Thanksgiving and November poem of the month

I'm ending this week of Thanksgiving full--full of food, full of thanks. We kind of had a low-key Thanksgiving this year, which was relaxing and nice. Louie and Kathy came from California for the feast, the bulk of which was provided by Ron and Vickie and was delish.

We started Thanksgiving day off with the 10K Turkey Trot. It was such a beautiful morning--overcast and cool, perfect for running. I kept my eyes glued to the crazy lines and movements of the clouds over the desert butte in the distance and dreamed up a new painting, to be titled, "Anticipation." But back to the race. According to my watch, I ran it in 53 minutes, which beats my old time of 56 minutes, so I was excited about that. I wish it was an "official" time, though, but I was in line for the porta-a-potty (only THREE for a race of almost 3,000 people!!) and thought that since I had a timing chip, it wouldn't matter that I started late. Guess it did. My chip didn't register.

Then, we feasted. I made my usual: sweet potatoes, green slush, creamed corn, bacon-stuffed mushrooms.

Please feast your eyes on this beauty (the pies, not Ron, although is lookin' good with the whipped cream!). Ron made all 14 pies, as usual. He is the pie master. We had 6 adults and 6 children, so that's pretty good pie-to-person ratio--more than 1 pie per person, just like I like it. My fav was the strawberry rhubarb. Thanks, Ron!

After eating leftovers Friday and Sat night, we hung out in the backyard with the outdoor heater and talked and played with this big elastic piece of fabric that would slingshot people back and forth. The video is better, but I'm too lazy to upload it tonight:

So, I'll end with the poem of the month, called "Father, We Thank You," has been attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, even though The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society swears it's not by him. I found it in one of our picture books that I love to read during November. It's very simple and straightforward and doesn't need any explication, which is sometimes nice in poetry:

Father, We Thank You

For flowers that bloom about our feet,

Father, we thank You.

For tender grass so fresh and sweet,

Father, we thank You.

For song of bird and hum of bee,

For all things fair we hear or see,

Father in heaven, we thank You.

For blue of stream and blue of sky,

Father, we thank You.

For pleasant shade of branches high,

Father, we thank You.

For fragrant air and cooling breeze,

For beauty of the blooming trees,

Father in heaven, we thank You.

For rest and shelter of the night,

Father, we thank You.

For this new morning with its light,

Father, we thank You.

For health and food, for love and friends,

For everything Your goodness sends,

Father in heaven, we thank You.

August Poem of the Month

Sheesh, how long has it been since I've done a poem of the month? MAY?! Way too long ago. This month, I'm choosing "Rain," by Raymond Williams, an interesting and fantastic poet who I studied in a grad school class at BYU. Here's the poem (and the pic is of Sweetie out with her umbrella during one of our early August monsoons):

Rain

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgiveable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

I remember doing this. You know, prekids, postmarriage when I had a drudgery job and called in sick just to read all day in bed. I like Williams's move from the small (big?) decision to live how he wants on this morning to a reflection of his life decisions and seemingly "unforgiveable" mistakes.

It might seem a little strange that I would choose a poem about rain when this August we've experienced record heat here in the desert. But I thought about this poem for 2 reasons: first, last weekend J and I took turns getting up in the night with the fevered H, and so I spent some quality time in his room. Also spending quality time in his room is the noise machine, which is sometimes set for "waterfall" and sometimes for "rain." When it's set for rain, I can picture in my mind and feel throughout my body how it was to sit in a rocking chair for hours with Mister when he was a baby and when we lived in Massachusetts. I remember that rain. I remember that little baby boy who is now 8. I remember that peace. And I want to hold onto it.

