This is why you were born, to pass me by, DNA of our ancestors, it’s your turn to fly, to be the center, the triumph, the culmination.
Though not quite zero at bone and marrow, you ~ are a merry new story, adhering to Conrad’s dictum, with shocks and surprises in every line and chapter.
Your book, your life, your metaphor, wearing truth as your dermis, seeking tears, not blood, and like all good art you changed me for the better,
having read you, I’ll never be the same. So time, My Heart, time now to fly, to leave this nest, the generations on which you stand, this is why you were born, now it’s your turn to fly …
Note: Conrad’s dictum is that the writer’s first responsibility is to help the reader see.
The great American novelist and educator, Toni Morrison, once wrote that it is the job of parents to provide their children both safe harbor and wings. This poem was written some time ago to convince myself, not my son. He did what son’s naturally do.
Time has seen our roles reverse in some ways. My son has the most generous heart and has had my back for thirteen years, ushering me to my pulmonologist/critical care specialist and through sundry procedures and surgeries (always my advocate), moving me to new digs each time I have to downsize, taking me home with him when I couldn’t be left alone, keeping me in computers and tech toys. Yet, our children are our children. As Naomi said yesterday in Part I, “. . . long after they’ve gone gray, long after they are elderly orphans…they will still be our babies. “
From my vantage point as my mother’s daughter and my son’s mother, I’ve learned that making family is just another kind of love story, one in which love is not circumscribed. As we pass this love along to succeeding generations, it grows in depth and breadth. We are better people for it and the whole world becomes a better place. In the end, even mom’s are given wings and the nest in never truly empty when love remains to fill in the spaces.
JAMIE DEDES is a poet and the founder of Into the Bardo. She is aformer freelance feature writer and columnist whose topic specialties were employment, vocational training, and business. She finds the blessing of medical retirement to be opportunity to play: to indulge in writing poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction.
Jamie’s primary playground is The Poet by Day, the journey in poem (formerly Musing by Moonlight) where at any time you can read five of her most recent poems along with a growing collection of Sunday posts on poetry, poets, and writers. She finds inspiration everywhere and in everyone. Her work is informed by the values of the multicultural/multiracial environment and classical Eastern and Roman Christianity in which she was raised as well as by a more recent introduction to Buddhism. Jamie has an abiding faith in the value of a life of the mind and spirit to heal and in the inestimable value of art and music, poetry and writing as spiritual practice.
a verizon service truck pulled away from aunt bea’s just as I drove up i asked if she’d had phone difficulties she said no i had one of those business lines installed with an automatic phone dialer it randomly calls either the irs or iran when it calls the irs it asks when the next dance lesson is going to be held and when it calls iran it just selects some random number says as-salam then hangs up i just want to see if the nsc is doing their ss kgb secret police thing maybe they’ll send one of those handsome fbi or partying cia agents around to ask me personal questions
CHARLES W. MARTIN, Ph.D. (Reading Between the Minds) ~ Throughout Charlie’s educational training and career in speech and language therapy, he maintained a devotion to the arts (literature/poetry, the theater, music and photography). He was a published poet before he completed his graduate work. Since his retirement in 2010, he has turned his full attention to his poetry and photography. He publishes a poem and a photographic art piece each day on his blog. Charlie has been blogging since January 31, 2010. He is hugely popular for his poetry, his ethic, and his support of other poets and bloggers.
Recently Charlie self-published a book of poetry entitled The Hawk Chroniclesand will soon publish another book called A Bea in Your Bonnet: First Sting. The Hawk Chronicles is available through both Lulu and Amazon. In The Hawk Chronicles, Charlieprovides a personification of his resident hawk with poems and photos taken over a two year period. By invitation Charlie has shown his photographs in local businesses that display the works of outstanding artists.
it must be painful for them to write, those poets in tough-times and hard places
where blood and tears and poverty contaminate the air, stain the sidewalks, and consume the people
the blood must be soul-sick and rusted and tasting of acid, not salt, and the poems meant to heal the writer and stroke the cheeks of the wounded, to dry their eyes and gently kiss their gray heads
to poem under such conditions must be like walking shoeless on glass shards
perhaps the most sacred thing in the dream-time meadow of poets’ desire is light
can you awaken to meet the Divine on the battlefield, in the camps, in government housing or in the ghettos?
