For love's sake

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D o   t h e   S e v e n   D a n c e ,   D a g n y   C l a r e

March 2019

Columbia, South Carolina

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What's greater, Pebble or Pond?

What can be known? The Unknown.

My true self runs toward a Hill

More! O More! visible.

Now I adore my life

With the Bird, the abiding leaf,

With the Fish, the questing Snail,

And the Eye altering it All;

And I dance with William Blake

For love, for Love's sake;

And everything comes to One,

As we dance on, dance on, dance on.

> Theodore Roethke <

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Happy Monday :: Happy Flag Day

This wondering joy

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G o i n g   G e n t l y

Greenville Creek :: Greenville City Park

Greenville, Ohio

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The things that one grows tired of -- O, be sure
They are only foolish artificial things!
Can a bird ever tire of having wings?
And I, so long as life and sense endure,
(Or brief be they!) shall nevermore inure
My heart to the recurrence of the springs,
Of gray dawns, the gracious evenings,
The infinite wheeling stars. A wonder pure
Must ever well within me to behold
Venus decline; or great Orion, whose belt
Is studded with three nails of burning gold,
Ascend the winter heaven. Who never felt
This wondering joy may yet be good or great:
But envy him not: he is not fortunate.

> Robinson Jeffers <

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Happy Friday

One of my many balconies

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H e a r t   O n   M y   S l e e v e

Defunct Funeral Home

Columbia, South Carolina

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Ok, I no longer want them,
the many selves I had to manage

that once exhausted friends. I believed

in angels then, thought I might be
an angel -- that was me, flying off

on a tangent, just so we could land
on one of my many balconies

so we could look down on everyone.

> Ira Sadoff <

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Happy Thursday

Haunted by waters

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M e m o r y   B a n k

Tennessee River at Gay Street Bridge

Knoxville, Tennessee

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Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.

The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks

from the basement of time.

On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.

Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

> Norman Maclean <

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Happy Wednesday

Rehearsed by the sorrows

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I   B l u e   Y o u   W e r e   T h e   O n e

Main Street

Landrum, South Carolina

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Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

> Galway Kinnell <

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Happy Tuesday

So lengthy a session with shade

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G o o d   t o   t h e   L a s t   D r o p

Finlay Park

Columbia, South Carolina

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And if sun comes

How shall we greet him?

Shall we not dread him,

Shall we not fear him

After so lengthy a

Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,

Though we have prayed

All through the night-years --

What if we wake one shimmering morning to

Hear the fierce hammering

Of his firm knuckles

Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder? --

Shall we not flee

Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter

Of the familiar

Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it

To sleep in the coolness

Of snug unawareness.

The dark hangs heavily

Over the eyes.

> Gwendolyn Brooks <

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Happy Monday

Proofs of love divine

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I   S t a n d   A m a z e d

Elmwood Cemetery

Charlotte, North Carolina

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Majestic sweetness sits enthroned
Upon the Savior’s brow;
His head with radiant glories crowned,
His lips with grace o’erflow.

Survey the beauties of His face,
And on His glories dwell;
Think of the wonders of His grace,
And all His triumphs tell.

No mortal can with Him compare
Among the sons of men;
Fairer is He than all the fair
Who fill the heav’nly train.

He saw me plunged in deep distress
And flew to my relief;
For me He bore the shameful cross
And carried all my grief.

His hand a thousand blessings pours
Upon my guilty head:
His presence gilds my darkest hours,
And guards my sleeping bed.

To Him I owe my life and breath
And all the joys I have;
He makes me triumph over death
And saves me from the grave.

To Heav’n, the place of His abode,
He brings my weary feet;
Shows me the glories of my God,
And makes my joys complete.

Since from His bounty I receive
Such proofs of love divine,
Had I a thousand hearts to give,
Lord, they should all be Thine.

= Samuel Stennett =

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Bless the LORD, O my soul.

O LORD my God, thou art very great;

thou art clothed with honour and majesty.

Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment:

who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:

Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters:

who maketh the clouds his chariot:

who walketh upon the wings of the wind:

Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire:

Who laid the foundations of the earth,

that it should not be removed for ever.

Psalm 104:1-5

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Happy Sunday

To sleep for half a second

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W i t h   M y   O n e   G o o d   H a n d

Riverside Cemetery

Asheville, North Carolina

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I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,

I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.

I want to sleep the sleep of that child

who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,

how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.

I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for

nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn

with its snakelike nose.

I want to sleep for half a second,

a second, a minute, a century,

but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,

that I have a golden manger inside my lips,

that I am the little friend of the west wind,

that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.

When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me

because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,

and pour a little hard water over my shoes

so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.

Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,

and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,

because I want to live with that shadowy child

who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

> Federico García Lorca <

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Happy Saturday

No end to ego

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P u d d l e   t o   t h e   M u d d l e

Folly Beach

Charleston, South Carolina

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I have been taught never to brag but now
I cannot help it: I keep
a beautiful garden, all abundance,
indiscriminate, pulling itself
from the stubborn earth: does it offend you
to watch me working in it,
touching my hands to the greening tips or
tearing the yellow stalks back, so wild
the living and the dead both
snap off in my hands?
The neighbor with his stuttering
fingers, the neighbor with his broken
love: each comes up my drive
to receive his pitying,
accustomed consolations, watches me
work in silence awhile, rises in anger,
walks back. Does it offend them to watch me
not mourning with them but working
fitfully, fruitlessly, working
the way the bees work, which is to say
by instinct alone, which looks like pleasure?
I can stand for hours among the sweet
narcissus, silent as a point of bone.
I can wait longer than sadness. I can wait longer
than your grief. It is such a small thing
to be proud of, a garden. Today
there were scrub jays, quail,
a woodpecker knocking at the white-
and-black shapes of trees, and someone’s lost rabbit
scratching under the barberry: is it
indiscriminate? Should it shrink back, wither,
and expurgate? Should I, too, not be loved?
It is only a little time, a little space.
Why not watch the grasses take up their colors in a rush
like a stream of kerosene being lit?
If I could not have made this garden beautiful
I wouldn’t understand your suffering,
nor care for each the same, inflamed way.
I would have to stay only like the bees,
beyond consciousness, beyond
self-reproach, fingers dug down hard
into stone, and growing nothing.
There is no end to ego,
with its museum of disappointments.
I want to take my neighbors into the garden
and show them: Here is consolation.
Here is your pity. Look how much seed it drops
around the sparrows as they fight.
It lives alongside their misery.
It glows each evening with a violent light.

> Paisley Rekdal <

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Happy Friday

Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know

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O l d   G l o r y

Convention Center :: 2014

Columbia, South Carolina

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An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, -- mud from a muddy spring,
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless -- a book sealed;
A Senate, -- Time’s worst statute unrepealed,
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.

> Percy Bysshe Shelley <

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Happy Thursday