Saturday, March 31, 2012


'Steven Spielberg has an impressive art collection, but one painting always attracted his children's friends. "Nobody was stopped by the Monet, but [Norman Rockwell's Happy Birthday Miss Jones] arrests everyone's attention," he says. The painting depicts a classroom; pupils are sitting properly at their desks - except for one boy with an eraser on his head. He's probably the one who wrote "Happy Birthday Jonesy" on the blackboard just before Miss Jones arrived.'

G. Wayne Clough
"Show and Tell"
Smithsonian
October 2010

Friday, March 30, 2012


so clearly
the poppies speak
(the lively red petals)
we are mortal!
huzzah!
the breeze flutters and trembles



Tuesday, March 27, 2012


She read the funny papers,
hoping for a clue
and filled her cup
with iced tea.
The birds sang,
'Too late for you!
Too late for you!'
She colored her hair
and it came out black
(even though it was the same
stuff what turned her hair
red-brown before)
but that was alright -
today was a different day
in a different month
and who knew
what would happen next?
It was her time to go
her time to stay
her time to go.
She guessed
she would just drink the iced tea.
The melting ice
jingled
in the bottom of the cup
and it was good.

Sunday, March 25, 2012


When I move to a new location, my faith in my judgment wavers as I carry box after box filled with books I've already read over the years. Why am I attached to so much baggage? I imagine a life without so much weight in it, and vow to get rid of some of them before the next move.

But, I'm reading one of the books from my collection now, one from high school, copyright 1961, 1965. Growing Years of American Literature, edited by Sister Mary Adolorata, O.S.M.. It's a smaller book than you might think, given its name, and worth its weight in gold.

Instead of trying to be all-inclusive, the editor chose to include a few choice writers. One was Stephen Crane who I quoted here a couple nights ago. I'm reading some essays by Mark Twain now, about childhood on the Mississippi River, and about working on a steamboat as a young adult. I almost got rid of this book because I didn't find much in it that interested me as a student. But now I read Walt Whitman, Bret Harte, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Abraham Lincoln and find not only do I gain a better understanding of my country, I get an understanding of what's going on in my own life and community in the year 2012.

And then there are the precious moments of coming across a paragraph or two where the brilliance of the writing lights up the mind like sunlight on the sea.

Saturday, March 24, 2012


They planted
seeds of hope
in the crevices of hell.
They planted
seeds of paradise...

Friday, March 23, 2012


'The correspondent arrived in water that reached only to his waist, but his condition did not enable him to stand for more than a moment. Each wave knocked him into a heap, and the undertow pulled at him.

'Then he saw the man who had been running and undressing, and undressing and running, come bounding into the water. He dragged ashore the cook, and then waded toward the captain; but the captain waved him away and sent him to the correspondent. He was naked - naked as a tree in winter; but a halo was about his head, and he shone like a saint. He gave a strong pull, and a long drag, and a bully heave at the correspondent's hand. The correspondent, schooled in the minor formulae, said, "Thanks, old man."'

Stephen Crane
'The Open Boat'
photo taken in Austin, Texas
18 March 2012

When I was a girl in the early 1960s, we lived on some farm land in Louisiana, and across the two-lane road was a dairy farm. The couple who lived there was Cajun - the husband spoke only French. They had no more than 25 cows I'd guess. He knew each one by name, and at 5 AM and at 3 PM, they'd line up outside of the barn, in the same order each day, and wait to be milked. He'd put this rich moist grain for them as they were milked. I remember the pungent mix of smells, of the grain and the milk and the cows.

Every couple of days, a truck with a gleaming steel tank would come to their farm and transfer the milk from the big steel vat in the farmer's barn.

The couple never had a day off, not Sundays nor Christmas nor hurricanes, because the cows, and their few chickens, required attention.

My sister and I visited them maybe three or four times. The farmer's English was so limited, and we as yet knew no French. I don't remember ever talking with him, and yet somehow we learned how everything worked in their dairy. He just let us follow him around, and we learned.

I have some vivid memories of the cakes his wife baked - yellow with chocolate frosting, decorated with cherries and pecans. She had a night light in the guest room - prayer hands that glowed in the dark. I remember she had ways of using eggs or mayonnaise to condition her hair, leaving it on with her hair wrapped in a white towel.

Once, we were running around with the chickens while she hung clothes on the line to dry. There was a very large azalea shrub nearby, dense with deep pink blooms. Hummingbirds, dozens of hummingbirds shimmering bright green and red in the daylight, flitted around the flowers. The smell of the grass and the faint poignant sweetness of the azaleas with the flickering of the little birds in flight felt like something key, something of love at the core of life.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012


Sometimes I get off track, worry about issues with the words 'financial', or 'monetary' in them.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Firewheel
(also known as Indian Blanket or Gaillardia)
photos taken 17 March 2014, Austin, Texas






Wildflowers are plants that live in one's part of the world in untended land without needing cultivation or fussing over. They are the natives.

