Other realms are noisy

>>>>++<<<<

W e ' l l   L e a v e   t h e   L i g h t   O n

St. Helena's Parish Church Cemetery

Beaufort, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

The unknowns are up early;
they browse through the bronze
porch bells. Crows
call & late
apples blaze
toward western emptiness.
In your illness,
the edges hesitate;
like the revolt
of workers, they
will take a while …

Here comes the fond
mild winter; other
realms are noisy
& unanimous. You tap
the screen & dream
while waiting; four
kinds of forever
visit you today: 
something, nothing,
everything & art,
greater than you are
& of your making --

> Brenda Hillman <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Wednesday

Those who are gone now remembered

>>>>++<<<<

G o o d   B u d d i e s

Rambo and Javier :: 2015

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

This hour, while a child sleeps, before he wakes
and those arcadian hours we make together --
is it a continued arch, vaulted, open at both ends, is it
a bending? -- recommence. Yes, a bending.
Light before you’d call it light bluing the sky.
The old city below, a fidget toy’s
string of buildings; doves calling and answering
from ledges in the cavities; a low
branching into divisions of memory;
a hot afternoon’s lunch on the grounds
of the museum, children at play in
tethered circles; traffic and voices from the avenues
carrying along the bright cold mornings
on the lawns of big houses near the hotel;
those who saw me home, whoever they were
(though I know who they are), I also saw them home.
I rode in their cars. I rode with the mother of the boy
who lost all his words, she gave us a ride, the boys
with their large eyes, sitting up high beside
each other and smiling; the empty avenues
of asphalt from the station to the new
hospital to the corner we rounded
and, past the galvanized fence, a school;
the city narrows there;
there is the river, suddenly;
and then a spread of houses like a cowl on the head
of the island; a journey whose meaning
was as yet unknown though I know it sometimes;
sheep on a patch of land at the convergence
of two superhighways; no silence in the train;
harvesters in orange and red slickers
among the lettuces; swifts overhead;
apricots flecked with rose; lichen spreading
on corrugated iron; short-wave voices of those
who are gone now remembered in the intonation
of throwaway phrases; it should not follow
but it follows; and are their fathers here;
one of them is, white stubble where his razor
didn’t pass that calls up his morning,
the temperature of his cheek, and how
luck befriended us then, and at this hour,
which rests on a child’s sleeping.

> Saskia Hamilton <

>>>>++<<<<

dedicated to the precious memory of

Javier

July 14, 1999 - April 11, 2016

and also of

Rambo

2008 - April 11, 2022

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Tuesday

We decide on a waltz

>>>>++<<<<

I   T h i n k   T h e r e f o r e   I   A m

Allegheny Cemetery

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

>>>>++<<<<

A woman walks by the bench I’m sitting on
with her dog that looks part Lab, part Buick,
stops and asks if I would like to dance.
I smile, tell her of course I do. We decide
on a waltz that she begins to hum.

We spin and sway across the street in between
parked cars and I can tell she realizes
she chose a man who understands the rhythm
of sand, the boundaries of thought. We glide
and Fred and Ginger might come to mind or
a breeze filled with the scent of flowers of your choice.
Coffee stops flowing as a waitress stares out the window
of a diner while I lead my partner back across the street. 

When we come to the end of our dance,
we compliment each other and to repay the favor
I tell her to be careful since the world comes to an end
three blocks to the east of where we stand. Then
I remind her as long as there is a ’59 Cadillac parked
somewhere in a backyard between here and Boise
she will dance again.

As she leaves content with her dog, its tail wagging
like gossip, I am convinced now more than ever
that I once held hundreds of roses in my hands
the first time I cut open a pomegranate.

> Kevin Pilkington <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Monday

Triumphs of His grace

>>>>++<<<<

D i g i t a l   P r a y i n g

Mount Hope Cemetery

Florence, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

O for a thousand tongues to sing

My great Redeemer's praise

The glories of my God and King

The triumphs of His grace.

My gracious Master and my God

Assist me to proclaim

To spread thro' all the earth abroad

The honors of Thy Name.

Jesus! The Name that charms our fears

That bids our sorrows cease

'Tis music in the sinner's ears

'Tis life and health and peace.

He breaks the pow'r of cancelled sin

He sets the captive free

His blood can make the foulest clean

His blood availed for me.

He speaks, and list'ning to His voice

New life the dead receive

The mournful broken hearts rejoice

The humble poor believe.

Hear him, ye deaf, His praise, ye dumb

Your loosened tongues employ

Ye blind, behold your Savior come

And leap, ye lame, for joy.

> Charles Wesley <

>>>>++<<<<

And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels

round about the throne and the beasts and the elders:

and the number of them was ten thousand

times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands;

Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb

that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom,

and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.

