Thursday, December 31, 2009



Thanks to Tammie Lee of Spirit Helpers for this week's prompt, wanderlust.
To all who gather at OSI: May your year be filled with reflections of light, laughter and friendship and may love be born in every new moment.


Wanderlust

There was a child
who was so hungry
for words
that she gobbled
phone books whole

her mother
did not know
what to do with her
They tried vitamins
filled her shoes with gravel
chanted the names of the dead
still she found her passport
though it was not easy
to break the seal

she dove beneath
the curled lip of fear
slept under many skies
dipped her feet
in cold racing streams
sending a shiver
to the parts of her
longing to be held

she looked up
and saw
geese carrying snow
under their wings
the wind passed through her
She felt warm
It was good

tonight she sleeps
in plain pajamas
beneath a dotted moon
watching birds chase gravity
wondering
How many eyes
are painted
on their wings?

Monday, December 28, 2009

Haiku Bones: regret

i sleep into day
trying too hard to repair
impossible dreams


the peel of night waits
fragrant, beneath your window
why bang empty pots?



s and h green stamps
yellowed pages, book half full
red tipped match same drawer



a rush of sparrows
such sudden beauty disturbs
childhood symmetry

Tuesday, December 22, 2009


Haiku Bones: Fleeting


poached pears moscata
you reach across the table
which birthday was it?

Monday, December 21, 2009

Wings


The photograph was taken in the chamber of Newgrange, Ireland by Fran Caffrey. on December 21st, 2003.

SUNLIGHT ENTERS THE NEWGRANGE CHAMBER
At dawn on Winter Solstice every year, just after 9am, the sun begins to rise across the Boyne Valley from Newgrange, Ireland over a hill known locally as Red Mountain. The dramatic event lasts for 17 minutes at dawn from the 19th to the 23rd of December. Given the right weather conditions, the event is spectacular.

At four and a half minutes past nine, the light from the rising sun strikes the front of Newgrange and enters into the passage through the roofbox which was specially designed to capture the rays of the sun.

For the following seventeen minutes, the beam of light stretches into the passage of Newgrange and on into the central chamber, where, in Neolithic times, it illuminated the rear stone of the central recess of the chamber. With simple stone technology, a significant astronomical event and a special time in the annual cycle was captured in a most astonishing way.



Wings


Come!
make drums of your soles
crack open your head
leave all you have worried at the gate
every thing you cannot live without.
visit terraced footings
tread points of roughness
scream closely held fears
into luminous darkness


For this is no fleeting station
but a repeat destination
a cloudless sky
curved and acrobatic
A featherless dance
five days without name
a time of empty form.

light a dark candle
at the furred edge of doubt
your breath
is my trail to you.


Winter solstice profoundly challenges our tolerance for paradox. Mary Oliver is the best companion I know to share the longest night. Solstice blessings! May the first rays of morning find a soft glow in your heart.

Starlings in Winter
by Mary Oliver

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can't imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

"Starlings in Winter" by Mary Oliver, from Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Red



Thank you Bobbie of Constant Current for this week's prompt, spider webs.





Red


From a crevice
in the molding
a tiny spider
smiled
like the sun

sometimes
she slept
or kept to herself
and we understood
we were alone

Then we would soap
each other’s hair
til it stood in peaks
and clap
the rippled flanks
til the dark
echoed
through them

when we were
comfortable
with each other
she padded
onto the soap dish
a tinkling arpeggio
of legs
we held our breath
so as not
to
disturb
a
thing

One day
red was gone
the months
trailed
each other
only the web remained
collapsing
into itself
like
a storm