a bountiful dawn breaks along the beach,
the salty air rousing me out of bed to a
good morning dressed in silken pale, in soft
pastels, like violet and peach and the seduction
of a blue-green ocean that sighs with its ebb tides
and with its surge, it roars on slivered winds ~
between the whiles, how pleasant this tender verge, softly caressed by a white-lighted wrinkle in time*
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~I am a medically retired (disabled) elder and the mother of married son who is very dear. I started blogging shortly after I retired as a way to maintain my sanity and to stay connected to the arts and the artful despite being mostly homebound. My Facebook pages are:Jamie Dedes (Arts and Humanities) and Simply Living, Living Simply.
With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded and host The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.”
“Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world.” Stefan Collini (b. 1947), English Literary Critic and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge
…and then a new generation …
a boy, an old soul
but a merry new story
fresh at bone and marrow
adhering to Conrad’s dictum
with little shocks and surprises
in every sentence of his book
his life, his metaphor . . .
wearing Truth as his dermis
seeking tears, not blood
and he, like all good art
changed me for the better
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~I am a medically retired (disabled) elder and the mother of married son who is very dear. I started blogging shortly after I retired as a way to maintain my sanity and to stay connected to the arts and the artful despite being mostly homebound. My Facebook pages are:Jamie Dedes (Arts and Humanities) and Simply Living, Living Simply.
With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded and host The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.”
“Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world.” Stefan Collini (b. 1947), English Literary Critic and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge
On May 28, our group for people with life-threatening illnesses celebrated the lives of those who have already passed on. I was unable to attend the memorial service due to bronchitis, but I celebrate them, two of my family, and this wonderful group here today.
Our group is composed of people from several different religious traditions and is hosted by our local Insight Meditation Center. The group was founded and is run by a Buddhist chaplain who has been very kind and is a stalwart friend to each of us.
I no longer attend meetings. By some surely unearned grace, I am now considered “chronic and stable” and I’ve grown to the point that the news of death no longer disturbs me. The major take-away for me from this experience is that the only difference between having a medically predicted expiration date and not knowing when our time will come is that with a diagnosis, we no longer fall into those moments of denial. That’s a huge gift. Huge! The result is that we become present in each moment.
Today, is my loving celebration of: Ann, Deborah, Dick, Ernie, Hilda, Mary, Parvathy, Robert, Mary Kate, Steve, Victor and to family lost in recent years: my former husband, Kirby (the most decent man I’ve ever known), and my cousin, Christopher, with whom I grew-up and who was like a brother …
Each moment and every person is precious and beautiful and the only thing that really matters is how much we have loved and been loved and that – as survivors – we continue to live in the service of our families and those in need. In the end it would seem that’s the best way to honor the family and friends whose memory we treasure .
Eternity flowed deftly through the last eight years
enfolding in her stream eleven with whom we
contemplated Knowledge and Mortality
Looking back, we ponder amazed at love among friends, ……….it blossoms fragrant, as gentle ……….as a dewy rose among thorns and thistles
We thrash and crawl and climb ……….puzzling ……….over the sea and fire that stalks us
Our hearts, cupped in one another’s hands ……….like castanets, beat in unison
Our measured moments grave lines in phantom fears, ……….they float like storm clouds above us
In words of jade, we speak elegies and encomiums
Our smiles mask our sorrows and yearning
Our laughter is love grown wild
We see each other in a thousand shapes and dreams ……….and in nameless names
Our sighs ride the ebb tides of Eternity …..Another moment: …..and even the sun will die …..but our lotus song will echo on …. ……….We have lived! We have loved!
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~I am a medically retired (disabled) elder and the mother of married son who is very dear. I started blogging shortly after I retired as a way to maintain my sanity, to stay connected to the arts and the artful despite being mostly homebound. My Facebook pages are:Jamie Dedes (Arts and Humanities) and Simply Living, Living Simply.
With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded and host The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another – no matter our tribe – in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.”
“Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world.” Stefan Collini (b. 1947), English Literary Critic and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge
What’s it to me? …
A knotted and nasty old poet of introverted time
wearing five-dollar sweats
dressing in black on black,
silver earrings tinkling softly in the winter breeze
What’s it to me? …
A Madwoman, A Madonna, A Medusa
Traipsing neighborhood streets, city parks, country lanes
Nibbling on sharp yellow cheese and glossy red apples
Sitting down on some wayward curb to sigh in wonder at
noisy birds, children, wizened old men, whiskered grandmothers
Dogs walking their humans by the side of the road
Feral cats scratching a living of pigeon stuffed with stale bread
Muttering, muttering, whispering, watching, writing
Writing long poems and short about what it was to be us
through clocked days trapped in pointless, punctilious youth
Enjoying now the wild, gnarly randomness of life
and the music of our dusty blue souls jingling as we walk …
What’s it to me? What’s it to this so lately untamable me?
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~I am a medically retired (disabled) elder and the mother of married son who is very dear. I started blogging shortly after I retired as a way to maintain my sanity, to stay connected to the arts and the artful despite being mostly homebound. My Facebook pages are:Jamie Dedes (Arts and Humanities) and Simply Living, Living Simply.
With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded and host The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another – no matter our tribe – in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.”
“Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world.” Stefan Collini (b. 1947), English Literary Critic and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge
The winds in May are still rusty from winter
and our crystal spring arrives stop-and-go,
not here in full force yet this year, not dense
enough to clear the rust or make the iris
dance, though the poppies are present and
there are star lilies and peonies to tempt my
eye and my wallet at the grocery. They stand
alongside the strawberries, buxom and red
and on sale this morning. A sprightly breeze
blew me home with promises of summer
tenderness, of willow branches sashaying
and of wild grasses amassed in tangles that
attract the artist’s vision and able brush.
My purple orchid is thriving and the bees are
as fat as baby mice, clever and cute. On the
mossy margins of the northern side there
are human infants with their midnight tears
waiting to be dried by serious fathers who walk
deep purple streets in slow comforing rhythms,
their newborns gently held, heads wobbling
like little drunks dripping saliva on their dads’
49er sweatshirts, while moms catch a rare nap.
Watching quietly from my place in life, I poem.
Note: A recording of John Anstie reading this poem can be heard on John’s SoundCloud site HERE. John’s other readings may be heard HERE.
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~ I am a mother and a medically retired (disabled) elder. The graces of poetry, art, music, writing and study continue to evolve as a sources of wonder and solace, as a creative outlet, and as a part of my spiritual practice.
Her fate was set when she fell under the spell of his kind eyes and bigger than life personality. For his part, he loved her gentle ways, the fluid dance of her hands at work, the sensual swing of her hips as she walked to the market with basket in hand. And so it happened that in 1948, with her father’s permission and her mother’s tears, they were wed in the old adobe iglesia where uncounted generations of her family had been married before her. Not many months after the wedding, she kissed her parents and siblings goodbye, took a long loving look at her village, and she followed her new husband north to losEstados Unidos de América. She was already pregnant with Clarita.
****
As the days and years passed, they settled into their routines. Sunday mornings were her husband’s quiet time. He stayed at home while Señora Ortega and Clarita were at Mass. In their absence he would occasionally put down his newspaper and stir his wife’s frijoles simmering fragrant with pork, a few bay leaves, onions and garlic.
Last night: their Saturday ritual, she and Clarita had sorted and then washed the dried beans in cold water and left them to soak until morning. The child – fast becoming a young woman – took the time and care to do a good job of this. El trabajo es vertud. Work is virtue, Señora Ortega encouraged. In the tradition of Señora Ortega’s own madre, la cocina was a place of teaching – about food, about life, about being a woman, about being human.
“!Ten cuidado, hija!” Be careful, she would say as she demonstrated her almost sacramental sorting of the dry beans. It was an opportunity to teach Clarita the dichos, the proverbs, of her mother and grandmother and all the grandmothers before. “Los frijoles son nuestra fuerza.” We get our strength from losfrijoles, she taught Clarita just as her own mother taught her. Certainly the beans give the strength to our bodies, but also the strength to our character. There are lessons. “¡Aqui!” Remove these. Remove the wrinkled, the broken, the discolored or malformed. Remove them as you should remove flaws from your character. One bad frijole will ruin the whole pot. Taparse con la misma cobija.* … You will be judged by the company you keep. Be cautious in your choice of friends. Even the norteamericanos have such a saying: one bad apple spoils the bunch.
“Mama,” said Clarita, rolling her eyes after her mother’s latest speech. We are North Americans.” Señora Ortega’s brow furrowed when she heard this. She was given to worry about such reactions from her daughter. What of the child’s values? It is true after all. My daughter is American. What does this mean for her future, for our relations, and for us as la familia?
