In age I bud again

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C r a c k i n g   U p

Hancock County Courthouse

Sparta, Georgia

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How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are Thy returns! even as the flowers in Spring,
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring;
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite underground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O, my only Light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.

= George Herbert =

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Happy Friday

Almost lost to view

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T r e a s u r e   S u r e

School Ruins

Ridgeway, South Carolina

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Your children grow from you apart,

Afar and still afar;

And yet it should rejoice your heart

To see how glad they are;

In school and sport, in work and play,

And last, in wedded bliss

How others claim with joy to-day

The lips you used to kiss.

Your children distant will become,

and wide the gulf will grow;

The lips of loving will be dumb,

The trust you used to know

Will in another's heart repose,

Another's voice will cheer ...

And you will fondle baby clothes

And brush away a tear.

But though you are estranged almost,

And almost lost to view,

How you will see a little ghost

Who ran to cling to you!

Yet maybe children's children will

Caress you with a smile ...

Grandmother love will bless you still,

-- Well, just a little while.

= Robert Service =

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Happy Wednesday

To their ethereal homes

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P e t a l   P o r t a l

Bonaventure Cemetery

Savannah, Georgia

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Talk not to me of Summer Trees

The foliage of the mind

A Tabernacle is for Birds

Of no corporeal kind

And winds do go that way at noon

To their Ethereal Homes

Whose Bugles call the least of us

To undepicted Realms

= Emily Dickinson =

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Happy Tuesday

This life startles you

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L o v e   O n e

Allegheny Cemetery

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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The life you could be living aches in its compression,
tires of being a spark, an asteroid,
a falling raindrop bouncing when it hits.
It’s wound tight between muscle and sinew,
lodged in the happy gaps of a synapse.
It’s fluid like flowers. It sounds like geese
out of sight. It’s marvelous as falling asleep
when exhausted, and it foreshadows your dreams
like a stray piece of sunlight or an unnoticed icicle.

Pull apart the paper vignettes and subtle
understandings. Find a favorite shoe lost
decades ago, a line to an old song,
and behind that, the melody that once
made you lift your arms and twirl
in your childhood bedroom after dark.

This life startles you with its foreign tongue
of traumas and kisses, its vulnerable eyes
staring into yours for mercy as it lies down beside you,
tries to say -- although it doesn’t know your language --
that it’s okay how it turned out, that it’s still here,
and despite its wish to be lived,
it’s not going anywhere.

= Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg =

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Happy Monday :: Happy May