if so, you are a saint, not simply a lyrist
2.
in my small world, my civilized world, people fall asleep reading or after making love or playing in the yard with their children
if they wander it is through books and planned travel
there are luxuries
there is food
there is cleanliness and paper on which to write
no bombs are dropping
there is almost certain dignity
3.
in San Francisco we walk along the beach at night, near the Cliff House
we walk to the sound of the waves, the sound of the Universe chanting its praise
our feet are bare and relish the comfort of cool sand
the air is clear and cold and easy to breathe, tasting of salt and smelling of sea life
here is a pristine moment of peace
i want to bequeath this peace to you, to everyone, as though it were a cherished heirloom
it is really a birthright
i want to plunge into the waters and gather the oceans to offer as sacramental wine in my cupped hands
i want to braid the seaweed into garlands for everyone to wear, hanging over their hearts, a symbol of affection
i want to collect pine cones from the trees that congregate along the coast and feed them to the children to remind them to love the earth and all its creatures, themselves included, and to say …
do not make war in your heart or upon your mother’s body
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.
No hesitation to break the silences,
to unite others with his verses, to
pierce sleep with the sharpened lance
of his reason, weaving his stanzas
and schemes into the warp and weft
of a marriage, with a single purpose ~ Peace. He tore at the knotted rhizome
and adventitious roots of hate and
despair, pressing on for the renewed
rootedness of hope and its fresh bright
blooms of honesty and courage, it was
his job to husband the survival of the
most refined proclivities of the heart
He planted his poems as seed in the
fertile ground of our best sensibilities
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.
I’m beginning to live with future tense
once more expanding my conjugations
to will and shall and verbs like hope the ones
I’ve been afraid to say out loud no sense
tempting the subjunctive when a sequence
of events in future perfect beckons
besieged still by emotional demons
I wobble precariously the pretense
of the conditional implying that
the ground could give way any minute and
I’d be plummeting through the past again
insecure disillusioned railing at
imperfect while trying to stop and stand
on the crust of could-be despite was-then
MARILYNN MAIR~ of Celebrating a Year is known as the “angel of the tremolo” and “the first lady of mandolin”. Marilynn is Professor of Music at Roger Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island. Her most recent CDs are Meu Bandolim and Enigmatica. Her most recent book is Brazilian Choro – A Method for Mandolin. For more of Marilynn’s story, link HERE. Marilynn Mair is a contributing writer to Into the Bardo.
پاس په كمر ولاړه ګله! نصيب دچايي اوبه زه درخيژومه
O Flower that you grow on the mountain side;
The duty to water you belongs to me, but to whom would you belong?
ستا به د ګلو دوران تير شۍ زما به پاته شۍ دزړه سوۍ داغونه
The blooming season of your beauty will pass;
But the scorched patches on my heart will always remain fresh.
Zarmina’s parents at her grave. She was a poet who died after setting herself on fire. Photo by Seasmus Murphy, 2012, Courtesy of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
This month The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, published its June 2013 issue, Landays. The issue is dedicated entirely to poetry composed by and circulated among Afghan women.
After learning the story of a teenage girl, Zarmina, who was forbidden to write poems and burned herself in protest, poet and journalist Eliza Griswold and photographer and filmmaker Seamus Murphy journeyed to Afghanistan to investigate the impact of the girl’s death, as well as the role that poetry plays in the lives of contemporary Pashtuns. A year later, Griswold and Murphy returned to Afghanistan to study the effects of more than a decade of U.S. military involvement on the culture and lives of Afghan women. In the course of this work, Griswold collected a selection of landays, or two-line poems. These poems are accompanied by Murphy’s photographs from the same period and are presented in the June 2013 issue of Poetry.
My pains grow as my life dwindles,
I will die with a heart full of hope.
