My Brother has died

 

Source: mimiwickett
 

Gray still sky over

Roiling silver sea 

Soaking gold to slate

Slabs of sand.

Satin rocks, ancient rocks

Worn and beaten

Smooth by

Merciless waves.

My brother is dying.

 

Her whispers cast

To deaf waters.

Salt to salt,

Whispered over and over.

Three speckled rocks

Chosen by grace.

One rock resting

in a noisy room,

Whispering silently

 

My brother is dying...

One rock for bedside

Where whispers and tears merged.

One rock more--

At last, gazing at my

Blessed brother, eyes closed, 

In steel gray casket.

Tucking a smooth

Ocean stone into icy hand.

 

My brother has died.

Tears to tears,

Sea to earth,

Cold hand to warm,

Words silenced,

Whispers lie heavy
in the heart. 

 

 

 This was written shortly before Robert died. I often found myself sitting by the computer when it was dark and tried to compose something that would have meaning for others.

Robert and I were born in 1951, he in January and me in December. He was diagnosed with a incurable brain tumor in 1995.  So hard to think about even now.  Stacking of rocks is symbolic of many things...mourning...remembrance... a message...religion...love.

 

 

To Dance with the Fairies

 

I’D LOVE TO BE A FAIRY’S CHILD

        

Children born of fairy stock

Never need for shirt or frock,

Never want for food or fire,

Always get their heart’s desire:

Jingle pockets full of gold,

Marry when they’re seven years old.

Every fairy child may keep

Two strong ponies and ten sheep;

All have houses, each his own,

Built of brick or granite stone;

They live on cherries, they run wild—

I’d love to be a Fairy’s child.

 Something, somewhere.  Somehow the start of something new, makes me feel like I should be somewhere else, doing something else. Something is not quite right--like I don't belong here.  I must be a fairy child.

 

William Blake is an amazing poet. Nothing is obvious at the first or second read through--- Good vs. evil, tiger/tyger stripes, burning bright. Good writer. Strong faith. Brilliant.

 

                            Performed by Tom O'Bedlam    

Morning Misted Grass

 

Morning misted grass

Velvet brushed green

Beckons, cries out

For a child,

Shoe-less and wild.

Race across bare grass

With bare feet

Unfettered and free.

Hedge to stone wall,

Run and invite all

Follow, come, join...

Weeping eyes reply,

Cannot run, sadly sigh...

Travel ahead and discover

Fields touched by many.

Through golden gorse,

Beneath rowan trees,

Still, but for wren and sparrow hawks.

Come, follow...

There is yet another

Field awaiting, 

Weeping eyes.

By Robert Sheridan

 

       Hedge trimming     

 

 Can you imagine walking along this road? Feeling the mist in the air?

 

Ireland 

Time. Time. Time..

Passing Time

During these past almost three months, time seems to stretch from breakfast to dinner. Not that those two meals are just fine in themselves, but something to stimulate the sleepy, food-numbed mind would be nice.

Time. Time. Time.  That has a good rhythm and rhyme. Rhyme.

Robert Frost, e.e. cummings, WB Yeats, Maya Angelou, Carl Sandburg....and many other poets can provide creative thought during anything.

A poet's words can capture time and hold onto it just a bit. 

“Time is the coin of your Life.

It is the only coin you have,
and only you can determine
how it will be spent.
Be careful
lest you let other people spend it for you. And when you spend it, spend it wisely so that you get the most for your expenditure.”

Carl Sandburg

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. 

Confucius

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen. 

Mark Twain

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. 

Buddha

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death. 

Leonardo da Vinci

The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I've got a magic charm
That I keep up my sleeve
I can walk the ocean floor
And never have to breathe.

Life doesn't frighten me at all
Not at all
Not at all.

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Maya Angelou

Do not think that I am so brilliant and creative enough to hunt for all these and compile them. Heck, no. I just happened on to this site. Good thing to pass on.

