Words to buoy the soul on a sunny February day of snow slowly melting from the winter-green grass and the drip-drip accompaniment from rain gutter eaves:
Walt Whitman in the 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass—
“Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men—go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families—re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.”…
Wind Dies Down
Absolutely fabulous (yes, I know I’ve stolen those words, homage, homage) day here today—sun, blue sky, more than the tops of snow-capped volcanoes visible 100 miles off in the Cascades. Dryness is…well, amazing…after months of excessive rain, sodden ground
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Dexter Avenue Baptist Bricks
Coretta Scott King’s funeral today. Six hours. Orations, presidents, standing ovations for truth tellers. Every now and then, the waters of justice and earnestness break through. We are talking about a woman
A Dream, Only a Dream
Monday night. Rain gone for a bit, well, the past two days. Which translates, predictably, to colder temperatures here. E-heat just kicked on in spite of the wood stove in front of which two blue-eyed, half-Siamese cats lounge on Presidential rockers…
Alone, Quiet, Night, Dark, Cats
Here I am. Back to my life. C. gone, back to Ithaca, his home, the sense of home I gave him, all those years living there, I guess…
Travel Diary: Impressions of Nashville and Memphis
We’ve been back two days from our trip to western Tennessee, Nashville then Memphis via the Natchez Trace. I’m finding it hard to construct a coherent narrative of everything we saw and did.Maybe that’s all a travel tale ever really is, a patchwork of sights, tastes, and sounds?…
Winter Rain, Winter Light
Medieval holiday music on the radio, Trio Medieval, singing Norwegian Christmas music, three women’s a cappella voices, the rain on the roof, the ground outside becomes an accompaniment, quiet drumbeat rhythm rather than the bleak…
Time-Out: Dusk, Wednesday, Mid-November
The day’s light disappears white and almost icy blue below the hills I can see from this upstairs window. It’s already darker behind me, the side of the house that faces east. Can a mood lift, a day be better simply because it isn’t raining? Because I accomplished something like setting my web site up…
Wednesday, Fog, Blue Sky
Photo by Brocken Inaglory Colder out there today. Winter in western Oregon. The light becomes lyrical. I go out to empty the woodstove ashes in …
Journal Entry: Sun Going Down, Holy Light
A day here at the Oxbow compound. Going nowhere. Wrote a brief bio and statement of my poetry aesthetics for the next class I’m taking through Writers on the Net. To the tune of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #5 performed by Treviso’s I Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca at the Royal Castle, Warsaw…