Visions of Sugar Plums….

Visions of Sugar Plums

“Poetry Man” by Phoebe Snow (1989)

Winter Solstice

 Winter Solstice  by Jody Aliesan

http://www.ravenchronicles.org/nwwriter/index/aliesan/aliesan.htm

Grief Sweat (Broken Moon Press, 1990)

 

Thinking only makes the heart sore. – I Ching

 

 

when you startle awake in the dark morning

heart pounding breathing fast

sitting bolt upright staring into

dark whirlpool black hole

feeling its suction

 

get out of bed

knock at the door of your nearest friend

ask to lie down beside ask to be held

 

listen while whispered words

turn the hole into deep night sky

stars close together

winter moon rising over white fields

nearby a wren rustling dry leaves

distant owl echoing

two people walking up the road laughing

 

let your soul laugh

let your heart sigh out

that long held breath so hollow in your stomach

so swollen in your throat

 

already light is returning pairs of wings

lift softly off your eyelids one by one

each feathered edge clearer between you

and the pearl veil of day

 

you have nothing to do but live

It’s snowing!

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky….
arrives the snow….”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

  From www.bartleby.com

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908).   An American Anthology, 1787–1900

The Snow-Storm

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.         5 The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm.     Come see the north wind’s masonry.         10 Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work         15 So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he For number or proportion. Mockingly, On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,         20 Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art         25 To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow.

Neruda’s “Poetry”

"....among violent fires...."

 

Poetry

And it was at that age…Poetry arrived in search of me.  I don’t know, I don’t know whereit came from, from winter or a river. I don’t know how or when, no, they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among violent fires or returning alone, there I was without a face and it touched me.   I did not know what to say, my mouth had no way with names, my eyes were blind, and something started in my soul, fever or forgotten wings, and I made my own way, deciphering that fire, and I wrote the first faint line, faint, without substance, pure nonsense, pure wisdom of someone who knows nothing, and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open, planets, palpitating plantations, shadow perforated, riddled with arrows, fire and flowers, the winding night, the universe.   And I, infinitesimal being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, felt myself a pure part of the abyss, I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind.   – Pablo Neruda (translated by Alastair Reid)  (from www.poemhunter.com)

Li-Young Lee

From the Lunch Poems series of U.C. Berkeley:

Happy Birthday Emily Dickinson….

Today is the birthday of Emily Dickinson, December 10, 1830

Emily Dickinson

Hope     

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

“Inspiration”

"Inspiration Tree" (Hot Springs National Park)

 

 

 

 

 

Inspiration

is quicksand that takes you down to rock solid

truth. She cannot be called up from within –

she comes from some place outside of us.

She is the smoke that curls upward

from an all-night fire that will die in the daylight.

The evanescing mist rising from a river.

A winter tree whose black shadow creeps,

long like fingers, over the deep crusted snow.

She is wispy cirrus clouds that appear,

then disappear. The longed for rains

over the Serengeti. She is full of grace –

the blur of a deer as she escapes the hunter.

She is born of silence on the wings of an owl.

She is ephemeral – like the brief bloom

of a desert flower. She causes the sunflower

to bow before the sun; the vine to spiral.

She is a pebble tossed into a great lake ) ) ) )

where ripples ) ) ) ) ) form ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )

then ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) radiate ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) far

beyond ) ) ) ) the shore ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )

 

 

 

 

Each day…brings endless possibilities

"The Jumping Off Place"

Sylvia Plath reads “The Stones”