the young, also flying

 

goodbye

"drawn to evening"

The Knowledge of Light by Henry Rago

I

The willow shining
From the quick rain,
Leaf, cloud, early star
Are shaken light in this water:
The tremolo of their brightness: light
Sung back in light.

II

The deep shines with the deep.
A deeper sky utters the sky.
These words waver
Between sky and sky.

III

A tree laced of many rivers
Flows into a wide slow darkness
And below the darkness, flowers again
To many rivers, that are a tree.

IV

Wrung from silence
Sung in lightning
From stone sprung
The quickening signs
lines quivered
Numbers flew

Darkness beheld
Darkness and told
Each in each
The depths not darkness.

V

To know
Meaning to celebrate:
Meaning
To become “in some way”
Another; to come
To a becoming:
To have come well.

VI

Earth Awakens to the work it wakens.

These dancers turn half-dreaming
Each to the other, glide
Each from a pool of light on either side
Below the dark wings
And flutter slowly, come slowly
Or drift farther again,
Turn on a single note, lifted,
And leap, their whirling lines
Astonished into one lucidity:
Multiples of the arc.

Shapes of the heart!

VII

The year waits at the depth of summer.
The air, the island, and the water
Are drawn to evening. The long month
Is lost in the evening.

If words could hold this world
They would bend themselves to one
Transparency; if this
Depth of the year, arch of the hour
Came perfect to
The curving of one word
The sound would widen, quietly as from crystal,
Sphere into sphere: candor
Answering the child’s candor
Beyond the child’s question.

                                                                                                                                    milkweed

winter flowers viii.

"Those who do not see the flower are no different from barbarians, and those who do not imagine the moon are akin to beasts. Leave barbarians and beasts behind; follow the ways of the universe [nature] and return to nature."  Basho, from Japanese Aesthetics and Culture: A Reader, edited by Nancy G. Hume

                                               glads

deciding what and where colour is

winter flowers vii.

                                               glads

“Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.” John Berger quoting Cezanne.

 

deciding what and where colour is

winter flowers vi.

"The effect of color has real power....So much power that, in certain lights, it seems to become a substance. Once when I found myself in the chapel, I saw on the ground a red of such materiality that I had the feeling that the color was not the effect of light falling through the window, but that it belonged to some substance. This impression was reinforced by a particular circumstance: on the floor in front of me there was some sand in a little pile that the red was resting on. That gave me the effect of red powder so magnificent that I have never seen the like in my life." Matisse

                                               glads

deciding what and where colour is

Red Thought within a Gladiolus Blossom by James Owens

--after a photograph by erin wilson

The image is a garden inside the garden.

Eros as shimmer
as blood unfurls
through the wall of this wound
that opens the air like a sex.

The strokes of her looking
breathe
the petals to further opening and opening
and un-
fold
membrane contour texture.
Different wet reds shine.

All this from dirt and sun and water
dust the flower has healed
sepal
ovule
anthers laden dark
nudge of a cell upward
any touch would soft to bursting
and scatter sperm
inside the four chambers of the stone.

winter flowers v.

"Thinking about color abstractly hasn't done me any good." Frank Stella

                                                                                                                                  glads

deciding what and where colour is

winter flowers iv.

 

At Home with Disquiet

This is both a surprise to me and an honour. So much has come to pass for all of us, I'm sure, over the years, since we first met one another through blogging. There's been loneliness, friendship, death, grief, childbirth, marriage— in other words, life. So much has happened! I couldn't have imagined it!

This last year has presented me with the most amazing opportunity to work with Jean Huets of Circling Rivers to put together what has become my debut collection of poetry. I owe a debt of gratitude to Jean for her tireless efforts. (Believe me, it takes so much more work to put a book together than I ever might have suspected!) I owe a debt of gratitude to the generous writers and editors who took time from their busy lives to read and endorse this compilation. In no particular order, thank you Brian Brett, Francesca Bell, Nina Murray, Abbie Copeland and Roger Mitchell.  And I owe a debt of gratitude to you folks who listened to me here, who were kind to me, and nurtured me through a great many of life's events. I smile. I'm not even sure if anyone might be listening any more, but with the greatest thanks I introduce this little piece of myself, At Home with Disquiet.

It will officially be released on March 24th of this year, but Jean tells me it can be pre-ordered from Amazon (in the United States and in Canada) and from Barnes & Noble (in the States), if anyone is so inclined. And if not my book, please, seek out these other dynamic writers. They deserve attention.

And my goodness, I hope you are well!

(If you click the book cover you will find it at Amazon.com for pre-order and if you click here, at Amazon.ca. If anyone wants to get in touch, I can be reached at thetinyleaf@gmail.com)

winter flowers iii.

 

some months ago I rescued these roses from the graveyard dumpster

 for many weeks the strong scent of decay interrupted me as I passed

did I rescue the roses?

or were they waiting for winter to rescue me?

winter flowers ii.

                                                                
                                                                                         orchid flowers

winter flowers i.

                                                                                                     sunflower

from "The Winter Flowers" by Brian Brett

     This house is a jungle thick with shivering green that
slows a man down. This house fills the brittle heart with the
sharp shoots of spring even when the snow sings heavy
through the outside evergreens.

“Once the soul was perfect and had wings and could soar into heaven as only creatures can. But the soul lost its wings and fell to earth, there it took an earthly body, and now while it lives in this body no outward sign of wings can be seen, yet the roots of its wings are still there and the nature of these is to try to raise the earthbound soul into heaven. When you see a beautiful woman or a man, the soul remembers the beauty it used to know in heaven and the wings begin to sprout and makes the soul want to fly but it cannot yet, the man is still too weak, so the man keeps staring at the sky like a young bird. He has lost all interest in the world around him." from Plato's The Phaedrus (and Terrence Malick's movie, Knight of Cups.)

"This is the prime reality —
Bird and man, the individual
Discriminate, the self evalued
Actual, the operation
Of infinite, ordered potential..."

from "The Phoenix and the Tortoise" by Kenneth Rexroth