Second, this poem is also about reading. And I have spent a relaxing summer with a nightstand full of books. Having been in a doctoral program for 8 years, followed 6 weeks later by the birth of a challenging baby, I haven't done a lot of consecutive, just-for-fun reading. This summer I indulged myself. My summer books read include the following:

• Here If You Need Me: A True Story
• Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother
• The Lost Hero
• The Chosen One
• Love Walked In
• Wolves, Boys, and Other Things that Might Kill Me
• A Discovery of Witches
• Back When You Were Easier To Love
• Entwined
• Hex Hall
• Demonglass
• Girl with a Pearl Earring
• A Hopeless Romantic
• Lighten Up: Love What You Have, Have What You Need, Be Happier with Less
• edited to add one that I forgot and that I really liked: The Hourglass. Darn those books that are the first of a series though . . .

and I'm sure some others that I can't remember right now. Of this list, I think my favorites were Here if You Need Me and the Hex Hall/Demonglass series, maybe because both surprised me. I don't usually read nonfiction since I read plenty of nonfiction in the form of scholarly books on composition or literacy or feminism, but I loved this book. It made me think, feel, and laugh. The Hex Hall books surprised me because the premise for the book (witches, vampires, blah blah blah) made me think, been there, done that. But I really liked the main character. The plot was thoroughly decent too, but the main character brought it home for me. (Added note: For anyone--like my sisters!--who wants to read something from my list, A Hopeless Romantic has sex and swearing in it--a little too much of both for my taste, and Love Walked In is beautifully written but also has a lot of swearing in it. Just to forewarn you . . . )

Alas, my summer of relaxing reading has come to an end. The last 2 weeks, I've buckled down and finally finished revising the article I sent off for submission last March to Computers and Composition. They sent it back in May for revisions but I let the lure of fun reading draw me off track. That and I can't stand revising. Very painful. I finished up my revisions this afternoon and sent off the article. Yay! But I have another waiting for me. If the kids are working, I need to get working too. Hopefully, I can find a better balance between the all-or-nothing approach of the past.

April's poem of the month and some random thoughts

Look at me being early with the poem of the month. I was thinking of this one last night and this morning. It's called "When I Am Among the Trees," by Mary Oliver. You might think it kind of strange that I have been thinking of a poem called, "When I Am Among the Trees," given that in the desert of the southwest, we have very few trees. For Oliver (or for the persona speaking in the poem), the trees are crucial to her slowing down and realizing the simplicity and purpose in her life. I understand that, having grown up loving the mountains for the same reason. But these reminders to not hurry through the world and to be filled with light also come from spiritual sources for me.

Last night while J was at the priesthood session of the general conference for our church, the kids and I picked up a Little Caesars pizza and headed to the park. We played kickball, people watched, and timed each other on made-up obstacle courses through the play equipment. (Watch out! I can slide and balance beam with the best of them--just don't make me do the monkey bars.) The sun left brilliant pink streaks in the sky, the air was perfectly warm, and I was perfectly content and overwhelmingly thankful. I felt as Mary Oliver writes in this poem, convinced of the need for simplicity, "to go easy, to be filled with light." I wanted to remember not to "hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often."

I have a problem with walking slowly--I multi-task and multi-task and multi-task. And I get a lot done in life. But life is usually not about getting things done and sometimes I need J to remind me of that (he's good at balancing me out in that respect) and sometimes I need a spring/summer night with my kids to remind me of that. So here's Mary Oliver's fabulous poem. (By the way, April is the National Month of Poetry. Do you have a favorite?)

When I Am Among the Trees

by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness,

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

Poem of the month: March

I still haven't blogged about the rest of spring break and our other going-ons. It might have something to do with a certain little destructive person in our home pulling off half of the keys on my laptop. . . .

Regardless, I did want to quickly post a poem of the month. This poem by Mormon writer Joanna Brooks is timely for me right now, as last Tuesday we had the birthday celebration for the Relief Society, the women's organization in our church. I wrote a reader's theater for our celebration, and it gave me the chance to remember and to reverence the great women who make up my history as a member of the Relief Society. This poem is also timely because of general conference this weekend, a time when we Latter-day Saints listen to council from the general leaders of our church. I look forward to this time and have such great memories associated with this time of year. These 2 events this week have reminded me, as Joanna Brooks says in this poem, "How wonderful it is to have a people to love." While Mormon culture has its negatives, there is still much to love in the history and traditions of my people. Like Brooks, I hope for "a quilt with no edges" and the courage, vision, and strength it will take to realize that.

Invocation/Benediction

by Joanna Brooks, published in Exponent II 30.3 (2010): 19.

Father, Mother, help me piece together the contradictions of my life:

White cotton, red satin, brown polka dot; torn Sunday dress, Navajo rug, frayed baby blanket.

