I laughed a crumbling laugh

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M o r t a l   P o r t a l

Anshai Sfard Cemetery

Rossford, Ohio

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I Years had been from Home

And now before the Door

I dared not enter, lest a Face

I never saw before

Stare stolid into mine

And ask my Business there --

"My Business but a Life I left

Was such remaining there?"

I leaned upon the Awe --

I lingered with Before --

The Second like an Ocean rolled

And broke against my ear --

I laughed a crumbling Laugh

That I could fear a Door

Who Consternation compassed

And never winced before.

I fitted to the Latch

My Hand, with trembling care

Lest back the awful Door should spring

And leave me in the Floor --

Then moved my Fingers off

As cautiously as Glass

And held my ears, and like a Thief

Fled gasping from the House --

= Emily Dickinson =

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Happy  Saturday

Come with the falling of the leaf

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I n   W a y s   T h a t   O n l y   W e   T w o   K n o w

Melanie and Allissa

Lenoir, North Carolina

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Come when the nights are bright with stars

Or when the moon is mellow;

Come when the sun his golden bars

Drops on the hay-field yellow.

Come in the twilight soft and gray,

Come in the night or come in the day,

Come, O love, whene'er you may,

And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,

You are soft as the nesting dove.

Come to my heart and bring it rest

As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.

Come when my heart is full of grief

Or when my heart is merry;

Come with the falling of the leaf

Or with the redd'ning cherry.

Come when the year's first blossom blows,

Come when the summer gleams and glows,

Come with the winter's drifting snows,

And you are welcome, welcome.

= Paul Laurence Dunbar =

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Happy Friday

Famous to silence

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F a m o u s l y   P r i v a t e

Circular Church Graveyard

Charleston, South Carolina

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The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

= Naomi Shihab Nye =

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Happy Thursday

Grind the grain of thought

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P e e l i n g s   . . .   O h ,   O h ,   O h ,   P e e l i n g s

Bull Street Lunatic Asylum (abandoned)

Columbia, South Carolina

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My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.

Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visible

Bow down before it, as in Joseph's dream
The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down
Before the dreaming of a little boy.
That dream got him such hatred of his brothers
As cost the greater part of life to mend,
And yet great kindness came of it in the end.

A school is where they grind the grain of thought,
And grind the children who must mind the thought.
It may be those two grindings are but one,
As from the alphabet come Shakespeare's Plays,
As from the integers comes Euler's Law,
As from the whole, inseperably, the lives,

The shrunken lives that have not been set free
By law or by poetic phantasy.
But may they be. My child has disappeared
Behind the schoolroom door. And should I live
To see his coming forth, a life away,
I know my hope, but do not know its form

Nor hope to know it. May the fathers he finds
Among his teachers have a care of him
More than his father could. How that will look
I do not know, I do not need to know.
Even our tears belong to ritual.
But may great kindness come of it in the end.

= Howard Nemerov =

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Happy Wednesday

Just beyond silence

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R a t e   T h a t   G a t e

First Presbyterian Church Graveyard

Knoxville, Tennessee

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All things in the end are bittersweet --

An empty gaze, a little way-station

just beyond silence.

If you can't delight in the everyday,

you have no future here.

And if you can, no future either.

And time, black dog, will sniff you out,

and lick your lean cheeks,

And lie down beside you -- warm, real close --

and will not move.

= Charles Wright =

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Happy Tuesday