life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “Seasons”

May the road rise to meet you! – Irish Blessing

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I stood in the surf
waiting
for what I was to receive
I looked at,
then past,
glistening rocks,
colored shells,
green sea glass,
none of them were right.
My back was to the Sound,
Waves coming and going,
Sand shifting under my wet feet.
I scan,
wait for what I must recognize –
then I see it.
this?
a black glob of rocks stuck together
browns and grey and bits of reds
it’s ugly
it’s heavy
it’s rough
it’s jagged
it’s not what I thought I wanted,
it’s not what I thought was valuable.
what is it, that the water has just delivered,
and I feel lead to pick up
to cart home with me?
I want it to be romantic.
Maybe…
I search for romance…
a meteorite?
a mystery from another planet?
I walk the mile home,
wondering what lessons I will learn from this ‘gift’
I have just received from the ocean.
Almost home,
one more curve,
I spot my favorite kinda caterpillar,
the brown and black,
softest, loveliest velvet
crawler in the world.
I loved the feel of them as a little girl,
let them crawl all over me.
I pass it,
then double back,
as directed by intuition,
to visit this small friend.
I am bent down,
and my fuzzy friend moves along,
and recognition comes.
I carry,
in my hands…
asphalt,
ASPHALT???!!!
a piece of the road,
which came to me by way of the ocean.
I belly laugh
as I my lesson,
my gift,
becomes clearer.
I am,
right now,
every moment,
in the ocean of grace
no matter where I am
the path is in the ocean of love,
of God.
The road is everywhere!
It rises to meet me.
It comes one chunk at a time.
This is gift –
teaching me what I need,
bringing me diamonds with each step.
Living,
and breathing,
thanks
is the best gift.
We are always loved
The message is waiting in
every surf
every leaf
every tree
every song
every heart beat
every tiny created thing
every little moment breathes and burns.
Remove your shoes,
dance wild by the fire,
dive into the sky,
sing loud and long –
holy,
holy,
holy
and fly away
home.
I’ll meet you there!
xoxo

ACL 9/22/14

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I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. – Lucy Maude Montgomery

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Some October, when the leaves turn gold, ask
me if I’ve done enough to deserve this life
I’ve been given. A pile of sorrows, yes, but joy
enough to unbalance the equation.

When the sky turns blue as the robes of heaven,
ask me if I’ve made a difference.
The road winds through the copper-colored woods;
no one sees around the bend.

Today, the wind poured out of Canada,
a river in flood, bringing down the brilliant leaves,
broken sticks and twigs, deserted nests.
Go where the current takes you.

Some twilight, when the clouds stream in from the west
like the breath of God, ask me again.

“Some October” by Barbara Crooker

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welcome

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watercolor paintings by Mary Lou Peters

October. Its brilliant festival of dry
and moist decay. Its spicy, musky scent.
The church’s parking lot deserted
except for this one witness,
myself, just resting there.

Somewhere a radio plays Flamenco.
A spotlight of sunshine falls on the scattered debris.
Blood-red and gold, a perfect circle of leaves
begins to whirl,
slowly at first, keeping the pattern,
clicking against the blacktop
like heels and castanets,
then faster, faster, faster. . .
round as a ruffle, as the swirling
skirts of an invisible dancer.
Swept off into the tangled woods
by the muscular breeze.
The hoarse cheering of crows.

Inside the dark empty church,
long cool shadows, white-painted wood,
austere Protestant candles thriftily snuffed,
Perhaps a note on the altar,
Gone dancing. Back on Sunday

Outside by Dolores Stewart

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tree-mendous

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For today, I will memorize
the two trees now in end-of-summer light

and the drifts of wood asters as the yard slopes away toward
the black pond, blue

dragonflies
in the clouds that shine and float there, as if risen

from the bottom, unbidden. Now, just over the fern—
quick—a glimpse of it,

the plume, a fox-tail’s copper, as the dog runs in ovals and eights,
chasing scent.

The yard is a waiting room. I have my chair. You, yours.

The hawk has its branch in the pine.

White petals ripple in the quiet light.

“Solitudes” by Margaret Gibson

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A tree you pass by every day is just a tree. If you are to closely examine what a tree has and the life a tree has, even the smallest thing can withstand a curiosity, and you can examine whole worlds.
– William Shatner

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The aspen glitters in the wind
And that delights us.