Make me insistent on every lonely shred, willing to sacrifice no one.

Where there is no pattern, God, give me courage to organize a fearsome beauty.

Where there is unraveling, let me draw broad blanket stitches of sturdy blue yarn.

Mother, Father, give me vision.

Give me strength to work hours past my daughters' bedtime.

Give me an incandescent all-night garage with a quorum of thimble-thumbed

grandmothers sitting on borrowed folding chairs.

We will gather all the lost scraps and stitch

them together;

A quilt big enough to warm all our generations: all the lost, found, rich, poor, good, bad,

in, out, old, new, country, city, dusty, shiny ones;

A quilt big enough to cover all the alfalfa fields in the Great Basin.

Bigger. We are piecing together a quilt with no edges.

God, make me brave enough to love my people.

How wonderful it is to have a people to love.

January poem of the month

This month's poem is "For the Sleepwalkers," by Edward Hirsch. I love this poem. I memorized it in college because I love the imagery--the feeling that the words and images together invoke (to know it is morning by feeling the shadows, for example). and I love the message (or the message I took from it anyway). To me, Hirsch is saying that we have to have more faith in life--more faith in God, more faith to follow that invisible arrow leading us to choices that we feel in our hearts are right, more faith in ourselves, in our legs, to take that next step, to make that change, to do what we think we might not be able to do. I love the idea that our hearts, were they independent of our bodies, would soak up everything good that they could and would close around those things tightly and bring them back to our bodies to experience. I like the description of faith as "desperate," because sometimes it really is. And I like Hirsch's ending thought--that taking a risk, that holding onto that faith so desperately and acting on it, has nourishing and surprising rewards, one of which is that we "wake up" to who we really are, we wake up to ourselves.

For the Sleepwalkers

Tonight I want to say something wonderful
for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith
in their legs, so much faith in the invisible

arrow carved into the carpet, the worn path
that leads to the stairs instead of the window,
the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror.

I love the way that sleepwalkers are willing
to step out of their bodies into the night,
to raise their arms and welcome the darkness,

palming the blank spaces, touching everything.
Always they return home safely, like blind men
who know it is morning by feeling shadows.

And always they wake up as themselves again.
That's why I want to say something astonishing
like: Our hearts are leaving our bodies.

Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs
flying through the trees at night, soaking up
the darkest beams of moonlight, the music

of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches.
And now our hearts are thick black fists
flying back to the glove of our chests.

We have to learn to trust our hearts like that.
We have to learn the desperate faith of sleep-
walkers who rise out of their calm beds

and walk through the skin of another life.
We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness
and wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised.

Edward Hirsch

December Poem of the Month

Since I haven't finished putting away my Christmas decorations and I haven't even blogged about Christmas yet, I figured it wasn't too late to post December's poem of the month (and since I've been a poem-of-the-month slacker lately). I looked this up to post it on Dec 24 and then got side-tracked and never did.

This poem--"Christ Climbed Down" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti-- was controversial at the time it was published in 1958 and still can be today. It may seem sacrilegious, but bear with me because I don't read it like that. I like this poem because every year it seems that I fight to keep Christ ever-present in our Christmas celebrations. Every year, Christmas seems to be hijacked by commercialism and wants and busyness. I see Ferlinghetti addressing that in this poem.

I also like this poem because the end makes me think about what Ferlinghetti might be saying and how this might be true: Christ does have to come again in our own individual, anonymous souls. He does have to be "born again," in effect, or evidenced in our own hearts. Isn't that what Christmas is about after all? This poem is still copyrighted, so I'm only going to include the beginning and the end. You can read the rest here.

Christ Climbed Down
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

CHRIST climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars
. . .
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings

Hope you had a great Christmas! I'll be back to report on ours very soon--as soon as those darn Christmas decorations get taken down (I'm intentionally using passive voice, hoping that I don't have to be the one to take them down).

Poem of the Month: May

Oops. I missed May's poem of the month. Here's a poem I've been thinking about recently and that I meant to post as poem of the month around Mother's Day.

Listen
by Linda Lancione Moyer

Standing in the garden,
left hand laden
with ripe strawberries. The sun

beams off the glassy
backs of flies. Three
birds in the birch tree.

