6 Days Back. 6 Days Forward.

Race

Race

Rest

Tough

Tender 

Test

Hill

Ridge

Dew

Concrete

Beach

View

Tuesday Cafe

Calendar coordination
Footnote explanation

Project nearly complete
Tackling a new feat

Espresso,my dear old friend
Hope our love affair does not end.

Hallo

Hoping your Halloween not bland
and that costumes are nothing but grand
And if travel you do,
hope all on time too
and music is only the good bands.

Sundays to Mondays

Sundays and suitcases and selections for Kindle.

Coffee and cakes and watching time dwindle.

National Poetry Day

October the 2nd, wouldn't you know it?
The day of course to celebrate a poet.
Rhymes, meters even haiku,
Ever memorize a poem or two?

In celebration of such a day
Our little GBC writer did play.
Casting a few lines here and there
Post reading water without a care.

The White City

Mid day swim
Pizza whim
Saul Bellows in my bag

Chicago city
Trying to be witty
A dress deal snag

Waiting on a train
Running in the rain
Wow, it is good to be back.

A little glass of wine
All is really fine
And always more than I lack.

Summer Dusk

Red clay
Seeds soon hay
Biking through the fields

Ear high corn
Cotton not yet born
Ground still not tilled.

Gentle breeze
Blowing through trees
My lips are sealed.

Sun starts to set
The clouds move west
This is how the heart heals.

Green Goddess II

Any fool can get into an ocean
But it takes a Goddess
To get out of one.
What’s true of oceans is true, of course,
Of labyrinths and poems.

Opening lines from "Any fool can get into an ocean" by Jack Spicer.

Gulf at sunset off the coast of Tampa
May 2014

Happy weekend - happy reading!

I'm on a Boat II

sometimes days run from 7 to midnight and there's no time to read
you manage a morning paper and a few lines from social feed
evening boat with wind in your hair and water's good deed
lucky yet, a view for a sunset succeed

Seize the Today

Happy Friday from the Poetry Foundation and Billy Collins:


Today
Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

Coast-ing

Book. 

Beach. 

Run.

Nap.

Nails.

Fun.

Pool.

Perch.

Sun.

Sunset.

Sunrise.

Won.

Two Words

It was a big treat to see the GBC grouping this weekend and catch up on life over a bit of reading water.  I was very fortunate to see a number of dear friends, one of which managed to succinctly create a story-telling image with the art of the two-word phrase.  Nod to KR for inspiring this little arrangement.

Pinewood
Business Plans
Cheese Curds
Snowy Lands

Outside painting
Housing sales
Machu Picchu
Haircut tales.

Interstate blanket
Toasts galore
Big hugs
Wine Store.

Honey Coffee
Presents Exchanged.
Big discussions
Life rearrange.

Pizza toss
Dinner party
Running hugs
All hearty.

Throw Back Thursday (and the rest of the week too)

Frozen milk.
Insulation run.
Would readily admit
this week is no fun.

Computer fails.
Crazy dreams
An item of clothing
losing seams.

But still yet

Deep breaths
Laughter creeps in
New discoveries
Adventure's your friend.

Ready Set Go

something about...

  running
      reading
        cleaning
  resolution-ing
      rebooting
        caffeinating
  reusing
      recycling
        creating
  writing
      riding
        contemplating

Long Walk Through the Woods

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Walls of Jericho
November 2013

Carving out October

Yesterday's Opinion piece by Paul Krugman in the NYT suggested that we don't read as much poetry as we used to do.  I am then breaking the trend as I find myself reading (and even writing*) a bit more these days.

In the art of public service, I offer the opening from "November for Beginners"  by Rita Dove.  You can find the piece in its entirety at poetryfoundation.org.

Snow would be the easy
way out—that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
We stack twigs for burning
in glistening patches
but the rain won’t give.

*This author wrote two to three poems a day for a period of at least two years.  Several of them even rhymed.

Sur Enough

This week's little trek included a stop at the Henry Miller library in Big Sur.  I've been enamored with Ping Pong, An Art and Literary Journal of the Henry Miller Library.  I have the 2011 edition and find myself revisiting poetry from Brian Henry and Erica Lewis.  There's something extremely soothing in verse and rhythm.

Life Leaks

Whistle through closed car window.
Shower curtain which has a hole.
Iridescent shell cracked from erosion.
Falling soil from burrowing mole.

Coffee lid with an upward lift.
Jackhammer at the six o'clock hour.
Chocolate escaping through croissant.
A burst of lemon sour.

Wet shoe from a little log dance
Petal drifting from the leaf.
Felled moss covered branches hide
Delicate flora beneath.

Contingencies, boundaries don't seem to matter.
When day to day begins its scatter.

SWM Like a FSH

As a fairly rookie swimmer, I'm not certain that reading a book about a murky pool is the best idea. 

"Do one thing every day that scares you" has become my underlying 2013 mantra, and so I did.

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy is disorienting, disarming. [It was also a Man Booker Shortlist which put it on my list.]  With but a few quirky (broken) characters to follow, I was readily taken in seeing the day through the eyes of a lonely child, a seldom present wife, a cranky neighbor. 

Love lost. Love never had. Love pined. 

Words. Rain. Color.

Poetry.

Oh Rumi, Don't Take Your Love to Town

This morning's inspiration from Rumi in the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets edited by Peter Washington.  It's not complete as I rather favor the beginning more than the ending.

If You Don't Have*
        - Rumi

if you don't have
enough madness in you
go and rehabilitate yourself

if you've lost a hundred times
the chess game of this life
be prepared to lose one more

if you're the wounded string
of a harp on this stage
play once more then resonate no more

if you're that exhausted bird
fighting a falcon for too long
make a comeback and be strong

you've carved a wooden horse
riding and calling it real
fooling yourself in life

though only a wooden horse
ride it again my friend
and gallop to the next post

* The last two stanzas are a bit more dire so they've been omitted.