****
Soon Señora Ortega had to put her concerns aside. It was springtime. Easter was upon them and with it a visit from her husband’s sister with her two small children. Señora Ortega and Clarita were busy with preparations. The air in her house smelled of poblanos roasting and cookies baking. They put fresh linens on the beds in the guest rooms. They picked flowers from her garden and set them in vases around the house. She gave in and bought chocolate Easter bunnies too, the silly convention of this country, but the children loved them and looked forward to them each year.
Finally the honored guests arrived and the house was filled with the cheerful noises of los niños. The boy and girl were now old enough to learn to prepare beans and, on the eve of Easter Sunday, Señora Ortega gave Clarita the task of showing the children how to sort los frijoles for cooking. She looked on as Clarita explained the process. “!Ten cuidado, mis primos. Aqui! Remove these. Remove the wrinkled, the broken, the discolored or malformed. Remove them as you should remove flaws from your character. Remember one bad frijole will ruin the whole pot. Be cautious in your choice of friends. Taparse con la misma cobija. You will be judged by the company you keep. “Los frijoles son nuestra fuerza.” Los frijoles are our strength.
****
At some point, Señora Ortega’s husband had come to stand by her side. She realized he was watching her as intently as she watched their daughter. He put his arm around her and held her close. “You see, mi querida, she is a good girl and you are a good mother. It’s gonna be okay …” “Am I that transparent,” thought Señora Ortega, but she sighed gratefully. All will be well. My mother was right. “Los frijoles son nuestra fuerza.”
* Taparse con la misma cobija – literally: to cover yourself with the same blanket, i.e. likely the same meaning as our expression “birds of a feather.”
– JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~ I am a mother and a medically retired (disabled) elder. The graces of poetry, art, music, writing and study continue to evolve as a sources of wonder and solace, as a creative outlet, and as a part of my spiritual practice.
…….For Ann who died a year ago of a rare cancer of the bone
we scattered your relics, charred bone
blithe spirit, to be rocked by waves,
to be rocked into yourself, the rhythm
enchanting you with sapphire spume,
sighs merging your poetry with the ether,
rending our hearts of their shivered memories,
shattering the ocean floor with your dreams
lost in lapping lazuli tides, dependable ~ relief perhaps after pain-swollen years of suckle on the shards of a capricious grace
those last weeks …
your restless sleeps disrupted by
medical monitors, their metallic pings
not unlike meditation bells calling to you,
bringing you to presence and contemplation,
while bags hung as prayer-flags on a zephyr,
fusing blood, salt, water
into collapsing veins, bleeding-out
under skin, yellowing and puce-stained,
fetid air filled, we came not with chant,
but the breath of love, we tumbled in
one-by-one to stand by you
to stand by you
when death arrived
and it arrived in sound, not in stealth,
broadcasting its jaundiced entrance i am here, death bellowed on morphine
in slow drip, i am here death shouted,
offering tape to secure tubing, handing
you a standard-issue gown, oversized –
in washed-out blue, for your last journey
under the cold pale of fluorescent light
far from the evergreen life of your redwood forest,
eager and greedy, death snatched
your jazzy PJs, your bling and pedicures,
your journals and pens, your computer and
cat, death tried your dignity and identity not quickly, no … in a tedious hospital bed,
extending torment, its rough tongue salting
your wounds, death’s hungering, a hunger
for bones, your frail white bones –
but you in your last exercise of will, thwarted death,
bequeathing your bones to the living sea
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~ I am a mother and a medically retired (disabled) elder. The graces of poetry, art, music, writing and reading continue to evolve as a sources of wonder and solace, as a creative outlet, and as a part of my spiritual practice.
see it moving – Life!
moving through the ache of time
seeking that place
where identity isn’t worn on a sleeve,
where individuals challenge the tribe,
where beauty frees itself from convention,
where the chain of fear dissolves
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~ I am a mother and a medically retired (disabled) elder. The graces of poetry, art, music, writing and reading continue to evolve as a sources of wonder and solace, as a creative outlet, and as a part of my spiritual practice.
I am only just now familiarizing myself with English poet Roger McGough’s work, having recently been introduced to it by a friend who sent me his poem, Mafia Cats. The presentation she sent me is the one HERE (scroll down), which I couldn’t load into this post. I think it’s the better one, though the one below is fun and funny too.