They must have been there
all year.

My mother, my grandmother,
stood like this
in their gardens,

I am 43.
This year I have planted my feet
on this ground

and am practicing
growing up out of my legs
like a tree.

To me, this poem is about a persona who is planting herself in the traditions of the women who have gone before her. She is finally paying attention, noticing birds that must have been there before. She is finally listening (the name of the poem). To me, this poem seems to have an air of peacefulness and acceptance in its ending. When I think about this poem in relation to Mother's Day, I think of myself, planting my own feet in motherhood, trying to be the solid tree for my children, and turning to/listening to so many other women in my life for help in this task. I also think that the challenges of mothering and of trying to figure out how to merge different aspects of my identity with my mothering make me feel very much like the persona describes in the last stanza: Having firmly planted myself in this role, I am "practicing" growing and emerging in this ground that I have chosen.

Poem of the Month: April

Coming fresh out of Easter and my church's General Conference, I thought I'd be early with the poem of the month. One of the things I love about this poem is that the persona seeks the Landlord himself and goes to much effort to find Him, which for me is symbolic of how it should be in my own life. Also, the abrupt ending of this poem always impacts me. The Landlord's response is immediate, and the understatement of it contrasts with how grand and how crucial the Atonement really is.

REDEMPTION. By George Herbert HAVING been tenant long to a rich Lord, Not thriving, I resolved to be bold, And make a suit unto him, to afford A new small-rented lease, and cancell th’ old. In heaven at his manour I him sought : They told me there, that he was lately gone About some land, which he had dearly bought Long since on earth, to take possession. I straight return’d, and knowing his great birth, Sought him accordingly in great resorts ; In cities, theatres, gardens, parks, and courts : At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth Of theeves and murderers : there I him espied, Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.

Poem of the Month: February

I seem to be a poem of the month slacker lately, so here's a make-up for February. Since February is the month of love, how about one of the most famous poems about love? Shakespeare's sonnet 116. Despite the fact that this poem is so frequently analyzed and cited, I still like it. I love the simplicity of the language--most of the words are monosyllabic, actually--and the simplicity of the structure--straightforward English/Shakespearean sonnet with only 3 run-on lines. In the midst of this simplicity, I love the depth of meaning. To me, the poem is about the endurance of spiritual love. I guess I slightly disagree with the persona in the poem who says "love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds" because, over the almost 10 years that I have been married, J and I's love looks and feels different than it did when we were married. For better and for worse, in some cases. But it endures. And it will continue to endure, despite "tempests" and Time's "bending sickle" that changes our physical appearances. This poem is the perfect poem for February, with love as its "ever-fixed mark."

Sonnet 116: Let Me Not To the Marriage of True Minds

by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Poem of the Last 3 Months

I've been a poem-of-the-month slacker lately, but this simple and short one fits my last three months pretty well:

"Grown-up"

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Was it for this I uttered prayers,

And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,

That now, domestic as a plate,

I should retire at half-past eight?

1. Breaking out the Thanksgiving decorations--bring on the pilgrims and turkeys! 2. Sunday afternoon football and naps, 3. Beating J at Kids' Sequence during family game night (we're cut-throat around here)

July Poem of the Month: "The Ninth Month"

Guess what the poem of the month is about this time?! It's a fitting end to my first poem of the month about this pregnancy. I love this poem because as uncomfortable as I am right now, there really is nothing like the experience of "being a duplex," of feeling the "tapping friendly on the wall," and of the "sweet proximity." And I am counting on the fact, as my children grow up and gradually away, that these bonds of love and labor will reach beyond a block, a mile, a hemisphere.

"The Ninth Month"

by Carol Lyn Pearson

Being a duplex,
I have been happy, my dear,
To loan you half the house.
Rent-free and furnished
as best I could.

You have been a good
Tenant, all in all,
Quiet, yet comfortably there.
Tapping friendly on the wall.

But I hear
You have outgrown the place
And are packing up to move.
Well, I will miss
The sweet proximity.
But we will keep in touch.
There are bonds, my dear,
That reach beyond a block,
Or a mile, or a hemisphere,
Born of much love and labor.

I approve the move,
And gladly turn from landlady
To neighbor.