A report on death and love by Eliza Grizwold and Seamus Murphy, a project of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Griswold describes the characteristics of a landay in her introduction:
“Twenty-two syllables: nine in the first line, thirteen in the second. The poem ends with the sound “ma” or “na.” Sometimes they rhyme, but more often not. In Pashto, they lilt internally from word to word in a kind of two-line lullaby that belies the sharpness of their content, which is distinctive not only for its beauty, bawdiness, and wit, but also for the piercing ability to articulate a common truth about war, separation, homeland, grief, or love.
Landays are centuries-old custom among Afghans, traditionally passed along in the oral tradition, and passed down through generations. The topics of the landays included in the June 2013 issue run the gamut—love, marriage, war, the status of women, drones, politics, courage, nature, and the Internet. Sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, these captivating two-line poems offer unique insight into the contemporary life of the more than twenty million Pashtun women who span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
*****
About Poetry
Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. Monroe’s “Open Door” policy, set forth in Volume 1 of the magazine, remains the most succinct statement of Poetry’s mission: to print the best poetry written today, in whatever style, genre, or approach. The magazine established its reputation early by publishing the first important poems of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, and other now-classic authors. In succeeding decades it has presented—often for the first time—works by virtually every major contemporary poet.
The entire June 2013 issue is available online as of June 3 HERE. Digital copies of the June issue of Poetry magazine, as well as a digital subscription, are also available.
The June 2013 issue of Poetry is accompanied by an exhibition at the Poetry Foundation gallery in Chicago, Shame Every Rose: Images of Afghanistan, which will feature a selection of Seamus Murphy’s photographs. The exhibition will run from June through August 2013 and is free and open to the public.
About the Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. The Poetry Foundation seeks to be a leader in shaping a receptive climate for poetry by developing new audiences, creating new avenues for delivery, and encouraging new kinds of poetry through innovative literary prizes and programs. For more information, please visit http://www.poetryfoundation.org.
About Everything Afghanistan
“Afghanistan’s recent history is a story of war and civil unrest. A country once prosperous now suffers from enormous poverty, a lack of skilled and educated workers, a crumbling infrastructure, and widespread land mines. It’s being heard about in the news every day but the media approaches this country from its dark side only. Here at Everything Afghanistan we try to show the world the other side of this war torn country. Despite years of bloodshed and destruction, there is still so much beauty that remains unseen.
Here we post about Afghan related things, from politics and events to its culture and traditions. This blog is against the US invasion of Afghanistan.” Amina jalalzei, a.k.a. Vicoden
About Mirman Baheer, the Ladies Literary Society
“Over 300 members of Mirman Baheer, the Ladies Literary Society, stretch across the provinces of Afghanistan. Women write and recite landai, two-line folk poems that can be funny, sexy, raging or tragic and have traditionally dealt with love and grief. For many women, these poems allow them to express themselves free of social constraints and obligations. 5 out of 100 women in Afghanistan graduate from high school, and most are married by the age of 16. This kind of expression is looked down upon in society, forcing the women writing to keep their craft a secret.” The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Meetings of the poetry society are held in Kabul, but with 8 out of 10 Afghanistan women residing in rural areas, many women call in to the meetings. Zarmina Shehadi was one of those callers. She lit herself on fire two years ago. Her family denies her suicide, claiming that she lit herself on fire to get warm after a bath. “She was a good girl, an uneducated girl. Our girls don’t want to go to school,” her mother said. Zarmina is the most recent of Afghanistan’s poet-martyrs.
About the Pultizer Center on Crisis Reporting
The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is an innovative award-winning non-profit journalism organization dedicated to supporting the independent international journalism that U.S. media organizations are increasingly less able to undertake. The Center focuses on under-reported topics, promoting high-quality international reporting and creating platforms that reach broad and diverse audiences. MORE
The Pulitzer Center will present I Am the Begger of the World, a reading and film screening event, on July 30, 2013, at Culture Project in New York City and on Wednesday, July 31, 2013, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Farrar, Straus and Giroux will release I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistanin spring 2014.
The primary narrative content for this post is courtesy of The Poetry Foundation.
