Good bye Winter

This winter tried really hard to be spring... but I felt cold enough inside to know better.

Winter in Utah

Billy Collins

The road across a wide snowy valley could not have been straighter if someone had drawn it with a ruler

which someone probably did on a table in a surveyor’s office a century ago with a few other men looking over his shoulder.

We’re out in the middle of nowhere, you said, as we bisected the whitened fields— a few dark bison here and there

and I remember two horses snorting by a shed— or maybe a little southwest of nowhere, you added, after you unfolded a map of the state.

But that night, after speeding on sleds down a road of ice, the sky packed with stars, and the headlights of our host’s truck blazing behind,

it seemed we had come a little closer to somewhere. And in the morning with the snow sparkling and the rough white mountains looming,

a magpie flashed up from a fence post, all black and white in its airy exertions, and I said good morning to him

on this first day of the new decade all of which left me to wonder if we had not arrived at the middle of exactly where we were.

Flowers in November

Happy Valentines Day!

I have the best Valentine. 

He is the type to toss out "I love you's" to me all the time. 

We don't save them for Volcano's though I love the sentiment. 

This years flowers from The Cowboy. 

“I Love You” 

By Billy Collins

Early on, I noticed that you always say it

to each of your children

as you are getting off the phone with them

just as you never fail to say it

to me whenever we arrive at the end of a call.

It’s all new to this only child.

I never heard my parents say it, 

at least not on such a regular basis

nor did it ever occur to me to miss it.

To say I love you pretty much every day

would have seemed strangely obvious, 

like saying I’m looking at you

when you are standing there looking at someone.

If my parents had started saying it

a lot, I would have started to worry about them.

Of course, I always like hearing it from you.

That is never a cause for concern.

The problem is I now find myself saying it back

If only because just saying good-bye

then hanging up would make me seem discourteous.

But like Bartleby, I would prefer not to

say it so often, would prefer instead to save it

for special occasions, like shouting it out as I leaped

into the red mouth of a volcano

with you standing helplessly on the smoking rim,

or while we are desperately clasping hands

before our plane plunges into the Gulf of Mexico,

which are only two of the examples I had in mind,

but enough, as it turns out, to make me

want to say it to you right now,

and what better place than in the final couplet

of a poem where, as every student knows, it really counts.

One More

from Walking To Martha's Vineyard by Franz Wright

THE POEM

It was like getting a love letter from a tree

Eyes closed forever to find you----

There is a life which

if I could have it

I would have chosen for myself from the beginning

Poetry Month

Found this one at the library. It's beautiful. I'm kind of in love with his work. 

In this radiant collection, Franz Wright shares his regard for life in all its forms and his belief in the promise of blessing and renewal. As he watches the “Resurrection of the little apple tree outside / my window,” he shakes off his fear of mortality, concluding “what death . . . There is only / mine / or yours,– / but the world / will be filled with the living.” In prayerlike poems he invokes the one “who spoke the world / into being” and celebrates a dazzling universe–snowflakes descending at nightfall, the intense yellow petals of the September sunflower, the planet adrift in a blizzard of stars, the simple mystery of loving other people. As Wright overcomes a natural tendency toward loneliness and isolation, he gives voice to his hope for “the only animal that commits suicide,” and, to our deep pleasure, he arrives at a place of gratitude that is grounded in the earth and its moods.

Poetry Month

I've been leafing through my poetry books this month and re-fell in love with Black Candle by Chitra Divakaruni.

This is one of them:

The Makers of Chili Paste

The old fort on the hill
is now a chili factory
and in it, we
the women,
saris tied over nose and mouth
to keep out the burning

On the bare brown ground
the chilies are fierce hills
pushing into
the sky's blue. Their scarlet
sears out sleep.
We pound them into powder
red-acrid as the mark
on our foreheads.

All day the great wood pestles
rise and fall,
rise and fall,
our heartbeat. Red
spurts into air, flecks our arms
like grains of dry blood.
The color will never
leave our skins.

We are not like the others
in the village below,
glancing bright black
at men
when they go to the well for water.

Our red hands
burn like lanterns
through our solitary nights.
We will never
lie breathless
under the weight of thrusting men,
birth bloody children.

We are the makers of chili paste.
Through our fingers
the mustard oil seeps
a heavy, melted gold. In it
chili flecks swirl and drown.
We mix in secret spices,
magic herbs,
seal it in glowing jars
to send throughout the land.

All who taste our chilies
must dream of us,
women with eyes like rubies,
hair like meteor showers.
In their sleep forever
our breath will blaze
like hills of chilies
against a falling sun.

Instant Poetry

We love this word exhibit at the Exploratorium, these are 

the random words that created our instant poetry, mine on 

top says, 

"storm trees wild fantasy" 

The MP's says 

"sorrow watches happy elegance" 

and The UB's 

"fog becomes rich beauty"

The UB's is my favorite.