Poem of the Month: June

I've been trying to post for 2 days now, but blogger isn't letting me. Don't know why, but maybe it has something to do with images, so I'm giving a non-image post a shot. I seem to have missed the poem of the month for April and May, so this is kind of a catch-up because I meant to post my favorite new Easter-type poem in April. It was published in Segullah, a journal by and for LDS women, and is written by Melissa Dalton-Bradford. You can read it and other great writing here. I'll also copy it below:

Early Harvest

by Melissa Dalton-Bradford

Midsummer. Eventide. Live waters.

You: broad-backed bundle of golden sheaves

hewn down,

washed,

rushed

headlong through death’s threshing current.

You: pre-ripe, holy harvest

wrested from these, your people;

gathered to those, your people

who attend from iridescent pastures.

You: Firstborn son,

First fruits of my womb,

Firstling of our flock,

First raised of our labors . . .

Enfolded now in the arms of the

First raised from the dead,

First lover of the flock,

First fruits of the tomb,

Firstborn Son . . .

O, Son!

Sweet, sacrificial fruit of my flesh,

Preserved in spirit

Till that first morn when you, our first reborn,

Shoot forth

’Mid spring. ’Mid song.

Parker Fairbourne Bradford, age eighteen, died July 21, 2007, after plunging twice into a rural river’s deadly undertow to save a friend who was drowning. The friend lived, but Parker never regained consciousness after 38 hours in a coma.

Poem of the Month: "On Nest Building"

When we lived in Massachusetts and I was taking courses towards my Ph.D., we were also struggling with infertility and with a series of failed infertility treatments. (I'll spare you the details!) Nobody knew about it but my parents, 2 of my siblings, and one very close friend. It was a very private matter for me and a very emotional matter.  I had an excellent visiting teacher at the time--Christy--who came one month when the message was on motherhood. But instead of giving the message, she brought this poem and told me that she thought what I was doing at the time--going to school--was preparing me for the mothering that would come in my future. I've loved this poem ever since. 

And I've been thinking about this poem a lot the past 6 months as my school demands have grown very large in proportion to what I feel I should be doing with my mothering as well. I've thought about it to remind myself that what I take on in addition to "Mom" can and should improve the nest that I am building here at home. I have been thinking about what I will do after the next couple of months when getting my Ph.D. will be a past tense project and how I can incorporate into my nest-building what I have learned and who I have become as a result of it. I do know now, with the blessing of hindsight, that Christy was absolutely right. The process of "reaching," of becoming "filled . . . from God's and man's very best" doesn't have to happen through a Ph.D. but however it does happen is crucial to my self-building and my nest-building.

"On Nest Building"

by Carol Lyn Pearson

Mud is not bad for nest building.
Mud and sticks
And a fallen feather or two will do
And require no reaching.
I could rest there, with my tiny ones,
Sound for the season, at least.
But—
If I may fly awhile—
If I may cut through a sunset going out
And a rainbow coming back,
Color upon color sealed in my eyes—
If I may have the unboundaried skies
For my study,
Clouds, cities, rivers for my rooms—
If I may search the centuries
For melody and meaning—
If I may try for the sun—

I shall come back
Bearing such beauties
Gleaned from God’s and man’s very best.
I shall come filled.

And then—
Oh, the nest that I can build!

Poem of the Month: "Like Pearls Well Strung"

The poem of the month this time has to do with love (of course). I was going to pull out a few of my favorite sonnets or love poems I studied while taking lit classes in college, but really, one of my most favorite love poems is written by my friend's husband's grandmother, Caroline Miner. Here's the poem:

"Like Pearls Well Strung"

by Caroline Miner

It was high noon. I did not know there was
Before or After . . . or that long hours could grow
with morning stretching long. I did not know
that evening would bring graying mist and gloom.
I only knew that by your side the cause
of things seemed very clear and I could go
with you, and love, and work, and win. And though
the way be rough and hard, there would be room
for us, for love was magic; we were young.
Together we would seek the Holy Grail,
and days and weeks would pass like pearls well strung
on one long thread of gold, fine-spun and frail
as mist. It has been so, will be tomorrow,
together, we will double strength, divide all sorrow.