Brainy Quote

Great Minds, great words

Hidden from sight

Wet clothing pinned and clipped on lines
Towels and pants on one high end,
Sheets and shirts other end of twines,
Hanging down low as centers bend.

But, in the middle, too shy to publicly fly,

Hangs the underwear, bleached and white.

Playing hide and seek from those near-by,

Wanting oh-so-badly to take flight.

Oh, for a strong wind to play,
Coming across and sweeping away
The blues, the whites, and the gray,
Onto tractor windows, passing this day.

Bras, panties with hearts, boxers brave

Landing square on a farmer's face,

No dignity there is left to save,

Underwear at last has found a place.

I have had much experience with laundry on the line, years and years of it.  

I wrote this poem with a head full of memories and my mother's commands to hang the underwear in the middle of the second line, out of sight.  "We don't want neighbors to see what we wear." 

 Neighbors?  The nearest lived one half  a mile away.  The lines were behind the house.  But I was obedient. 

If anyone wants to sing the praises of laundry drying on clothesline, go ahead. I will not be agreeing with you. Too many memories of laundry basket after each other has left me with a desire to never dry clothes out blowing in the wind. Sorry.

So much more than the Letter T

Krysztof (Kriss) Szkurlatowski

Here we are at the Letter T!  Only six or seven letters to go!

What to do is always the big question...after all the dictionary is mighty big, and ever increasing.

The Letter T is for

Source

Tolkien, J. R. R.

A man of literary renown!  I fear, however, that the current generation will say, "Yeah, dude.  I saw the movies" without ever having opened the pages of Tolkien's amazing books.  

Before you head off to check another blog, I will post one of Tolkien's poems,

"Roads Go Ever On and On".

Roads go ever on and on,

     Over rock and under tree,

By caves where sun has never shone;

     Over snow by winter sown,

 And through the merry flowers of June,

     Over grass and over stone,

 And under mountains in the moon.


So much more than just a movie.  His writing is the creation of a world, language, people....

Horseman pass by

Under the shadows of Benbulben

The Balloon of the Mind

Hands, do what you’re bid,

Bring the balloon of the mind

That bellies and drags

In the wind,

Into its narrow shed.

Wm. B. Yeats 

Source: wine as medicine

A Drinking Song

Wine comes in at the mouth

And Love comes in at the eyes.

That’s all we shall know for truth

Before we grow old and die.

I lift my glass to my mouth,

I look at you and I sigh.

Wm. B. Yeats

                                                               

William B. Yeats—always a favorite of mine.  

We Who Were Born

Source: Ireland Indie Travel Guide

WE WHO WERE BORN

By Eiluned Lewis

We who were born

In country places

Far from cities

And shifting faces,

We have a birthright

No man can sell,

And a secret joy

No man can tell.

For we are kindred

To lordly things:

The wild duck’s flight

And the white owl’s wings,

The pike and the salmon,

The bull and the horse,

The curlew’s cry,

And the smell of gorse.

Pride of trees,

Swiftness of streams,

Magic of frost

Have shaped our dreams.

No baser vision

Their spirit fills

Who walk by right

On the naked hills.

Today I think of green and blue.  Not just any green, but that deep green frosting the hills and fields.  Not just any blue, but that shifting blue going from robin egg to thunder storm.  Those are not here where I live, but I know where to find them.

Wednesday Words for Nov. 14, 2012

From my front lawn

I will not include the word “dust” in my Wednesday Words this week, although the word still haunts me. 

Do we really have to rake them up?

Words for this week are grabbed out of the air:

Fallen     Chill          Clouds  Crumble       Faded     Sunset

What occurs to you when you read these words?  What image comes to mind?

source

Quick!  Write it down!  I would love to see what you see!

E is for Edgar Lee Masters

All photos courtesy of Bing. com

Growing up in Illinois, I had studied about some of our state heroes:  Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Edgar Lee Masters.  A diverse group to be sure, each one had an impact on my thinking and writing.

