Happiness

It's a little hard to concentrate these days.

School is winding down.

Flip-flops and air-conditioning are ON.

I found this poem today and had to share it with you.  Makes me want to sit down and cry a little bit...

Happiness
by Joyce Sutpen

This was when my daughters were just children
playing on the rocky shore of the lake,

their hair in braids, their bright-colored jackets
tied around their waists. It was afternoon,

the shadows falling away, their faces
glowing with light. Whatever we said then

(and it must have been happy; it must have
been hopeful) is lost as I am now lost

from that life I lived. This was when nothing
that I wanted mattered, though all I wanted

was happiness, pure happiness, simple
as strawberries and cream in a saucer,

as curtains floating from a window sill,
as small pairs of shoes arranged in a row.

Poetry Thursday

Perfection Wasted
by John Updike

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market --
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone.  The memories packed
in the rapid-access file.  The whole act.
Who will do it again?  That's it:  no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

Poetry Thursday

For the Anniversary of My Death
by W.S. Merwin

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And then shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

A Belated Christmas Poem

I found this on one of my new favorite websites - The Rabbit Room.  If you are familiar with Andrew Peterson's music and books, you'll see why this is a place for hunkering down. 

When I read this poem, I had to share it with you:

Breath
by Luci Shaw

When in the cavern darkness, the child
first opened his mouth (even before
his eyes widened to see the supple world
his lungs had breathed into being),
could he have known that breathing
trumps seeing? Did he love the way air sighs
as it brushes in and out through flesh
to sustain the tiny heart’s iambic beating,
tramping the crossroads of the brain
like donkey tracks, the blood dazzling and
invisible, the corpuscles skittering to the earlobes
and toenails? Did he have any idea it
would take all his breath to speak in stories
that would change the world?

Poetry Thursday

How To See Deer
by Philip Booth

Forget roadside crossings.
Go nowhere with guns.
Go elsewhere your own way,

lonely and wanting.  Or
stay and be early:
next to deep woods

inhabit old orchards.
All clearings promise.
Sunrise is good,

and fog before sun.
Expect nothing always;
find your luck slowly.

Wait out the windfall.
Take your good time
to learn to read ferns;

make like a turtle:
downhill toward slow water.
Instructed by heron,

drink the pure silence.
Be compassed by wind.
If you quiver like aspen

trust your quick nature:
let your ear teach you
which way to listen.

You've come to assume
protective color; now
colors reform to

new shapes in your eye.
You've learned by now
to wait without waiting;

as if it were dusk
look into light falling:
in deep relief

things even out.  Be
careless of nothing.  See
what you see.

Poetry Thursday

The Sacred
by Stephen Dunn

After the teacher asked if anyone had
a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank

in their chairs, the most serious of them all
said it was his car,
being in it alone, his tape deck playing

things he'd chosen, and others knew the truth
had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms,

their hiding places, but the car kept coming up,
the car in motion
music filling it, and sometimes one other person

who understood the bright altar of the dashboard
and how far away
a car could take him from the need

to speak, or to answer, the key
in having a key
and putting it on, and going.

Poetry Thursday

Lost
by David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still.  The forest knows
Where you are.  You must let it find you.

Poetry Thursday

Bookmobile

by Joyce Sutphen

I spend part of my childhood waiting
for the Sterns County Bookmobile.
When it comes to town, it makes a
U-turn in front of the grade school and
glides into its place under the elms.

It is a natural wonder of late
afternoon. I try to imagine Dante,
William Faulkner, and Emily Dickinson
traveling down a double lane highway
together, country-western on the radio.

Even when it arrives, I have to wait.
The librarian is busy, getting out
the inky pad and the lined cards.
I pace back and forth in the line,
hungry for the fresh bread of the page,

because I need something that will tell me
what I am; I want to catch a book,
clear as a one-way ticket, to Paris,
to London, to anywhere.

"Bookmobile" by Joyce Sutphen, from Coming Back to the Body.

Poetry Thursday - or, I Wish I Had Written This!

Things You Didn't Put On Your Resumé
by Joyce Suptan

How often you got up in the middle of the night
when one of your children had a bad dream,

and sometimes you woke because you thought
you heard a cry but they were all sleeping,

so you stood in the moonlight just listening
to their breathing, and you didn't mention

that you were an expert at putting toothpaste
on tiny toothbrushes and bending down to wiggle

the toothbrush ten times on each tooth while
you sang the words to songs from Annie, and

who would suspect that you know the fingerings
to the songs in the first four books of the Suzuki

Violin Method and that you can do the voices
of Pooh and Piglet especially well, though

your absolute favorite thing to read out loud is
Bedtime for Frances and that you picked

up your way of reading it from Glynnis Johns,
and it is, now that you think of it, rather impressive

that you read all of Narnia and all of the Ring Trilogy
(and others too many to mention here) to them

before they went to bed and on way out to
Yellowstone, which is another thing you don't put

on the resumé: how you took them to the ocean
and the mountains and brought them safely home.

Poetry Thursday

I Stop Writing the Poem
by Tess Gallagher

to fold the clothes.  No matter who lives
or who dies, I'm still a woman.
I'll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together.  Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I'll get back
to the poem. I'll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there's a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it's done.