Revelation 5:11-12

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Resurrection Sunday

Built for mighty freight

>>>>++<<<<

P o w e r   P l a y

North Carolina

Late Winter 2016

>>>>++<<<<

A great Hope fell

You heard no noise

The Ruin was within

Oh cunning wreck that told no tale

And let no Witness in

The mind was built for mighty Freight

For dread occasion planned

How often foundering at Sea

Ostensibly, on Land

A not admitting of the wound

Until it grew so wide

That all my Life had entered it

And there were troughs beside

A closing of the simple lid

That opened to the sun

Until the tender Carpenter

Perpetual nail it down --

> Emily Dickinson <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Saturday

I know first with my eyes

>>>>++<<<<

P i n k   S p r i n g

Side Yard

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

I noticed the mockingbirds first,

not for their call but the broad white band

like reverse mourning bands on gunmetal

gray, exposed during flight

then tucked into their chests. A thing

seen once, then everywhere --

the top of the gazebo, the little cracked statue,

along the barbed fence. Noticed because

I know first with my eyes, then followed

their several songs braiding the trees.

Only later, this other, same-same-again song,

a bird I could not see but heard

when I walked from the house to the studio,

studio to the house, its three notes

repeated like a child's up and down

on a trampoline looping

the ground to the sky --

When I remember being a child like this

I think I wouldn't mind living alone

on a mountain, stilled into the daily

which isn't stillness at all but a whirring

gone deep. The composer shows how

the hands, palms down, thumb to thumb

and forefinger to mirrored finger, make

a shape like a cone, a honeybee hive, and then

how that cone moves across the piano --

notes in groups fluttering fast back-and-forth

and it sounds difficult but it isn't

really, how the hand likes to hover each patch

of sound. Likes gesture. To hold. Listening

is like this. How it took me a week to hear

the ever-there wren. And the bees

are like this, intent on their nectar,

their waggle dance better than any GPS.

A threatened thing. A no-one-knows-why.

But the wrens' invisible looping their loop --

And I, for a moment, pinned to the ground.

Pinned and spinning in the sound of it.

> Laura Donnelly <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Tuesday

The snow hath retreated

>>>>++<<<<

I   S e e ,   I   S e e

Elmwood Cemetery

Memphis, Tennessee

>>>>++<<<<

The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The plowboy is whooping -- anon-anon:
There's joy in the mountains;
There's life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone!

> William Wordsworth <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Monday

Against the morning's white

>>>>++<<<<

B u t   E n o u g h   A b o u t   M e

Boyce Angel :: Green Mount Cemetery

Baltimore, Maryland

>>>>++<<<<

Some day, when trees have shed their leaves
And against the morning’s white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves
Have sheltered for the night,
We’ll turn our faces southward, love,
Toward the summer isle
Where bamboos spire the shafted grove
And wide-mouthed orchids smile.

And we will seek the quiet hill
Where towers the cotton tree,
And leaps the laughing crystal rill,
And works the droning bee.
And we will build a cottage there
Beside an open glade,
With black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near,
And ferns that never fade.

> Claude McKay <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Friday

And waiting ever more

>>>>++<<<<

J u s t   W a i t

Late Winter Sunset

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Unseen buds, infinite, hidden well,
Under the snow and ice, under the darkness,

in every square or cubic inch,
Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn,
Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping;
Billions of billions, and trillions of trillions of them waiting,
(On earth and in the sea -- the universe --

the stars there in the heavens,)
Urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless,
And waiting ever more, forever more behind.

> Walt Whitman <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Thursday

Wounds undressed to the sun

>>>>++<<<<

W o r t h   t h e   W e i g h t

Rose Hill Cemetery

Macon, Georgia

>>>>++<<<<

Blue haze. Bees hanging in the air at the hive-mouth.
Crawling in prone stupor of sun
On the hive-lip. Snowdrops. Two buzzards,
Still-wings, each
Magnetized to the other,
Float orbits.
Cattle standing warm. Lit, happy stillness.
A raven, under the hill,
Coughing among bare oaks.
Aircraft, elated, splitting blue.
Leisure to stand. The knee-deep mud at the trough
Stiffening. Lambs freed to be foolish.

The earth invalid, dropsied, bruised, wheeled
Out into the sun,
After the frightful operation.
She lies back, wounds undressed to the sun,
To be healed,
Sheltered from the sneapy chill creeping North wind,
Leans back, eyes closed, exhausted, smiling
Into the sun. Perhaps dozing a little.
While we sit, and smile, and wait, and know
She is not going to die.

> Ted Hughes <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Wednesday