Day 5: {view~ this coming year holds the promise of dreams no longer deferred}
A Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
~Langston Hughes
| Chance | ||
may favor obscure brainy aptitudes in you
and a love of the past so blind you would
venture, always securing permission,
into the back library stacks, without food
or water because you have a mission:
to find yourself, in the regulated light,
holding a volume in your hands as you
yourself might like to be held. Mostly your life
will be voices and images. Information. You
may go a long way alone, and travel much
to open a book to renew your touch.
{Molly Peacock}
|
||
At the entrance, my bare feet on the dirt floor,
Here, gusts of heat; at my back, white clouds.
I stare and stare.
It seems I was called for this:
To glorify things just because they are.
{Czeslaw Milosz}
{from my visual journal - found poetry}
SCARLET
You will know Scarlet
as soon as you set eyes on it.
Flaming.
Gorgeous.
Often it will call
or sing
from an exposed perch.
The easiest way to find Scarlet
is to persist
through Spring.
Vibrant in its quality,
you know,
you suspect,
Scarlet is a Summer resident.
~ h. bradley
{❤ that my 18-year-old writes poetry and helps me find heart-shaped rocks}
color week: tuesday = white/gray/black
{I want painting to be my flashlight. ~ Squeak Carnwath}
Candle Hat
In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Sampson.
But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.
He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
a device that allowed him to work into the night.
You can only wonder what it would be like
to be wearing such a chandelier on your head
as if you were a walking dining room or concert hall.
But once you see this hat there is no need to read
any biography of Goya or to memorize his dates.
To understand Goya you only have to imagine him
lighting the candles one by one, then placing
the hat on his head, ready for a night of work.
Imagine him surprising his wife with his new invention,
then laughing like a birthday cake when she saw the glow.
Imagine him flickering through the rooms of his house
with all the shadows flying across the walls.
Imagine a lost traveler knocking on his door
one dark night in the hill country of Spain.
"Come in, " he would say, "I was just painting myself,"
as he stood in the doorway holding up the wand of a brush,
illuminated in the blaze of his famous candle hat.
Billy Collins - a.k.a "he who saves me daily"
{look}
{linger}
{listen or create your own}
{love}
{locomotion in Albuquerque - come join me!}
{click on any of the above to look, linger, listen, love and locomote(?) too}
{I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really. ~ Tennessee Williams}
Polish and Balm
Dust develops
from inside
as well as
on top when
objects stop
being used.
No unguent
can soothe
the chap of
abandonment.
Who knew
the polish
and balm in
a person's
simple passage
among her things.
We knew she
loved them
but not what
love means.
~Kay Ryan ~ The Best of It: New and Selected Poems
{an open invitation: any evening, come sit with me}
The Chairs That No One Sits In
You see them on porches and on lawns
down by the lakeside,
usually arranged in pairs implying a couple
who might sit there and look out
at the water or the big shade trees.
The trouble is you never see anyone
sitting in these forlorn chairs
though at one time it must have seemed
a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.
Sometimes there is a little table
between the chairs where no one
is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.
It may not be any of my business,
but let us suppose one day
that everyone who placed those vacant chairs
on a veranda or a dock sat down in them
if only for the sake of remembering
what it was they thought deserved
to be viewed from two chairs,
side by side with a table in between.
The clouds are high and massive on that day.
The woman looks up from her book.
The man takes a sip of his drink.
Then there is only the sound of their looking,
the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird
then another, cries of joy or warning --
it passes the time to wonder which.
~ Billy Collins, from Horoscopes for the Dead: Poems
"drunk with the light..." Billy Collins
{click on any of the above to listen, love, learn, lift, linger}
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