Why should I then care

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U n s i n k a b l e

Riverside Cemetery

Asheville, North Carolina

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I care not today what the morrow may bring

If shadow or sunshine or rain

The Lord I know ruleth o'er everything

And all of my worries are vain.

Living by faith in Jesus above

Trusting, confiding in His great love

From all harm safe, in His sheltering arms

I'm living by faith and feel no alarm.

Though tempests may blow and the storm clouds arise

Obscuring the brightness of life

I'm never alarmed at the overcast skies

The Master looks on at the strife.

I know that He safely will carry me through

No matter what evils betide

Why should I then care though the tempest may blow

If Jesus walks close to my side.

Our Lord will return for His loved ones someday

Our troubles will then all be o'er

The Master so gently will lead us away

Beyond that blest Heavenly shore.

Living by faith in Jesus above

Trusting, confiding in His great love

From all harm safe in His sheltering arms

I'm living by faith and feel no alarm.

= James Wells =

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Consider the lilies how they grow:

they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you,

that Solomon in all his glory

was not arrayed like one of these.

Luke 12:27

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Happy Sunday

Beyond the Realm of Bird

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G r a c k l y   G r a f f i t i

Old City Alleyway

Knoxville, Tennessee

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A Wind that rose

Though not a Leaf

In any Forest stirred

But with itself did cold engage

Beyond the Realm of Bird --

A Wind that woke a lone Delight

Like Separation's Swell

Restored in Arctic Confidence

To the Invisible --

= Emily Dickinson =

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Happy Saturday

Absurd but bewitching secrets

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H e a r t   O v e r   M i n d   O v e r   M a t t e r

Lake Murray Padlocks

Lexington, South Carolina

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Time and place, time and place,

how dull you make them sound:

I'll take a happier ground.

A history and a mystery

of absurd but bewitching secrets

in the May sky tra la in the bloodstream too

in the gay heart and the merry mind

in the dream that sings on the borders of sleep

of worlds lost and worlds to come

all of it woven with needles of light

blossoming and vanishing

flashing and gone. Time and place

but with a difference. Everything

to be touched and loved at once

each fiery item intrinsic and tangible

as the round red moon of the calendar

or the seconds jumping like crickets

on the stupid face of the clock.

The senses are mischievous but also

there's magic in them, and love

lives through the senses only.

Isn't it there that the soul lies?

O yes and lies and lies if you like,

for the soul too is a chameleon,

where and for how long can it stand still?

Over the steeple and under the hill.

Yet volatile and incorporeal howsoever

-- see where it flies! --

it too feeds only through the senses

summoning thus the very quiver of light

to be by this translated

and quickened to an ecstasy.

Now that is gone

and love undone.

From Love's Grammarians

= Conrad Aiken =

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Happy Friday

A vision in the eye

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R o o m   2 0 1

Rossford Junior High School

Rossford, Ohio

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NIGHT

The cold remote islands

And the blue estuaries

Where what breathes, breathes

The restless wind of the inlets

And what drinks, drinks

The incoming tide;

Where shell and weed

Wait upon the salt wash of the sea,

And the clear nights of stars

Swing their lights westward

To set behind the land;

Where the pulse clinging to the rocks

Renews itself forever;

Where, again on unclouded nights,

The water reflects

The firmament's partial setting;

-- O remember

In your narrowing dark hours

That more things move

Than blood in the heart.

MORNING

I

The robins' green-blue eggs

Being the complementary color

To the robins' rosy breast --

Is it a vision in the eye, a resolution in the blood

That calls back these birds, to cherish and to guide?

II

The clever and as though instructed

Tendril of convolvulus

Having chosen the rosebranch for the support

Of its ascending spiral

Succeeds in avoiding

All but the smaller thorns.

= Louise Bogan =

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In Loving Memory

of

Stanley Ray Weber

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Happy Thursday

The thing before the letters came

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S h a d o w s   a n d   S h e d

Belleview Cemetery

Lenoir, North Carolina

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Death's the classic look. It goes

down stoneworks carved with Latin Prose

and Poetry. And scholar's Greek

that no one now can really speak,

though it's all guessed at. The long view

contains bits of Etruscan, too,

(as guessed at as the Greek is, but

no one yet has figured out

more than a first few words, and those

the names for fish, bird, water, rose

painted beside the painting of

what a dead man kept to love

inside his tomb). In back of that

the view runs desert-rimmed and flat

past writings that were things, not words:

roses, water, fish, and birds.

The thing before the letters came,

The name before there was a name.

And back of things themselves? Who knows?

Jungle spells it as it grows

where the damp among the shoots

waterlogs the classic roots,

and the skulls and bones of things

last half as long as a bird sings,

as a fish swims, as a rose fills,

opens, lets out its breath, and spills

into the sockets where things crawl,

and death looks like no look at all.

= John Ciardi =

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Happy Wednesday