Welcome Poetry Month

I love reading poetry in April. This

one is the new city book-club read.

So far I'm very happy with it, though

I'm only on day one. I'll share a few 

favorites before the end of the month. 

I love Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda

ODE TO SALT

This salt
in the salt cellar
I once saw in the salt mines.
I know
you won't
believe me
but
it sings
salt sings, the skin
of the salt mines
sings
with a mouth smothered
by the earth.
I shivered in those
solitudes
when I heard
the voice
of
the salt 
in the desert.
Near Antofagasta
the nitrous
pampa
resounds:
a
broken
voice,
a mournful
song.

In its caves
the salt moans, mountain
of buried light,
translucent cathedral,
crystal of the sea, oblivion
of the waves.
And then on every table
in the world,
salt,
we see your piquant
powder
sprinkling
vital light
upon
our food. 
Preserver
of the ancient
holds of ships,
discoverer
on
the high seas,
earliest
sailor
of the unknown, shifting
byways of the foam.
Dust of the sea, in you
the tongue receives a kiss
from ocean night:
taste imparts to every seasoned
dish your ocean essence;
the smallest,
miniature
wave from the saltcellar
reveals to us
more than domestic whiteness;
in it, we taste finitude. 

persimmons

persimmons image and cookie recipe

The Cowboy and I tasted our first persimmon a few days ago.

I can't believe it took so long for me to taste one. 

It was incredibly delicious, ripe and complete perfection.

I had no idea I was missing out on something so incredibly tasty.  

Also do you know the poem... by Li-Young Lee, I love it.

poetry list

some other books we've been reading from that I recommend:

It's Time to Find a Place

by Eunice De Souza

taken from Nine Indian Women Poets

It's Time to Find a Place

It's time to find a place
to be silent with each other.
I have prattled endlessly
in staff-rooms, corridors, restaurants.
When you're not around
I carry on conversations in my head.
Even this poem
has forty-eight words too many.

also I highly recommend anything by Mary Ruefle

ahhh I love poetry month

April Poetry

I love Pablo Neruda, own several of his books.  

This one is fantastic. 

Today I was reading from it...

Ode to Light on the Sea 

In honor of the wild ocean we saw today 

driving to and from the zoo

It seemed breathtakingly dangers and lovely

Poetry in April Day 5

Now re-reading from The Simple Truth by Philip Levine

Also one I own and love to read 

Here are the opening lines (there are 55 total lines) 

from the poem BLUE AND BLUE

In mid-June the light hangs on until I think
the day will never end. At the table, alone,
I place my left hand, palm up, before me
and begin to count the little dry riverbeds
on the map of life.

This April I have a goal to read poetry and dance everyday 

even if I only have a few minutes for each

I started with this book By Stanley Plumly, it's one I own and love. 

I saw him read from it once years ago. 

It is truly lovely. 

valentines

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright,
Meet in the aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven and gaudy day denies.

-Lord Byron

Two by Frost Welcome Fall

Nothing Gold can Stay


Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.


Gathering Leaves

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

from: The Simple Truth

DREAMING IN SWEDISH

--Philip Levine

The snow is falling on the tall pale reeds
near the seashore, and even though in places
the sky is heavy and dark, a pale sun
peeps through casting its yellow light
across the face of the waves coming in.
Someone has left a bicycle leaning
against the trunk of a sapling and gone
into the woods. The tracks of a man
disappear among the heavy pines and oaks,
a large-footed, slow man dragging
his right foot at an odd angle
as he makes for the one white cottage
that sends its plume of smoke skyward.
He must be the mailman. A canvas bag,
half-closed, sits upright in a wooden box
over the front wheel. The discrete
crystals of snow seep in one at a time
blurring the address of a single letter,
the one I wrote in California and mailed
though I knew it would never arrive on time.
What does this seashore near Malmo
have to do with us, and the white cottage
sealed up against the wind, and the snow
coming down all day without purpose
or need? There is our canvas sack of answers,
if only we could fit the letters to each other.

from: Apology For Want

CHICAGO

--Mary Jo Bang

On the 44th floor, plate glass against night
twins the room, invites me out
for a moment of vertigo--

a mock suicide. Below is Rush Street:
bar talk and head lamps crawl
on a lighted screen like drosophila walking

from an ether sleep. Under the bed
red coral carpet, azalea swirls.
Image is invincible, defies gravity

gets away with the breathless life of a jar.
From this leased remove, cars appear docile,
doormen surrendering. An ambulance blinks

hush and hollow. Above them, static as air
I am unfallen. The world without me
has rarely seemed this clear.

Neruda bit

"...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or river.
I don't know how or when...."

--Pablo Neruda

and this one...

Poetry Speaks