The securest fold

>>>>++<<<<

G r e e n   A f a r   O f f

Elmwood Cemetery

Charlotte, North Carolina

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Let down the Bars, Oh Death --

The tired Flocks come in

Whose bleating ceases to repeat

Whose wandering is done --

Thine is the stillest night

Thine the securest Fold

Too near Thou art for seeking Thee

Too tender, to be told.

> Emily Dickinson <

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Happy Saturday

Against the drip of night

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W e l c o m e   S t r a n g e r

Circular Church Graveyard

Charleston, South Carolina

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God banish from your house

The fly, the roach, the mouse

That riots in the walls
Until the plaster falls;

Admonish from your door
The hypocrite and liar;

No shy, soft, tigrish fear
Permit upon your stair,

Nor agents of your doubt.
God drive them whistling out.

Let nothing touched with evil,
Let nothing that can shrivel

Heart's tenderest frond, intrude
Upon your still, deep blood.

Against the drip of night
God keep all windows tight,

Protect your mirrors from
Surprise, delirium,

Admit no trailing wind
Into your shuttered mind

To plume the lake of sleep
With dreams. If you must weep

God give you tears, but leave
You secrecy to grieve,

And islands for your pride,
And love to nest in your side.

> Stanley Kunitz <

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Happy Friday

Muse of golden melody

>>>>++<<<<

T o   N e v e r   T i r e   O f   T r y i n g

Side Street

Newberry, South Carolina

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And victor of life and silence,
I stood upon the Heights; triumphant,
With upturned eyes, I stood,
And smiled unto the sun, and sang
A beautifully sad farewell unto the dying day.
And my thoughts and the eve gathered
Their serpentine mysteries around me,
My thoughts like alien breezes,
The eve like a fragrant legend.
My feeling was that I stood as one
Serenely poised for flight, as a muse
Of golden melody and lofty grace.
Yea, I stood as one scorning the swords
And wanton menace of the cities.
The sun had heavily sunk into the seas beyond,
And left me a tempting sweet and twilight.
The eve with trailing shadows westward
Swept on, and the lengthened shadows of trees
Disappeared: how silently the songs of silence
Steal into my soul! And still I stood
Among the crickets, in the beauteous profundity
Sung by stars; and I saw me
Softly melted into the eve. The moon
Slowly rose: my shadow on the ground
Dreamily began a dreamy roam,
And I upward smiled silent welcome.

> Yone Noguchi <

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Happy Thursday

A blind bit of difference

>>>>++<<<<

I   F l o w e r   H e r e

Elmwood Cemetery

Memphis, Tennessee

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Hard though I know

you find this to believe,

I was actually alive once.

Alive. And well enough,

at least, to play my part.

I too faced heartaches, disappointments,

embarrassments and vanities

not all that unlike yours, kept up

with the pressing issues of the day,

registered weather's moodiness

on my skin, brooded on the big

life-and-death questions when

I indulged my more reflective traits.

And if it's any consolation,

it feels no less strange to me now

to conceive that I was truly

such a creature once,

and had some small say in how

the world -- as it stood at that

time -- conducted its affairs.

That my birth would not make

a blind bit of difference

in the final analysis, does not

negate my life, and counts

for precious little against

the surge of unbounded joy

I felt, on better days, imagining

my highest hopes were still fulfillable.

There was everything to live for then.

It was all before me.

> Dennis O'Driscoll <

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Happy Wednesday

Between two great darks

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A g a i n   . . .   S t i l l

Oakdale Cemetery

Wilmington, North Carolina

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What of the neighborhood homes awash
in a silver light, of children hunched in the bushes,
watching the grown-ups for signs of surrender,
signs that the irregular pleasures of moving
from day to day, of being adrift on the swell of duty,
have run their course? O parents, confess
to your little ones the night is a long way off
and your taste for the mundane grows; tell them
your worship of household chores has barely begun;
describe the beauty of shovels and rakes, brooms and mops;
say there will always be cooking and cleaning to do,
that one thing leads to another, which leads to another;
explain that you live between two great darks, the first
with an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest
thing is having been born, that you live in a blur
of hours and days, months and years, and believe 
it has meaning, despite the occasional fear
you are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing
to prove you existed. Tell the children to come inside,
that your search goes on for something you lost -- a name,
a family album that fell from its own small matter
into another, a piece of the dark that might have been yours,
you don’t really know. Say that each of you tries 
to keep busy, learning to lean down close and hear
the careless breathing of earth and feel its available
languor come over you, wave after wave, sending
small tremors of love through your brief, 
undeniable selves, into your days, and beyond.

