Happy November!
I simply HAD to share this brilliant illustration by Will Santino, cartoonist at The New Yorker.
https://www.willsantino.com/
Waxing Poetic
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Category Archives: Poetry
It’s Halloween!
Wishing everyone a light-filled thinning of the veil on this Samhain.
Angel Boy 2.0 is a firefighter this year (thanks to this Grandma for choosing the perfect costume) and Angel Girl is either going to be a mermaid a la Fancy Nancy or a spider. And me? I’m always a princess…
Halloween
Upon that night, when fairies light
On Cassilis Downans dance,
Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze,
On sprightly coursers prance;
Or for Colean the route is ta’en,
Beneath the moon’s pale beams;
There, up the cove, to stray and rove,
Among the rocks and streams
To sport that night.
Robert Burns-1759-1796
Ida Rentoul Outhwaite
Daytime Moon
I love seeing the moon during the day even though it’s so very confusing.
Daytime Moon
In the morning
When the sun
Is shining down
On every one,
It’s very strange
To see the moon,
Large and like
A pale balloon,
Drifting over
Roof and tree
Without one star
For company…
~ Dorothy Aldis, American children’s author and poet (1896-1966).
Hold On
As I lay here slightly paralyzed in excruciating pain from a lower back injury, a broken toe, and recovering from a surgical procedure, I really have to laugh because what else is there to do?
How did I hurt myself? It doesn’t matter HOW, what matters is that I do dumb stuff all the time and that’s how I broke my toe for the thousandth time, too. Two separate incidents, but both on the same side of my body.
I could feel sorry for myself, but that’s not productive, right? OK, I confess that I do feel a LITTLE sorry for myself, but I’m trying to make the best of it. This pain can’t go on forever; it never does. Bright days are ahead, I believe that. I have faith.
And, If I just hold on
Hold on tight
Will the fair wind take me
To where the sun does shine bright
There be no more talk of dark days
Only sun shine days of light
If I just hold on
Hold on tight
Taken from “ A Little Book Of Poetry “ by Athey Thompson
Hold On, one of my fave songs of all time.
Art by Arthur Rackham
From talesoftheoldforestfaeries.com
Nothing Rhymes with Orange
Is it true? Is there no word that rhymes with orange? Here’s what I found…
“Orange has almost no perfect rhymes. The only word in the 20-volume historical Oxford English Dictionary that rhymes with orange is sporange, a very rare alternative form of sporangium (a botanical term for a part of a fern or similar plant).” Lexicohttps://www.lexico.com
Anyway, here’s an orange zinnia.
I had planted a whole row but my garden bunnies LOVE zinnia flowers. I watched them eat every single one EXCEPT for this plant.
Photos taken at different times of the day; intense color versus sort of washed out by the sun.
Zinnias
Zinnias, stout and stiff,
Stand no nonsense: their colors
Stare, their leaves
Grow straight out, their petals
Jut like clipped cardboard,
Round, in neat flat rings.
Even cut and bunched,
Arranged to please us
In the house, in water, they
Will hardly wilt—I know
Someone like zinnias; I wish
I were like zinnias.
–Valerie Worth
Gathering
I could have written these words. As I look around Casa de Enchanted Seashells, I see feathers and rocks and driftwood and seashells, so many seashells.
They are my true and stalwart friends.
In every room, I can touch and feel and recreate the time and place they were collected and lovingly gathered: local beaches, Anza-Borrego, Zion, Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Painted Desert, Grand Tetons, Pinnacles, Pacific Northwest–a weaving of memories.
And yes, they bring a smile to my face.
As Above, So Below
As we transition into another Mercury Retrograde (whatever that means) and another super moon, this Sunday finds me in a sort of melancholy mood. The Full Flower Moon coincides with a total lunar eclipse in some areas, so a lot is happening above us.
As above, so below.
These words from Rainer Maria Rilke resonate deep within my heart.
“So you mustn’t be frightened, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do.
You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.
Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going?
Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change.
If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”
Have a lovely Sunday, everyone!
Dandy Lion
I used to think that was how it was actually spelled and that the humble and sturdy dandelion certainly was a very “Dandy” Lion.
Thoughts of my Angel Boy sneak up on me around Mother’s Day. I especially cherished the bouquets of dandelions and other wildflowers (or weeds) he’d gather for me. Could there be anything more lovely than knowing my angel wanted to gift his mom with what his mind and heart considered to be treasures? I don’t think so.
The name dandelion is taken from the French word “dent de lion” meaning lion’s tooth, referring to the coarsely-toothed leaves, so I wasn’t totally wrong!
The hardy little dandelion is the only flower that represents the three celestial bodies: sun, moon, and stars. The yellow flower resembles the sun, the puff ball resembles the moon, and the seeds resemble stars.The dandelion flower opens to greet the morning and closes in the evening. Every part of the dandelion has value: root, leaves, flower. It can be used for food, medicine, and dye for coloring. Dandelions have one of the longest flowering seasons of any plant. Seeds can be carried as far as five miles from their origin.
I’m nodding my head. It’s fitting that the dandelion represents celestial bodies as my Angel Boy is still and always has been my sun and moon and stars.
Close your eyes, blow the seeds from the puffball, and make a wish. BELIEVE.
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Simply stated by Walt Whitman/Leaves of Grass:
The First Dandelion
Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close
emerging,
As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics,
had ever been,
Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass—
innocent, golden, calm as the dawn,
The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful
face.
Vernal Equinox/Spring is Here!
It began at 2:37 a.m. Pacific Time.
The sun crosses the celestial equator south to north. It’s called the “celestial equator” because it’s an imaginary line in the sky above the Earth’s equator.
If you were standing on the equator, the sun would pass directly overhead on its way north.
Can you feel it?
How will you celebrate? We’re going to plant a lemon tree and some blueberries to add to the peach, plum, apple, pomegranate, grapefruit, and orange trees already in the ground.
Sadly, I had inadvertently killed my favorite lime tree and was disappointed to learn that no one in my area has any lime trees for sale. According to the nursery, the pandemic caused an explosion in home gardening and it’ll be quite some time before they’ll be back in stock, an interesting phenomenon directly related to Covid.
Those old poets sure knew how to describe the ethereal affirmations of an ephemeral season.
Lines Written in Early Spring
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
William Wordsworth
A Host of Golden Daffodils
This seems to be a lovely way to herald spring and the time change on Sunday.
I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the shew to me had brought:
For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.
I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
William Wordsworth – 1770-1850
Enchanted Seashells | Princess Rosebud 