to the pink flush
swelling in the east that, soon,
will become the long, reasonable day.

Inside the house
it is still dark, except for the pool of lamplight
in which I am sitting.

I do not close the book.

Neither, for a long while, do I read on.

*Loon Moon – acrylic painting on paper -9×12

June 25, 2013

Weed Wide Enough…

weedwideenough

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows
Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine
With sweet musk roses, and with eglantine.
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight,
And there the snake sheds her enamelled skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

-A Midsummer’s Night Dream by William Shakespeare

Another acrylic painting (inspired by Jane Davies great tutorial DVD).

I have no idea why it reminds me of A Midsummer’s Night Dream – probably because I am obsessed with the words and the very idea of it all – maybe the green color…??  Not sure, but its been named already and there’s no way to change it now.  It will forever be known as the painting, ‘Weed Wide Enough’.

June 4, 2013

Ragged Island

island stroll

There, there where those black spruces crowd
To the edge of the precipitous cliff,
Above your boat, under the eastern wall of the island;
And no wave breaks; as if
All had been done, and long ago, that needed
Doing; and the cold tide, unimpeded
By shoal or shelving ledge, moves up and down,
Instead of in and out;
And there is no driftwood there, because there is no beach;
Clean cliff going down as deep as clear water can reach;

No driftwood, such as abounds on the roaring shingle,
To be hefted home, for fires in the kitchen stove;
Barrels, banged ashore about the boiling outer harbour;
Lobster-buoys, on the eel-grass of the sheltered cove:

There, thought unbraids itself, and the mind becomes single.
There you row with tranquil oars, and the ocean
Shows no scar from the cutting of your placid keel;
Care becomes senseless there; pride and promotion
Remote; you only look; you scarcely feel.

Even adventure, with its vital uses,
Is aimless ardour now; and thrift is waste.

Oh, to be there, under the silent spruces,
Where the wide, quiet evening darkens without haste
Over a sea with death acquainted, yet forever chaste.

Ragged Island – a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Island Stroll – Encaustic art on panel by me.

May 9, 2013

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness

small9

Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.

Always before about my dooryard,
Marking the reach of the winter sea,
Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;

Always I climbed the wave at morning,
Shook the sand from my shoes at night,
That now am caught beneath great buildings,
Stricken with noise, confused with light.

If I could hear the green piles groaning
Under the windy wooden piers,
See once again the bobbing barrels,
And the black sticks that fence the weirs,

If I could see the weedy mussels
Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls,
Hear once again the hungry crying
Overhead, of the wheeling gulls,

Feel once again the shanty straining
Under the turning of the tide,
Fear once again the rising freshet,
Dread the bell in the fog outside,—

I should be happy,—that was happy
All day long on the coast of Maine!
I have a need to hold and handle
Shells and anchors and ships again!

I should be happy, that am happy
Never at all since I came here.
I am too long away from water.
I have a need of water near.

“Exiled” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Encaustic Monotype by me.

May 6, 2013

In My Room

my room
the curtain billows
my feet are warmed by the floor
a cricket chirps

Haiku seems simple until you try to create one yourself!

Haiku poems contain three word groupings in separate poetry lines. Seventeen total syllables comprise the Japanese poetry style but are divided into a five – seven – five syllable count for each corresponding line.

Some forms of poetry tell a story through verses, but a haiku describes only a moment in time. The compact format does not allow for longer descriptive lines and verses but only enough syllables within the three lines to explain feelings, thoughts, scenes or actions in a single moment.

Encaustic/beeswax, damar resin, fabric and graphite on 16″x16″ cradled panel.