The leaf flutters, turning,
Because that motion in the heat of August
Protects its cells from drying out. Likewise the leaf
Of the cottonwood.

The gene pool threw up a wobbly stem
And the tree danced. No.
The tree capitalized.
No. There are limits to saying,
In language, what the tree did.

It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us.

Dance with me, dancer. Oh, I will.

Mountains, sky,
The aspen doing something in the wind.

“The Problem of Describing Trees” by Robert Hass

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responding to good treatment

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The need comes on me now
to speak across the years
to those who finally will live here
after the present ruin, in the absence
of most of my kind who by now
are dead, or have given their minds
to machines and become strange,
“over-qualified” for the hard
handwork that must be done
to remake, so far as humans
can remake, all that humans
have unmade. To you, whoever
you may be, I say: Come,
meaning to stay. Come,
willing to learn what this place,
like no other, will ask of you
and your children, if you mean
to stay. “This land responds
to good treatment,” I heard
my father say time and again
in his passion to renew, to make
whole, what ill use had broken.
And so to you, whose lives
taken from the life of this place
I cannot foretell, I say:
Come, and treat it well.

“XI” by Wendell Berry

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Send them love.

Wish them peace.

See them happy.

Everyone, always, forever.

And prepare to be astounded,
The Universe

http://www.tut.com/

hello Spring, my favorite season!!

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not in vain

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I said, “I have labored in vain,
yet surely my cause is with the Lord.”
The Holy One says,
“I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
—Isaiah 49.4, 6

Beloved,
you do not see your own face,
nor can you hear God’s delight in you.
You can’t hold your work in your hands.
You can’t know the whole tapestry
into which you are woven.
God’s grace works within, unseen.
Go with the mere faith
that you are God’s thread.

No star can guess its place in the heavens,
which are nonetheless glorious.
The Beloved is continually making this world,
saying, “Let there be light:”
and you walk out into the darkness,
and God says, “It is good.”
The miracle rolls on to the end of the earth
until all is mended, all is beautiful,
all is blessed.
________________________
Weather Report

Low lying fog,
with visibility often reduced
so that you cannot see
the good of your life,
dissipating later;
clearer at higher elevations.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net

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in the middle

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The White
by
Patricia Hampl

These are the moments
before snow, whole weeks before.
The rehearsals of milky November,
cloud constructions
when a warm day
lowers a drift of light
through the leafless angles
of the trees lining the streets.
Green is gone,
gold is gone.
The blue sky is
the clairvoyance of snow.
There is night
and a moon
but these facts
force the hand of the season:
from that black sky
the real and cold white
will begin to emerge.

http://www.patriciahampl.com

seasons

Walking among trees being stripped,136040026385c5a03b2b2e432c34f77e
the graveyard of colors at my feet,

branches above slowly being robbed,
air chilling, reaching farther into me,

I can’t shake the gentle dread
that something more will be required,

something taken, or outgrown,
requiring a reckoning of grief,

no loss God wants to save me from,
no turning that I want to miss,

a coming free that will not feel like such,
a birth resembling autumn’s lovely death.

I know no other passage through these woods.
0ece9c124b074afeb94168e1d0a3bae2The small path reaches out to me.

I feel my breathing, steady, slow and small.
The forest turns around me as I go.

Mist rises from the farm field to the west,
that slowly fills with yellow morning light.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

a walk in September

22Creamy dreamy whites
float in bright, delight blue
I walk in a country-scape
Skyline of tree-scrapers
Staggering my vision
in every variation and shade of green
sun blending with shadows
inspiring new creations within
I walk the welcoming leaf path
to the applause of the gaping trees leaning in close
cheering,
8 crowding to get a glimpse of me
I enter a magnificent cathedral
lush carpets of leaves underfoot
sunlight streaming through the natural stained glass-like leaf ceiling
ground scattered with acorn-glitter strewn for the party
cool breeze blows my hair back as I make my way
past paparazzi squirrels peering out from behind stump and branch
to get my photo for the upcoming
ET (Evening Twilight) show
there are fresh flower bouquets
flaming the colors of fall fabulous
bushes and trees blazing holy
Everything about me shouts,
We are here and we love it!
Because we do.
There really is nothing better
than a walk in nature
4 to refresh the soul
and remind me I’m am one with this universe
made of clay and stardust
a superstar
totally accepted
truly beloved

AL 9/21/13

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