I can see treetops

A Daily Joy to be Alive Jimmy Santiago Baca

No matter how serene things may be in my life, how well things are going, my body and soul are two cliff peaks from which a dream of who I can be falls, and I must learn to fly again each day, or die. Death draws respect and fear from the living. Death offers no false starts. It is not a referee with a pop-gun at the startling of a hundred yard dash. I do not live to retrieve or multiply what my father lost or gained. I continually find myself in the ruins of new beginnings, uncoiling the rope of my life to descend ever deeper into unknown abysses, tying my heart into a knot round a tree or boulder, to insure I have something that will hold me, that will not let me fall. My heart has many thorn-studded slits of flame springing from the red candle jars. My dreams flicker and twist on the altar of this earth, light wrestling with darkness, light radiating into darkness, to widen my day blue, and all that is wax melts in the flame- I can see treetops

Empty and Filled

Standing Deer

As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.

Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken from us.
I have disappointed.
I am sorry. I knew no better.

A root seeks water.
Tenderness only breaks open the earth.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.

~ Jane Hirshfield ~

(The Lives of the Heart)

I am moved by so many portions of this poem, it is filled with so much to think about.... it is a bit overwhelming. For example, "tenderness only breaks open the earth." I think the point is that something as delicate as a root can break rocks by simply doing what it is intended to do. So what does that mean for me and how I approach life? 

I feel the idea of yin and yang made obvious in this poem where balance is maintained in everything.  I see the bittersweet irony in how life can be so painfully sweet and so perfectly tragic. How the beginning and end of each day is like a complete lifetime in some ways. Those are a few seeds of thought I took from it.

Treat Number Two

Another song by the uniquely talented lady, Yael Naim.

Come Home

Yael Naim

I'm flying far away to be really free
Tired hard to build myself independently
It's hard to always do what you expect from me
Saying come home
Come home

I try to understand why it hurts you
To see a difference in our points of view
Don't blame me for a thing that I didn't do
saying come home
Come home

It's insane
How feeling so much shame Will only bring you pain
And I no longer know how to explain
See I'm happy as can be
And you're my family, my ground
And I'm just hoping one day I will find you

You're holding back the tears when you kiss me
Smile smile when I'm back again as you see me
When years are passing by and you miss me
You're saying come home
Come home

Such a shame
You're feeling so much blame And yet I'm still the same
And I no longer know how to explain
See I'm grateful as can be
'Cause you're my family, I'm bound
And I'm just hoping one day
you will shine through

Let's try to look at each other
Find one other
Asking how can it be fighting out all that we see
Is just not always what is real

That you come home
Come home
Just come home
Come home
My turn to understand what you lived through
Today I only feel how i miss you so it's only fair, when it's hard to bare
and you ask if I, I try to come home
Come home

Treat Number One

Let's enjoy some upbeat lyrics. This video is so much fun. I think you will love it! 

Click on the arrow to watch here. To see it bigger, click again on the video and it will go to youtube. There click on the lower right corner of the black screen to enlarge and crank up  the volume! click your escape key to get out of the enlarge mode

"New Soul"

I'm a new soul
I came to this strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit about how to give and take.
But since I came here
Felt the joy and the fear
Finding myself making every possible mistake

La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la...

I'm a young soul in this very strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit bout what is true and fake.
But why all this hate?
Try to communicate
Finding trust and love is not always easy to make.

La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la...

This is a happy end
Cause' you don't understand
Everything you have done
Why's everything so wrong

This is a happy end
Come and give me your hand
I'll take your far away.

I'm a new soul
I came to this strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit about how to give and take
But since I came here
Felt the joy and the fear
Finding myself making every possible mistake

La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la...

La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la....

Thanksgiving

Turkeys

by Mary Mackey

One November
a week before Thanksgiving
the Ohio river froze
and my great uncles
put on their coats
and drove the turkeys
across the ice
to Rosiclare
where they sold them
for enough to buy
my grandmother
a Christmas doll
with blue china eyes

I like to think
of the sound of
two hundred turkey feet
running across to Illinois
on their way
to the platter
the scrape of their nails
and my great uncles
in their homespun leggings
calling out gee and haw and git
to them as if they
were mules

I like to think of the Ohio
at that moment
the clear cold sky
the green river sleeping
under the ice
before the land got stripped
and the farm got sold
and the water turned the color
of whiskey
and all the uncles
lay down
and never got up again

I like to think of the world
before some genius invented
turkeys with pop-up plastic
thermometers
in their breasts
idiot birds
with no wildness left in them
turkeys that couldn't run the river
to save their souls

"Turkeys" by Mary Mackey, from Breaking the Fever.