The Value of Staring

(Canyon in Yellowstone, Artist Point)

I stared a lot during our road trip.  Just taking in all of the raw beauty of this land.  

I felt like my eyes, my soul, had feasted.  And it was good.  

Leisure 

by W.H. Davies

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Poetry Thursday

A few days ago, a little boy was born to some great family friends of ours.  He had multiple heart issues which required immediate surgery.  He is recuperating now and doing quite well, but we know that prayer and support are still needed in huge quantities.  I am posting a poem today that reminds us that dark places do not have to be lonely places.  "God does not leave us comfortless..."
Please pray for Lucas.

Let Evening Come 
by Jane Kenyon

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the crickets take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn.  Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in the long grass.  Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down.  Let the shed
go black inside.  Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid.  God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

Poetry Thursday

We've had a happy little canary tap-tap-tapping on our living room windows for several days now.  I don't know why he thinks he belongs in our house.  The annoyance reminded me of the following poem that always makes me smile.  I read it to my students every year and they always get a kick out of it.

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House
by Billy Collins

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

Poetry Thursday

Today's poem is by Wendell Berry.  It makes me think of my husband who really needs to go fishing in rivers for the sake of his soul and says that hunting alone in the woods is a great time of worship.  :)  I love him.  Don't understand him, but love him....

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.  For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Morning Person

Morning Person
by Vassar Miller

God, best at making in the morning, tossed
stars and planets, singing and dancing, rolled
Saturn's rings spinning and humming, twirled the earth
so hard it coughed and spat the moon up, brilliant
bubble floating around it for good, stretched holy
hands till birds in nervous sparks flew forth from
them and beasts--lizards, big and little, apes,
lions, elephants, dogs and cats cavorting,
tumbling over themselves, dizzy with joy when
God made us in the morning too, both man
and woman, leaving Adam no time for
sleep so nimbly was Eve bouncing out of
his side till as night came everything and
everybody, growing tired, declined, sat
down in one soft descended Hallelujah.

I have read this poem several times...each time it fills me with wonder and light.  I love the creative, imaginative, hilarious heart of God.  It's inspiring and leaves me dumbstruck.

There are some ridiculous arguments out there right now about the historical Adam -- who he was, if he existed at all.   Human genome research has caused some evangelicals to look at Genesis with skepticism...and I just shake my head.  We are like children playing with Legos, thinking we've found the answer to the world's problems.  We know nothing.  We haven't begin to know what we're dealing with when it comes to God.  Heaven help us!  As Jon Acuff says, I just hop in my escape pod called "faith like a child" and scoot right out of all the arguing...

Take Me to a Country Church...

I wrote this poem after a visit to Hayward Wesleyan Church in Hayward, Wisconsin -- a funky little town in northern Wisconsin known for it's Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame.

(K&C Farmer!  Good memories!)

Hayward
(by me!)

Take me to a country church
on a clear blue day in June
where smiling strangers
shake your hand
overwhelm you with grace

Let there be a young man
strumming a guitar and singing
his voice strong and scrubbed clean

Let there be children
small enough to fit in
the laps of their fathers
resting their heads on his chest

Let there be truth
spoken plainly
gently
about simple devotion
to a gracious God
mercy and peace
flowing in waves

Let joy fill the sanctuary
overflow out open windows
where angels inhale
the sweet aroma
and dance in the light

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Wild Geese 

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.

Selecting a Reader

I like how this poem imagines the reader.

I wonder about you, too. :)  Are you in your kitchen, propping your elbows on the counter over a laptop? 

Sitting at your office at lunch?

Hanging out in your basement with a squirmy toddler on your lap?

Slamming your hand on the desk and yelling, "HOGWASH!!"

I'd love to see that...but, on with the poem, for cryin' to Pete.

Selecting a Reader
by Ted Kooser

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it.  She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having enough money for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf.  She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

Not Forgotten - Poetry Thursday

I really love this one.  Especially the last two lines. 

Not Forgotten

by Sheila Packa

I learned to ride
the two wheel bicycle
with my father.
He oiled the chain
clothes-pinned playing cards
to the spokes, put on the basket
to carry my lunch.
By his side, I learned balance
and took on speed
centered behind the wide
handlebars, my hands
on the white grips
my feet pedaling.
One moment he was
holding me up
and the next moment
although I didn't know it
he had let go.
When I wobbled, suddenly
afraid, he yelled keep going—
keep going!
Beneath the trees in the driveway
the distance increasing between us
I eventually rode until he was out of sight.
I counted on him.

That he could hold me was a given
that he could release me was a gift.

"Not Forgotten" by Sheila Packa, from Cloud Birds. © Wildwood River Press, 2011. 

Poetry Thursday (mud-luscious :)

It's happened. 

It's actually spring in Minnesota.  Our family went for our inaugural first bike ride of the year last night and I could have sang the Hallelujah chorus the entire way.  In honor of that feeling - some e.e. cummings....

[in Just-]

by e.e. cummings

in Just-
spring      when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles      far      and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far      and    wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
    the

          goat-footed

balloonMan     whistles
far
and
wee