> Mark Strand <

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Happy Tuesday

Clouds about the fallen sun

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E l o q u e n t   E l e m e n t s

From the Passenger Seat

Fairfield County, South Carolina

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These are the clouds about the fallen sun,

The majesty that shuts his burning eye:

The weak lay hand on what the strong has done,

Till that be tumbled that was lifted high

And discord follow upon unison,

And all things at one common level lie.

And therefore, friend, if your great race were run

And these things came, so much the more thereby

Have you made greatness your companion,

Although it be for children that you sigh;

These are the clouds about the fallen sun,

The majesty that shuts his burning eye.

> William Butler Yeats <

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Happy Monday

All sorrow will erase

>>>>++<<<<

C r o s s   M y   H e a r t

Laurel Grove Cemetery

Savannah, Georgia

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Ofttimes the day seems long, our burdens hard to bear

We're tempted to complain, to murmur and despair

But Christ will soon appear to catch His bride away

All tears forever over in God's eternal day.

It will be worth it all when we see Jesus

Life's trials will seem so small when we see Christ

One glimpse of His dear face, all sorrow will erase

So bravely run the race, till we see Christ.

Sometimes the sky looks dark, with not a ray of light

We're tossed and driven on, no human help in sight

But there is One in Heav'n Who knows our deepest care

Let Jesus solve your problem, just go to Him in prayer.

Life's days will soon be o'er, all storms forever past

We'll cross the great divide, to Glory safe at last

We'll share the joys of Heav'n -- a harp, a home, a crown

The tempter will be banished, we'll lay our burden down.

It will be worth it all when we see Jesus

Life's trials will seem so small, when we see Christ

One glimpse of His dear face, all sorrow will erase

So bravely run the race, till we see Christ.

> Esther Kerr Rusthoi <

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Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so,

I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again,

and receive you unto myself; that where I am,

there ye may be also.

John 14: 1-3

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Happy Sunday

A softness suffuse the story

>>>>++<<<<

S t o n y   S i l e n c e

Town Square

McDonough, Georgia

>>>>++<<<<

Glee -- The great storm is over --

Four -- have recovered the Land --

Forty -- gone down together --

Into the boiling Sand --

Ring -- for the Scant Salvation --

Toll -- for the bonnie Souls --

Neighbor -- and friend -- and Bridegroom --

Spinning upon the Shoals --

How they will tell the Story --

When Winter shake the Door --

Till the Children urge --

But the Forty --

Did they -- come back no more?

Then a softness -- suffuse the Story --

And a silence -- the Teller's eye --

And the Children -- no further question --

And only the Sea -- reply --

> Emily Dickinson <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Saturday

As from a thousand prisms

>>>>++<<<<

S t a r s   O f   T h e   S h o w

Yellow Iris and Purple Vinca

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

True Love in this differs from gold and clay,

That to divide is not to take away.

Love is like understanding, that grows bright,

Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,

Imagination! which from earth and sky,

And from the depths of human fantasy,

As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills

The Universe with glorious beams, and kills

Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow

Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow

The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,

The life that wears, the spirit that creates

One object, and one form, and builds thereby

A sepulchre for its eternity.

From Epipsychidion

> Percy Bysshe Shelley <

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Happy Friday

The soul in sorrow

>>>>++<<<<

T h e   S t r u g g l e   I s   R e a l

Rose Hill Cemetery

Macon, Georgia

>>>>++<<<<

My mind was a mirror:

It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew.

In youth my mind was just a mirror

In a rapidly flying car,

Which catches and loses bits of the landscape.

Then in time

Great scratches were made on the mirror,

Letting the outside world come in,

And letting my inner self look out.

For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow,

A birth with gains and losses.

The mind sees the world as a thing apart,

And the soul makes the world at one with itself.

A mirror scratched reflects no image --

And this is the silence of wisdom.

> Edgar Lee Masters <

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Happy Thursday