Examples of Pashto Landay, A form of Afghan poetry courtesy of Everything Afghanistan
“I will die …” Landry courtesy of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Photo credit ~ Seamus Murphy for The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Video by Seamus Murphy for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why
But energy will never die
It merely changes shape and form
Regardless of faith and decorum
All things are bound by this dharma
This my friend is part of Karma
We will die and in death disperse
Seeds upon wind of universe
On what ground those seeds settle and grow
Is something no one can really know
Some say angels with halos and wings
But we know nothing of these things
There is more to elephant than just tusk
And our bodies no more than mortal husk
It is the fruit that it contains
That baffles our little birdbrains
It confounds the fool as it does the wise
Because energy never dies
TIMOTHY JAMES “TJ” THERIEN (Liars, Hypocrites & The Development of Human Emotions) ~ is a guest writer today on Into the Bardo. He has been blogging since November 2012 and has already garnered a significant and loyal following. He says in another poem “I am not a writer … I am possessed by unseen spirit/And my hand is so moved/Words dictated to me by inner voice/Muse speaks when she wants to speak…” That sounds an awful lot like work coming from sacred space. TJ tells us that he was born 1968 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and current resides in The Eastern Townships, Quebec, Canada. He’s lived briefly in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and Parry Sound, Ontario Canada. He participates in Poet’s Corner. His “About” is posted HERE.
The leaves of an elm splash
dappled sunlight on the forest
floor. A chill lingers in the
air so we share hot chocolate
from a thermos, pour the creamy
liquid into insulated mugs.
Age does not prevent her
from sprawling on the earth
she loves so passionately.
She leans against the tree’s
stout trunk, says, “I’m yours.”
My mouth is dry like when
the dentist stuffs it full of
cotton rolls. Disbelief numbs
me till she laughs—a sound
as real as songs of her beloved
birds that sing their prayers
in unison from the surrounding
branches and marshy meadows.
“I’m yours,” she says again,
reminding me I’m here to do
the interview I’ve wished for,
nurtured in my imagination
since I discovered her.
“Your life,” I coax, knowing
that but a single word suffices.
As for myself I swung the door open and there was The wordless singing world. And I ran for my life.
“You ran to it?”
“Yes, immersed myself in beauty.” While on and on the sparrow sings.
“And aging? If you don’t mind, that is.”
In the deep fall, don’t you imagine the leaves think how comfortable it will be to touch the earth…?”
…and what shall I wish for myself but, being so struck by the lightning of years to live with what is left, loving.
“Any regrets?”
There wasn’t time enough for all the wonderful things I could think of to do
In a single day…
“If you could choreograph your death?”
…Maybe on a midsummer night’s eve, And without fanfare.
“About death?”
So it is if the heart has devoted itself to love, there is not a single inch of emptiness. Gladness gleams all the way to the grave.
“And after?”
If there’s a temple, I haven’t found it yet, I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of grass and the weeds.
She takes her leave.
I watch her walk across the fields,
stopping to listen
or to follow the flight of a heron.
She’s alone now
with Percy her dog
and memories of having lived well.
I would do just about anything to spend an hour with Mary Oliver, a poet who has touched my life and my writing so deeply. This is an imagined interview. The responses in italics are all snippets of her poetry chosen from New and Selected Poems, Volume Two.
– Victoria C. Slotto
Victoria and Dave SlottoVictoria at the Palm Springs Writer’s Expo March 2012
VICTORIA C. SLOTTO (Victoria C. Slotto, Author: Fiction, Poetry and Writing Prompts) ~ a Contributing Writer to Into the Bardo ,attributes her writing influences to her spirituality, her dealings with grief and loss, and nature. Having spent twenty-eight years as a nun, Victoria left the convent but continued to work as a nurse in the fields of death and dying, Victoria has seen and experienced much. A result of Victoria’s life experience is the ability to connect with readers on an intimate level. She resides in Reno, Nevada, with her husband and two dogs and spends several months of the year in Palm Desert, California.