“Yes, you can feel very alone as a poet and you sometimes think, is it worth it? Is it worth carrying on? But because there were other poets, you became part of a scene. Even though they were very different writers, it makes it easier because you’re together.” Roger McGough
McGough is a prodigious writer with an apparently broad range. He has about fifty published books. Of a certain age – he is one of the Liverpool Poets (c.1960s) – he takes some inspiration from the Beats. It seems he belongs to several poetry societies and has a bit of alphabet jumble after his name, indicative of some of his country’s special honors: CBE – Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and FRSL – Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. I’m always happy to see poets honored in this way.
Until I read more about him and much more of his poetry, I’ll just leave you with Roger McGough’s own reading of Mafia Cats, which will surely put a smile on your Wednesday face.
.
Don’t forget to join us this evening (7 p.m. PST) for Writers’ Fourth Wednesday prompt hosted by poet, writer and writing coach, Victoria C. Slotto. Mister Linky will remain open for seventy-two hours so that you can link in your own work in response to the prompt. Victoria and I will visit and comment.
maybe a thing about particles and waves
or wave-particles and the way light works
and moves, the way soulmates’ eyes ignite
into stardust, the way some ancient god
smiled and blinked, flicked an able wrist
to strew some billion stars across a darkly
barren sky, then asked his goddess to
suspend the yellow moon, a caress so
softly lighted, it stirred the hopeful hearts of
night-blooming lovers into endless devotion,
though for sure the years run like the cheetah
and soon-or-late all hearts quake asunder,
just as sure as moonlight and stardust and
the way a true love fills in the fault lines
A ROMANTIC VALENTINE’S DAY POST because Valentine’s Day itself will be devoted to our BLOGGERS IN PLANET LOVE event, which will start on Valentine’s Day at 7 p.m., that is Friday, February 14. We invite writers, poets, artists, musicians and other creatives to join in by linking your work that shares your appreciation for the beauty of nature or your concern for environmental issues. You can share the url to your post via Mr. Linky, which will stay up for seventy-two hours. Corina Ravenscraft (DragonDreams) hosts and Jamie Dedes (The Poet by Day) will visit sites and comment. We hope you will also visit others and comment on their work, lending support and encouragement.
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~ I am a mother and a medically retired (disabled) elder. The graces of poetry, art, music, writing and reading continue to evolve as a sources of wonder and solace, as a creative outlet, and as a part of my spiritual practice.
Heather Von St. James is an eight-year survivor of mesothelioma – a rare cancer caused by asbestos exposure. She initiated Lung Leavin’ Day to encourge people to face their fears, whatever those fears might be. Together she and Jamie Dedes share some of their experiences with and victories over Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) and encourage you care for yourself.
“Breathing involves a continual oscillation between exhaling and inhaling, offering ourselves to the world at one moment and drawing the world into ourselves at the next…” David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology
Breath: So necessary to the maintenance of life and so often a metaphor for life and spirit. Every year around this time, I take advantage of my blog to change the subject and write about diseases that harm the mechanism of breath, our lungs. I don’t do this to draw attention to myself. I do it to draw attention to the lung disease. I want people to be aware because Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) can go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed and unattended for too long adding even more devastation to what is frankly horrific.
This year I was contacted by Heather Von St. James who wrote to me saying, ” I am an 8-year survivor of mesothelioma – a rare…
January is on the wane
leaving behind early dark and champagne hopes
for the genus Rosa. Wild or tame, they’re lovely.
Garden roses need pruning, solicitous cultivation ~
Layer shorter under taller, drape on trellises
and over pergolas, the promise of color and fragrance,
climbers retelling their stories in ballet up stone walls,
an heirloom lace of tea roses, a voluptuous panorama
rhymed with shrubs and rock roses in poetic repetition.
Feminine pulchritude: their majesties in royal reds
or sometimes subdued in pink or purple gentility,
a cadmium-yellow civil sensibility, their haute couture.
Is it the thorned rose we love or the way it mirrors us
in our own beauty and flaw and our flow into decrepitude?
They remind of our mortality with blooms, ebbs, and bows
to fate, a noble death to rise again in season, after Lazarus.
Divinely fulsome, the genus Rosa, sun-lighted reflexed ~
And January? January is ever on the wane.
