Category: poetry

  • une orange sur la table

    an orange (for lunch)
    A lot of questions are bubbling up about the future. About what I want for my life and where I see myself headed. On so many fronts, I simply have no idea. Sure, I’ll keep working at my job and on my dissertation. I’ll continue caring for my children. For the time being I’ll stay in my current home. But my days are filled with moments where I realize, I just don’t know what lies ahead. And I’m not sure I even care to think too deeply about it either. Yes, I worry occasionally (which usually prompts me to go check my bank account balances and take a few deep breaths).

    The past few days I’ve been in a whirlwind of busy-ness because of the THATCamp conference I hosted at Chapman. Organizing such an event is an absolute delight–especially sitting at the feet of scholars whose work outshines mine in so many ways. But now I have a ‘to-do’ list that is quite long. I put off many personal tasks until this event was over, knowing that I could only handle ‘so much’ this past week given all that’s been happening in my life.

    However, instead of thinking about the future and my lists and my uber-weird life, I am sitting here looking out the window at this fresh new day and am just being. A friend brought me a tree-ripened orange yesterday and I’m slowly slicing it and savoring each bite. And remembering my favorite poem of orange– the first French poem that I ever attempted to translate–and focusing on the “sweet present of the present” and realizing that sometimes that is simply enough.

    Alicante

    Une orange sur la table
    Ta robe sur le tapis
    Et toi dans mon lit
    Doux présent du présent
    Fraîcheur de la nuit
    Chaleur de ma vie

    ~Jacques Prevert

    The orange in the picture above was one that I picked from the satsuma tree in my garden. A tree that was a birthday gift from my mother a few years ago & now sits in a pot on my porch.

  • even losing you…

    Another wonderful gem from a friend. It made me giggle (which is a good thing, I’d say)…

    path
    One Art

    The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
    so many things seem filled with the intent
    to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

    Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
    of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
    The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

    Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
    places, and names, and where it was you meant
    to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

    I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
    next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
    The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

    I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
    some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
    I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

    — Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
    I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
    the art of losing’s not too hard to master
    though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

    ~Elizabeth Bishop

  • I cried…


    peach blossom, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    Autumn Movement

    by Carl Sandburg

    I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

    The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman,

    the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

    The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things

    come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go,

    not one lasts.

  • let it splash…

    When the ocean surges, don’t let me
    just hear it. Let it splash inside my chest!
    ~Rumi

    Kuroshio Sea – 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world – (song is Please don’t go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

    via worldhum

    I can’t even express how deeply it thrills me to realize that these creatures are swimming below and around me when I paddle on the ocean–thus, I need poetry (and photography)! The ocean itself seems a kind of creature, its cycles and rhythms are at both completely regular and completely unpredictable. Added to that is the beauty of all that finds home within its depths…

    On Saturday, for the first time, I tested out a waterproof camera setup to take out with me on my outrigger canoe. I snapped pics of pelicans and shorebirds, and the various landmarks that are part of the Newport channel. And here’s me, on my boat*:

    me & my boat!!

    I wish the ocean was as clear and blue in the Newport area as it is in the Japanese aquarium captured above. I rarely ever actually “see” anything swimming in the water except for the trash floating on the surface. So that’s one reason I’m really thrilled to be headed to the South Pacific in a few months–to see some really clear blue water. Of course the other reason for my excitement is that I’ll be competing in my first international outrigger competition. And that, my friends, is as amazing and unbelievable as life can be…

    *We rigged up a sweet steering system for my canoe so I can maneuver with just one foot pedal.

  • from blossoms (and peaches)

    peach blossom

    from blossoms

    from blossoms comes
    this brown paper bag of peaches
    we bought from the joy
    at the bend in the road where we turned toward
    signs painted peaches.

    from laden boughs, from hands,
    from sweet fellowship in the bins,
    comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
    peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
    comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

    o, to take what we love inside,
    to carry within us an orchard, to eat
    not only the skin, but the shade,
    not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
    the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
    the round jubilance of peach.

    there are days we live
    as if death were nowhere
    in the background; from joy
    to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
    from blossom to blossom to
    impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

    ~li-young lee

    (h/t to vintagedramas for the poem)

    My peach tree is chock-full of hard green knobs right now. And as I do every year around this time, I am dreaming of peaches

  • so they change themselves.


    garden love, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    Just one more Audre Lorde poem that I’ve found incredibly thought-provoking…an excerpt from “Stations” (the very last part is my very favorite bit):

    Some women wait for visions
    that do not return
    where they were not welcome
    naked
    for invitations to places
    they always wanted
    to visit
    to be repeated.

    Some women wait for themselves
    around the next corner
    and call the empty spot peace
    but the opposite of living
    is only not living
    and the stars do not care.

    Some women wait for something
    to change and nothing
    does change
    so they change
    themselves.

    Pic above is some rosepetal love from my garden, by way of CatGirl’s artistry.

  • I take your hand….


    wet gerber daisy, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    One of my joys is to have books of poetry stashed on nearby shelves, just perfect for grabbing and reading a few poems when the time is at hand. Yesterday’s book was The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde, a book that I first happened upon at the Bluestocking Bookstore in NYC, but didn’t buy until later because I feared it’s weight would be too much in my slim carry-on bag.

    One of yesterday’s discoveries was a poem about gardening and hope, titled “Walking Our Boundaries.” I suspect that only I could be so charmed by a poem that speaks of compost (yes, it is all-too poetic, in my mind). An excerpt:

    I take your hand beside the compost heap
    glad to be alive and still
    with you
    we talk of ordinary articles
    with relief
    while we peer upward
    each half-afraid
    there will be no tight buds started
    on our ancient apple tree
    so badly damaged by last winter’s storm
    knowing
    it does not pay to cherish symbols
    when the substance
    lies so close at hand
    waiting to be held
    your hand
    falls off the apple bark
    like casual fire
    along my back
    my shoulders are dead leaves
    waiting to be burned
    to life.

    The sun is watery warm
    our voices
    seem too loud for this small yard[…]
    our footsteps hold this place
    together
    as our place
    our joint decisions make the possible
    whole
    I do not know when
    we shall laugh again
    but next week
    we will spade up another plot
    for this spring’s seeding.

  • a small cup of light


    lacy reflections, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    “But tomorrow, dawn will come the way I picture her,
    barefoot and disheveled, standing outside my window
    in one of the fragile cotton dresses of the poor.
    She will look in at me with her thin arms extended,
    offering a handful of birdsong and a small cup of light.”
    ~William Collins

    The image above was the morning reflection on the wall from the light coming through my window at the Sacramento hostel. All of the windows had these gauzy, lacy curtains. If the old house was haunted it certainly seemed so with the ghosts of wind that caused the curtains to billow in the evening breeze.

  • breathless


    spring quince blossoms, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    Breathless, we flung us on a windy hill,
    Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
    ~Rupert Brooke

    Here’s hoping that your May Day is full of beauty.

  • naked you are…


    more blue, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    I often just hold my breath as I read through the posts on Persisting Sighs. They are crisp like the snap of clean sheets and lush like smell of rose petals at sunset.

    Today Madelyn quoted Neruda and channeled just how I felt earlier today, when I didn’t have the word to express what I saw:

    Naked you are as simple as one of your hands,
    smooth, terrestrial, tiny, round, transparent,
    you have moon~lines, apple paths.
    Naked you are as thin as bare wheat,
    Naked you are blue like a Cuban night,
    there are vines and stars in your hair,
    Naked you are enormous and yellow
    like summer in a gilded church.
    ~Pablo Neruda