Winter is Past is her first novel. It was published in 2012 by Lucky Bat Books. She has a second novel in process and also a poetry chapbook. Victoria is also an accomplished blogger and poet who has assumed a leadership role in d’Verse Poet’s Pub. You can read more ofher fine poetry HERE.
A crucial ingredient is the right frame of mind
so abandon all ideas of getting on. Stop pedalling,
dismount, go indoors and give yourself masses of time.
Then begin by heating a pool of oil in a frying pan
and, Mrs. Beeton style, take a dozen onions
even though the space you’re working in is smaller
than the scullery in a Victorian mansion. Pull off
the papery wrappings and feel the shiny globes’ solidity
before you chop. Fry the segments in three batches.
Don’t fuss about weeping eyes, with a wooden spoon
ease the pieces as they turn translucent and gold.
When you’ve browned but not burnt the cubes of beef
marry meat and onions in a deep pan, bless the mixture
with stock, spoonfuls of paprika, tomato purée
and crushed garlic. Enjoy the Pompeian-red warmth.
Outside, the sun is reddening the pale afternoon
and you’ll watch as it sinks behind blurring roofs,
the raised arms of trees, the intrepid viaduct.
In the kitchen’s triumph of colour and light the meat
is softening and everything in the pot is seeping
into everything else. By now you’re thinking of love:
the merging which bodies long for, the merging
that’s more than body. While you’re stirring the stew
it dawns on you how much you need darkness.
It lives in the underskirts of thickets where sealed buds
coddle green, where butterflies folded in hibernation,
could be crumpled leaves. It lives in the sky that carries
a deep sense of blue and a thin boat of moon angled
as if it’s rocking. It lives in the silent larder and upstairs
in the airing cupboard where a padded heart pumps
heat, in the well of bed where humans lace together.
Time to savour all this as the simmering continues,
as you lay the table and place at its centre a small jug
in which you’ve put three tentative roses and sprigs
of rosemary. At last you will sit down with friends
and ladle the dark red goulash onto plates bearing
beds of snowhite rice. As you eat the talk will be bright
as the garnets round your neck, as those buried
with an Anglo-Saxon king in a ship at Sutton Hoo,
and the ring of words will carry far into the night.
MYRA SCHNEIDER ~ is a poet, a poetry and writing tutor, and the author of Writing My Way Through Cancer and, with John Killick, Writing Your Self. Her poetry collections, Circling the Coreand Multiply the Moon, were published by Enitharmon Press. She has eight published collections. Her most recent work What Women Want was published earlier this year by Second Light Publications.
Myra’s long poems have been featured in Long Poem Magazine and Domestic Cherry. She co-edited with Dilys Wood, Parents, an anthology of poems by 114 women about their own parents. She started out writing fiction for children and teens. We first discovered Myra through her much-loved poem about an experience with cancer, The Red Dress, which she generously shared with readers here in our Perspectives on Cancer series in 2011.
Currently Myra lives in North London, but she grew up in Scotland and in other parts of England. She lives with her husband and they have one son. Myra tutors through Poetry School, London. Her schedule of poetry readings is HERE.
grateful for the backward glance of memory
to those days when life was about bottles
and diapers, walks in the park and baking
cookies for little hands and greedy mouth,
when the mornings were written in wonder,
months honey-combed with baby kisses
and the fascination of intrepid first steps …
in solidarity with other parents i will them
memories laced with gratitude, not the pain
of lost dreams, of lost bodies of their bodies,
the fragile students silenced in the corridors
of relative privilege after an insane rampage
or the everyday streets streaming blood in
Harlem and Bayview/Hunter’s Point where
uncelebrated kids live foreshortened lives
… and those are the children of democracy
there are these too, children of oppression what of them? – tiny starved brown humans
that line the arenas of hunger and war, where
soundless tears of voiceless parents drown
the vestiges of hope while we share our pain,
so sure the world will grieve along with us
JAMIE DEDES ~ My worldly tags are poet and writer. I’m in my fifth year of blogging 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.