The work that was the jumping off point for my poem is one by the Mexican nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1551-1695), who lived during the time when Mexico was a part of the Spanish empire. Sor Juana was an ambitious writer, self-taught, and a Baroque poet. She belonged to the Order of St. Jerome. I am enamored of her work and find her life interesting. She was brilliant, independent and nonconforming.
Sor Juana was a writer, playwright and a Baroque poet. She was hungry for learning and was self-educated. From childhood, she set her own demanding educational goals. These three famous quotes of hers are telling:
“I don’t study to know more, but to ignore less.”
“One can perfectly well philosophize while cooking supper.”
“…for there seemed to be no cause for a head to be adorned with hair and naked of learning…”
For those who might be interested, here is her poem Rosa in Spanish and in English.
Rosa divina que en gentil cultura
eres, con tu fragrante sutileza,
magisterio purpureo en la belleza,
enseñanza nevada a la hermosura.
Amago de la humana arquitectura,
ejemplo de la vana gentileza,
en cuyo ser unió naturaleza
la cuna alegre y triste sepultura.
¡Cuán altiva en tu pompa, presumida,
soberbia, el riesgo de morir desdeñas,
y luego desmayada y encogida
de tu caduco ser das mustias señas,
con que con docta muerte y necia vida,
viviendo engañas y muriendo enseñas!
Rose, heaven’s flower versed in grace,
from your subtle censers you dispense
on beauty, scarlet homilies,
snowy lessons in loveliness.
Frail emblem of our human framing,
prophetess of cultivation’s ruin,
in whose chambers nature beds
the cradle’s joys in sepulchral gloom.
So haughty in your youth, presumptuous bloom,
so archly death’s approaches you disdained.
Yet even as blossoms soon fade and fray
to the tattered copes of our noon’s collapse –
so through life’s low masquerades and death’s high craft,
your living veils all your dying unmasks.
– Juana Inés de la Cruz
Illustration and poem in the public domain. Source of translation unknown.
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~ I am a mom and a medically retired (disabled) elder. The graces of poetry, art, music, writing and reading continue to evolve as a sources of wonder and solace, as a creative outlet, and as a part of my spiritual practice.
i awoke it was the golden light the moon camping out casting my room in the glow of its fire
i thought for a moment unsure of my place forgetting what city what state what day
seconds passed soundless
slowly peeling away the veil, the confusion i melted into the golden light breathed myself into sleep again done
and done as easily perhaps as breathing into eternal sleep so frail and fragile is this anchor this silver thread this castle of solitude this just me inside me inside life
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~ I am a mom and a medically-retired (disabled) elder. The graces of poetry, art, music, writing and reading continue to evolve as a sources of wonder and solace, as a creative outlet, and as a part of my spiritual practice.
what must it be like for you in your part of the world?
there is only silence, I don’t know your name, i know only
that the fire of life makes us one in this, the human journey,
search and return, reaching for the sun, running through mud
walking the gauntlet without a prayer or a blessing
our eyes meet in secret, our hearts open on the fringe,
one breath and the wind blows, one tear and seas rise,
on the street where you live, your friends are all gone
the houses are crushed and the doves have flown
there is only silence, no children playing, no laughter
here and there a light remains to speak to you of loneliness,
my breath caught in my throat, i want to make it sane again
“Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.” Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), American poet, writer, and editor
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~ I am a mom and a medically retired (disabled) elder. The graces of poetry, art, music, writing and reading continue to evolve as a sources of wonder and solace, as a creative outlet, and as a part of my spiritual practice.
JAMIE DEDES ~ My worldly tags are poet and writer. I am in my sixth year of blogging at The Poet by Day,the journey in poem, formerly titled Musing by Moonlight. Poetry is my spiritual practice. Through the gift of poetry (mine and that of others), I enter sacred space.
one day, you’ll see, i’ll come back to hobnob
with ravens, to fly with the crows at the moment
of apple blossoms and the scent of magnolia ~
look for me winging among the white geese
in their practical formation, migrating to be here,
to keep house for you by the river …
i’ll be home in time for the bees in their slow heavy
search for nectar, when the grass unfurls, nib tipped ~
you’ll sense me as soft and fresh as a rose,
as gentle as a breeze of butterfly wings . . .
i’ll return to honor daisies in the depths of innocence,
i’ll be the raindrops rising dew-like on your brow ~
you’ll see me sliding happy down a comely jacaranda,
as feral as the wind circling the crape myrtle, you’ll
find me waiting, a small gray dove in the dovecot,
loving you, one lifetime after another.