A performance of the play based on Spoon River Anthology

In my university years, a literature class focused on short stories, which included Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology.  Each of the 213 poems gave voice to the long dead occupants of the cemetery on The Hill.  These mouths expressed Masters’ own grudges, beliefs, insights, anger at injustice, and perspectives on life. 

Masters' headstone, 1868 - 1950

Coming from a very small town, I recognized the social structure of the small town, the struggles of its occupants, and how death was the great equalizer. 

In the writing of my book, In Preacher’s Creek, I incorporated the cemetery as an active part of town life.  Ancestry before, during, and after death were part of each person. 

Edgar Lee Masters was born in 1868, lived a long productive life, was a contemporary of poets Carl Sandberg and Vachel Linsday, and died in 1950.  There is so much that could be said of him and how he interpreted a life that spanned post-Civil War to post-World War II-- too much, really.

"Good friends, let's to the fields--I have a fever.  After a little walk, and by your pardon, I think I'll sleep.  There is no sweeter thing, Nor fate more blessed than to sleep.  Here, world, I pass you like an orange to a child.  I can no more with you.  Do what you will..."

One of his best-loved poems is "Silence", published in The New Poetry, H. Monroe and Henderson, eds., The Macmillan Company, New York, 1946.  The opening lines:

I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
Of what use is language?
A beast of the field moans a few times
When death takes its young.
And we are voiceless in the presence of realities--
We cannot speak....

Of the 213 characters in Spoon River Anthology, my favorite character is  Lucinda Matlock, who says, “Degenerate sons and daughters, Life is too strong for you—It take life to love Life.”

Have you ever read this book?  If so, which headstone would be yours?

Ecce Puer by James Joyce

James Joyce's Photograph of Ireland

James Joyce was an Irish writer of great fame.  Some of his works are epic, in the truest sense of the word.

James Joyce tribute in Dublin

He also wrote small tender works, such as the poem below.  This poem talks of the birth of his grandson and the death of his father.  Joyce, being the generation in between, writes of this position.

Of the dark past

A child is born.

With joy and grief

My heart is torn.

Calm in his cradle

The living lies.

May love and mercy

Unclose his eyes.;

Young life is breathed

On the glass;

The world that was not

Comes to pass.

The child is sleeping

The old man gone.

Oh, father forsaken,

Forgive your son.

Life and death--two certain events in one's span.  

On this day, November, a baby died nine years ago.  His mother, Elisa C. Stilson, has published her journal about the struggles of his short life, and how she viewed each day.  A precious book.  A painful book.  A book that speaks of a mother's love and her fight to hold all together.

Click on the image to go to this site for an exciting event: The Golden Sky

Lists of Happy Thoughts

The past year has been hard for my family. Over the past 15 years, we lost two brothers, our father, and now our mother. The rural area that had been ‘home’ for generations dating back to the 1820s, now has no ties for us. When our mother died in April 2011, there went the last reason to return to the farmlands and small towns. Most probably, we would never again drive down those country roads we once knew so very well.

All this made me realize how truly wonderful life is in general, and my life in particular. The things and events that have made me stop and reflect have been small in the large scale of life, but significant. This list may not make sense to anyone but me, but here goes:

1. The smell of angel food cake baking.

2. The sound of a violin solo and getting goose bumps

3. The jasmine blooms winding over the front door

4. Holding hands with my husband in a dark movie theater

5. Churning homemade ice cream under a maple tree on a hot summer day

6. That first cup of coffee (or tea) in the morning

7. Holding a baby

8. Walking on the beach with the tide washing over my feet

9. Watching a smiling young couple pushing a baby stroller

10. Writing anything

11. Singing the “Hallelujah Chorus”

12. Reading poetry aloud in an empty house

This is my list.

Do you have a list? What would be on that list?