… For when I shut myself off the outer tick
I find myself listening to the quickening beat
of this dear planet as if it were my own heart’s clock.” The Composition Hut, Myra Schneider in What Women Want
In this short collection of nineteen poems – including the ten-page narratively-driven long-poem, Caroline Norton – Myra Schneider manages to cut through our many-layered lives. Her poems often move from the intimacy of personal experience to a broader frame of reference. The opening poems are nature-and-spirit driven and bespeak a love of and concern for environment. The second part of the collection fulfills the polemic promise of the title to present hard lives and harder times in a clear and righteous outcry.
Among the opening poems is Losing, written for her publisher. Myra starts with the unimportant lose of socks and moves on to finding what is valuable:
“a sparrowhawk perched on your gate, eyes alert for prey, words that toadleap from imagination, from heart – to make sure every day is a finding.”
In two poems she hints at the symmetrical beauty of mathematics, “… the square root of minus one you once grasped, dumbfounded.” A visit to the Garden is bursting with color and movement and triggers speculations …
“but what does it matter? You know too well how the years have shrunk your future, that the past is an ever expanding suitcase.”
… and further along in the poem she closes with …
“to your feet, to the bees still milking flowering raspberries. You free a frog watch it hop back to its life.”
I was riveted by the story of Paula Schneider in Crossing Point, as Paula (probably Myra’s mother-in-law) crosses with her children from Germany into Holland during World War II. This is included in the second half of Myra’s book, which comes to the business at hand: injustice as it affects women and children.
Interesting that this book came my way when I am standing by two friends whose physical and emotional frailty are much entwined with their relations with fathers and husbands or boyfriends. It’s not that things haven’t been improved since our parents’ days…at least for many of us it has. It’s not that there are no kind and enlightened men. Certainly there are. It’s not because women and society are without culpability, because they are not.
The complexity of the gender and social issues examined are clear in Myra’s long poem, Caroline Norton, about the nineteenth century writer and poet, social reformer and unwitting feminist. Caroline came to the latter two occupations, not so much by choice as necessity. As the poem folds out, we see that the brutal husband who separated Caroline from her children (with tragic results for them), was abetted and aided by the women in his life, influenced as they were by a social context in which women and children are property with no legal rights of their own. No doubt those women were numb to the implications, threatened by the hint of change, and anxious to bolster the sense of surperiority they got out of putting this woman down.
Myra stands firm in her poetic commitment to continue the fight started with Caroline Norton, since half the world is still under siege and the other half still begs improvements. We read about the child-bride (Woman) and the woman who is stoned (Her Story). One wonders what happens to the children – boys and girls – of such women. The short story here is that: What women want is justice.
For two years, I have enjoyed Myra Schneider’s work and appreciated her commitment to encouraging others to honor their inner artist, through her books on writing, her classes, and her support of Second Light Network (England), an association of women poets over forty. I suspect that her work doesn’t have the audience it deserves. I hope the day comes when that is remedied.
The closing poem in What Women Want:
WOMEN RUNNING
by Myra Schneider, 2013, All rights reserved
posted here with Myra’s permission
after Picasso: Deux femmes courant sur la plage
Look how their large bodies leaping
from dresses fill the beach, how their breasts
swing happiness, how the mediterraneans
of sea and sky fondle their flesh. Nothing
could rein them in. The blown wildnesses
of their dark animal hair, their hands joined
and raised, shout triumph. All their senses
are roused as they hurtle towards tomorrow.
That arm laid across the horizon,
the racing legs, an unstoppable quartet, pull
me from my skin and I become one of them,
believe I’m agile enough to run a mile,
believe I’m young again, believe age
has been stamped out. No wonder, I worship
at the altar of energy, not the energy huge
with hate which revels in tearing apart,
in crushing to dust but the momentum
which carries blood to the brain, these women
across the plage, lovers as they couple,
and tugs at the future till it breaks into bloom.
Video, Myra Schneider at Poetry East, [interview] audio is poor. I was motivated . I actually listened to it on my iPad so that I could put it up to my ear.