JAMIE DEDES ~ My worldly tags are poet and writer. My most meaningful tags are mother and daughter. This is my sixth year of blogging at The Poet by Day,the journey in poem, formerly titled Musing by Moonlight. I’ve hosted The Bardo Group (formerly Into the Bardo) for three years come 22 February 2014.Through the gift of poetry (mine and that of others), I enter sacred space.
This is simultaneously blogged on Rev. Terri Stewart’s blog and my own personal blog.
Today begins the first day of our Terri Stewart’s Advent event. There are many bloggers participating in this event. Each day of the Christian celebration of Advent will be sponsored by a different blogger who will post appropriately on his or her site. Their posts will also go up on Terri’s site and the kick-off is on Into the Bardo today.
If you follow Into the Bardo regularly, you know that we share work here that is not necessarily religious but is reflective of diverse cultures and spiritual paths and representative of universal human values, however differently they might be expressed. This is a space where we hope you’ll delight in learning how much you have in common with “other” peoples.
We acknowledge that there are enormous theological differences and historical resentments that carve wedges among and within the traditions, but we believe that ultimately self-preservation, common sense, and human solidarity will empower connections and collaboration and overcome division and disorder. We work for the tipping point when compromise – an admittedly imperfect peace – will overcome war and respect for life will topple resentment. That may not happen in our time, but it has to start somewhere and sometime and this is our modest contribution toward an end for which diverse people the world over are working.
For those who are not Christian, Advent is the period of time leading up to the Nativity of Christ (Christmas). It is celebrated somewhat differently by different Christian sects and by Roman and Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox churches. I think the details of the celebrations are less important than the scriptural quote for the day …
James 4:1-3 1 Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? 2 You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.
Indeed, where do the conflicts and disputes originate: in the cravings that make us restless within ourselves, in coveting things or situations we don’t have (and may not really need), and in not using right means for just ends? These are appropriate considerations as we approach the annual celebration of the “Prince of Peace,” a celebration which is in the end a call for compassion and understanding.
May our compassion have legs.
PEACE ON EARTH The tipping point: GOOD WILL FROM AND TOWARD WOMEN AND MEN EVERYWHERE!
JAMIE DEDES ~ Poetry remains a gift in disability and medical retirement. It’s a compact thing that I can still manage. I am the founder and host of Into the Bardo, a spirited international collaborative of word-play, music, art and photography where our core team members function independently and yet with a remarkable synergy. They do everything. They are the stars. I have simply created a space in which to share.
For the past five years I’ve blogged at The Poet by Day, the journey in poem, formerly titled Musing by Moonlight (hence the url). Poetry is my spiritual practice.
the mindful peace of the cypress beckons, she bows in the wind but doesn’t break, she knows well the moments, but nothing of time her poetry is written in presence, not words
in this business of life, of death and of poetry
today is, i think, best forgotten ~
just a figment, after all, an old locked-room mystery,
stored among a million neurons, a trillion connections,
soundproof, but for the occasional cerebral accident
with its quick crack of a gunshot fading into a yellow eye,
watching with an understandable fatalism
life, as it turns out, is a matter of imagination, or folly, nurturing the seesaw of grief and joy,
the contrapuntal pulls of yin and yang
we can reframe, but we can’t rewrite there are no encores
this business of life, of death and of poetry is what it is
and the past is not a salve nor the future a savior,
the same sun that warms words poemed into life
will dry our skin to leather and weld it to bone ~
moss, says the poet, will cover up our names*
it’s best then, i think, to mimic the cypress
to let go the days, the clutter and the noise,
to bow – but not snap – in the wind,
to know well the moments, but nothing of time
JAMIE DEDES ~ My worldly tags are poet and writer. For the past five years I’ve blogged at The Poet by Day,the journey in poem, formerly titled Musing by Moonlight. Through the gift of poetry (mine and that of others), I enter sacred space.
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~I am a medically retired (disabled) elder and the mother of married son who is very dear. I started blogging shortly after I retired as a way to maintain my sanity and to stay connected to the arts and the artful despite being mostly homebound. My Facebook pages are: Jamie Dedes (Arts and Humanities) and Simply Living, Living Simply.
…and then a new generation …
The BeZine 