My favorite part of this poem is the last line: "It has been so, will be tomorrow, together, we will double strength, divide all sorrow." I love this line because this is what love--particularly the love of my husband but also the love of my family--has meant for me in my life. It has meant that in sharing my life, I have received double the strength when I most need it. And my sorrows have been lighter as I have someone else to help me carry them.  Valentine's Day gives me the chance to show that I am extremely glad that "It has been so, will be tomorrow."

Poem of the Month: "Metaphors"

I missed posting January's poem of the month by one day. Better late than never, right? This one requires audience participation. It's a riddle. A pretty exciting one, if I do say so myself. I always used this poem in the figures of speech unit when I taught intro to lit. So, I'll save my commentary on the poem until later. First, you have to let me know if you figure out the riddle . . . 

"Metaphors"

by Sylvia Plath

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,

An elephant, a ponderous house,

A melon strolling on two tendrils.

O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!

This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.

Money's new-minted in this fat purse.

I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.

I've eaten a bag of green apples,

Boarded the train there's no getting off.

Catching up--Poem of the Month, December

Ever since I studied T.S. Elio'ts poem "The Journey of the Magi" in a literature class, I have loved it, although upon first reading it, it doesn’t make much sense.  I love the poem because it speaks of wisemen who give so much to travel to Jesus and celebrate His birth.  But along the way, they see the betrayal and violence of His death, and, not knowing, as we do, that He was born to give His life for us, they are left feeling ambivalent at the meaning of His birth. Years later, the persona speaking in the poem does not know if he was led all that way for birth or death. I like that T.S. Eliot does not separate Christ’s birth from His death because we celebrate His birth because of the glory of His life and the supreme gift of His death.

I also like that the wiseman speaking in the poem has been changed profoundly by the experience.  He returns to his place in a kingdom but is “no longer at ease here” because the people do not believe in the true God. The wiseman is not the same as he was before he journeyed to see Christ.  This, of course, is symbolic of how it should be for all of us. On our journey to come to know Christ, we should be changed, no longer at ease with aspects of our self before we began the journey. And, as it was for the wiseman, our journey itself and the death of our bad habits will both be difficult—“hard and bitter agony,” the wiseman says. 

T.S. Eliot, “Journey of the Magi”

“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death. 

1.  watching football, 2. homemade bread, 3. open windows and the smell of spring

Poem of the Month: "Pied Beauty"

Here's the poem of the month. Just in time for Thanksgiving. It's Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Pied Beauty." I love this poem because of the sound, but also because it's sole purpose is to praise an unchanging God for creating all of the variety and beauty in the earth. 

1.  Opportunities    2.  Family    3.  Faith

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;	5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:	10
Praise him.

poem of the month--"The Drum"

I had to squeeze it in since this is the last day of the month. Lucky for you, this poem is short and sweet. It's one I've always liked because, alas, I tend to be more of the sit-nicely-and-don't-make-waves kind of people. Don't get me wrong, there are definite benefits to being a pleaser instead of a drum-beater. But I always secretly wished I had a little more of the latter to me. Also, this poem is in honor of my littlest sister Laura, whose birthday was this month and who has always beat out her own rhythm in a way that, for a long while, drove my poor mother crazy. But now all those drum beats together have made her into the fun, crazy, and smart girl/woman/sister that we all love. Happy belated birthday, Lou!

"The Drum"

by Nikki Giovanni

daddy says the world is

a drum tight and hard

and i told him

i'm gonna beat

out my own rhythm

Poem of the Month: "For the Children"

I've been meaning to blog. But, well, you know how it goes. I just came across this poem while I was looking for a book and thought I would share it as my poem of the month. It reminded me of being in grad school at BYU and driving to Westminster to hear Gary Snyder read his poetry. Aaahhh, the days of going to poetry readings. Did I really live that life? But anyway, it also was a good reminder in this last week of summer vacation (not last week of summer, unfortunately) of keeping my priorities and my head as I try to maximize the summer fun with my kids while minimizing the increasing sibling fighting. Maybe it's also me getting ready to send my oldest off to kindergarten next week (sniff, sniff). So hear you go . . . This poem is beautiful, simple, and deep, all at the same time. Enjoy!

For the Children
The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
The steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light.

~ Gary Snyder