JAMIE DEDES ~ My worldly tags are poet and writer. I’m in my fifth year of blogging 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.
the tawny moon is good fortune’s evening grace
it draps itself on the dwindling day’s calm
while mystic mountains rise pristine and high
above an earthy base, the wizard Merlin’s realm,
with memories of a green and primal past … …….of rootedness …………..essential things
the air is a sweet-and-salty caramel
and Peace!
a lively Peace …
visits on the briny spray and
delights at the meeting of land and sea
at rhythms of the ocean against the shore
the waves drift in and out, fling and toss
stop, start, begin again and then again lilting, the dew drop of a mother’s kiss
it’s the mother’s kiss …
but moonlight wanes at the liminal hour
and Peace!
capricious Peace …
sees the moon incised with holographs
from the wind-whipped edges of the Earth
read the tales of valour and cowardice …….the blight of war …………..the naked lives
sundering tragedies under the heel of armies
citizen’s fleeing the lacerations of their plight
frozen in the crashing horror of their fright
in this amethyst veiled night . . .
the sense of peace deconstructed
on the rise of dawn, its shredding light
JAMIE DEDES ~ My worldly tags are poet and writer. For the past five years on medical retirement due to a chronic, potentially life-threatening illness, I’ve blogged at The Poet by Day, formerly titled Musing by Moonlight. The gift of illness is more time for poetry. Through the gift of poetry (mine and that of others), I enter sacred space.
The Irish poet and writer, John O’Donohue (1956-2008) was as moved by the landscape of the soul as he was by the landscape of his country with its Celtic spirituality. A Catholic priest, he eventually left the priesthood, but he never abandoned the mystical roots of his Christianity. He was a Hegelian philosopher, did doctoral work on the Meister Eckhart, was fluent in Irish and German, was an environmental activist, and wrote several best-selling books (nonfiction and poetry). His most notable work was Anam Cara:A Book of Celtic Wisdom. (Anam Cara meaning soul friend.) Jamie Dedes
Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition.”
No one knew the name of this day;
Born quietly from deepest night,
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
Opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that traveled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.
The mind of the day draws no attention;
It dwells within the silence with elegance
To create a space for all our words,
Drawing us to listen inward and outward.
We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.
Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.
So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.
The Path that Skis Take is a video poem by Marlene McNew.
Marlene McNew “Veni, Vidi, Vici”
Marlene McNew ~ is a contributing writer to Into the Bardo. Shebegan exhibiting symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease (P.D.) nine years ago. Her blog (Strange Gift) is a vehicle for sharing her interests and her experiences with P.D. Marlene is a master skier and triathlon competitor. She expresses her beautiful spirit through poems and paintings. Her YouTube channel is SkiDisiple.
MARLENE G. McNEW ~ began exhibiting symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease (P.D.) eight years ago. Her blog (Strange Gift) is a vehicle for sharing her experiences with P.D. and her many, many interests.
Marlene is a master skier and athlete. Her most recent athletic triumph involved successfully completing the Might Mermaid Triathlon, a fund raiser for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.
For the past several years Marlene’s been able to incorporate into her life increasing involvement in the arts. She expresses her beautiful spirit through poetry, painting, and poetry videos.Her YouTube channel is SkiDisiple. She has designed and uploaded 21 videos at the time of this writing.
Here is Marlene’s latest poetry video. This one is on her experience with the triathlon. Jamie Dedes
Our dear artist-friend, Paula Kuitenbrouwer, shares her thoughts on homesickness and being at home wherever you are. Be sure to link through to her site and enjoy her “Mindful Drawing.” J.D.
Mandolinist, composer, educator and writer Marilynn Mair, posts a poem on her blog once a week. It’s always a treat: sonnet, villanelle, decima, rondeau, or pantoum … It’s an event I look forward to. This one is from her 208th week of blogging. Jamie Dedes
This is why you were born, to pass me by,
JAMIE DEDES is a poet and the founder of Into the Bardo. She is a former freelance feature writer and columnist whose topic specialties were employment, vocational training, and business. She finds the blessing of medical retirement to be opportunity to play: to indulge in writing poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction.
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