© Marsh Hawk Press, 2006

I really liked the imagery of Turkeys. I can envision this taking place 100 years ago on the Clarion river with my ancestors.

I truly don't know what to think of this poem by Merwin. Is he being sarcastic or am I just too cynical to see the gratitude he is seeing. I don't think we are saying thank you much at all. Any thoughts?

Thanks

  W.S. Merwin

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water thanking it

smiling by the windows looking out

in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

after funerals we are saying thank you

after the news of the dead

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and the police at the door

and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks we are saying thank you

in the faces of the officials and the rich

and of all who will never change

we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us

our lost feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

we are saying thank you and waving

dark though it is

The Moon

FACTS ABOUT THE MOON

           By Dorianne Laux

The moon is backing away from us
an inch and a half each year. That means
if you're like me and were born
around fifty years ago the moon
was a full six feet closer to the earth.
What's a person supposed to do?
I feel the gray cloud of consternation
travel across my face. I begin thinking
about the moon-lit past, how if you go back
far enough you can imagine the breathtaking
hugeness of the moon, prehistoric
solar eclipses when the moon covered the sun
so completely there was no corona, only
a darkness we had no word for.
And future eclipses will look like this: the moon
a small black pupil in the eye of the sun.
But these are bald facts.
What bothers me most is that someday
the moon will spiral right out of orbit
and all land-based life will die.
The moon keeps the oceans from swallowing
the shores, keeps the electromagnetic fields
in check at the polar ends of the earth.
And please don't tell me
what I already know, that it won't happen
for a long time. I don't care. I'm afraid
of what will happen to the moon.
Forget us. We don't deserve the moon.
Maybe we once did but not now
after all we've done. These nights
I harbor a secret pity for the moon, rolling
around alone in space without
her milky planet, her only child, a mother
who's lost a child, a bad child,
a greedy child or maybe a grown boy
who's murdered and raped, a mother
can't help it, she loves that boy
anyway, and in spite of herself
she misses him, and if you sit beside her
on the padded hospital bench
outside the door to his room you can't not
take her hand, listen to her while she
weeps, telling you how sweet he was,
how blue his eyes, and you know she's only
romanticizing, that she's conveniently
forgotten the bruises and booze,
the stolen car, the day he ripped
the phones from the walls, and you want
to slap her back to sanity, remind her
of the truth: he was a leech, a fuckup,
a little shit, and you almost do
until she lifts her pale puffy face, her eyes
two craters and then you can't help it
either, you know love when you see it,
you can feel its lunar strength, its brutal pull

Laux makes an important point.  Consider

how much we receive that we don't deserve.

Letting go

 These poems beautifully address the bittersweet experience of parting with our grown up daughters.

First Thanksgiving

Sharon Olds

When she comes back, from college, I will see

the skin of her upper arms, cool,

matte, glossy. She will hug me, my old

soupy chest against her breasts,

I will smell her hair! She will sleep in this apartment,

her sleep like an untamed, good object,

like a soul in a body. She came into my life the

second great arrival, after him, fresh

from the other world—which lay, from within him,

within me. Those nights, I fed her to sleep,

week after week, the moon rising,

and setting, and waxing—whirling, over the months,

in a slow blur, around our planet.

Now she doesn’t need love like that, she has

had it. She will walk in glowing, we will talk,

and then, when she’s fast asleep, I’ll exult

to have her in that room again,

behind that door! As a child, I caught

bees, by the wings, and held them, some seconds,

looked into their wild faces,

listened to them sing, then tossed them back

into the air—I remember the moment the

arc of my toss swerved, and they entered

the corrected curve of their departure.

Sharon Olds, “First Thanksgiving” from Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002.

RESTLESS GHOSTS

Margaret Meade

That I be not a restless ghost

Who haunts your footsteps as they pass

Beyond the point where you have left

Me standing in the new sprung grass,

You must be free to take a path

Whose end I feel no need to know,

No irking fever to be sure

You went where I would have you go,

Those who would fence the future in

Between two walls of well-laid stones

But lay a ghost walk for themselves,

A dreary walk for dusty bones.

So you can go without regret

Away from this familiar land,

Leaving your kiss upon my hair

And all the future in your hands.

Margaret Mead

Blackberry Winter

Mead wrote this to her daughter, her only child , when she made her a grandmother.