The beauty of wildflowers is that they have adapted over many generations to the climate and soil in their local area. In other words, they tend to be robust. I understand that many wildflowers have developed a sort of insurance to survive even after the toughest seasons. Their seeds are like little timers. Some will germinate during the first year after they fall to the ground, so that new flowers show up during the next blooming season. But some will remain as seeds, will not germinate, for another year or two or three, until their timers go off. So, if one year's crop of wildflowers does not make it to the flowering stage because of extreme heat or because of flooding, there are still seeds on hold, waiting to germinate the next year. There is still hope.

Some local insects and birds have a close relationship to specific native flowers. For example, in central Texas where I live, monarch butterflies lay eggs on the milkweed variety known as Antelope Horn. The caterpillars hatch there, feed on the leaves, and go into metamorphosis (the change from caterpillar to butterfly) all on the same plant. The chrysalis dangles beneath the leaves until the butterfly is ready to emerge, full grown, only minutes away from first flight.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Austin, Texas
18 March 2011














I walked through Northwest Park this morning on my way home. I sat awhile in the bleachers above the baseball diamond. It was warm out, but there was a pleasant breeze. Another woman was sitting in the bleachers on the other side of home base. There was a man wearing a baseball cap walking his dogs in an adjacent field enclosed by a fine stone wall. Another man was entering the field from the parking lot, bringing in equipment as for a game or team practice.

Each of the areas we were in was separated by fencing or other structures. We were so near, sharing the same moment in the same ballpark. We could see each other, each alone in our own sections, but somewhat blocked without easy access from one location to the next.

I left the ball field and walked through the rest of the park and through the neighborhood. The park was covered with mounds of clover and other lush green growth. I'd never seen anything like it, especially in Austin and especially so soon after the dry inferno last summer when the ground was matted with dead grass, and many trees were leafless, shriveled carcasses. I was grateful today for the sounds of mockingbirds, and the smells of spring, of seasonal rebirth. I no longer take these pleasures for granted.

This morning was like a dream. It was sorta like Narnia if Lucie could have taken pictures and brought them back through the wardrobe (or, in this instance, to the other parts of the ball park).
Austin, Texas
17 March 2012


Life is irrepressible,
exuberant, insistent,
sometimes clumsy,
sometimes full of grace.

Friday, March 16, 2012









I was going to peel this orange. I popped the little star-shaped button off and looked at it. For perhaps the first time in my life, I got it. The button that fit so firmly and perfectly into the orange peel was the base of the blossom from which this fruit grew. For there to be an orange, there has to be a flower.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

piku for pi day


send me socks
or
a verse might do

Monday, March 12, 2012


The more we became like children,
the more we could see and hear and smell and taste,
the more magic we could do,
the more we could laugh,
the more tears were shed.

Sunday, March 11, 2012


starlight glowed
from within the laurel
and said yes to the camera

Saturday, March 10, 2012










I feel no qualms about wearing my grandfather's shirt.

He made no demands of me. But I brought him his mail every day, and he brought me chocolate bars.

He makes no demands of me now. His shirt sits softly on my shoulders. His spirit rides lightly within me.

Friday, March 09, 2012


Though we couldn't always see this, our journey had many layers including above the surface, below the surface, and reflection.

Then, time... time was playing its capricious role. Units of time shrank, and expanded from layer to layer.

We relied on each other to anchor ourselves, to maintain group mental stability when our individual minds could not handle the improbable realities encountered, or when punishment or false information threatened to pull us under. We had to learn to rely on each other.

With time, we came to welcome the connections with others in the different layers, enhancing the stability of the journey.

Love was necessary, integral, to this journey.
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas


It was two steps forward and one step back. Two steps forward, one step back. Then there were the days or nights where we sailed so fast and so high, accomplished such improbable feats, that we came to a complete stop to find ourselves in a sinkhole of fog, mute, shackled, and alone. In other words, we were grounded.

That's how we knew, we'd had a great day.

Wednesday, March 07, 2012


The illness, the hair falling out, the ads for wrinkle creams and college degrees were all distractions. The melting of the icebergs, the appalling taxes, the ashtrays emptied at one's doorstep. The love was all. The love between neighbors, the love of old classmates, the love of the boy who rescued birds. The trust in the romance of life, the leaves twirling at our feet, the grasses glistening with dew; the briefest glimpse of those in our hearts would keep us in flight, in alignment with our purpose, and the rest was chaff that fell away along the path.

Monday, March 05, 2012

March 5, 2012
Austin, Texas






a white cafe
where flowers
shimmer like stars -
the wind teases my scarf

Colorful glass spheres were used as fishing floats that kept long, heavy nets from sinking. They'd break loose sometimes and ride the currents all the way from Japan, Taiwan, Korea to the western shores of the United States. People collected the handmade floats from the beaches, and wondered about those folks far across the Pacific who made objects of such beauty for their work.

Glass, made of sand, eventually crumbles back to sand.

Saturday, March 03, 2012


define 'tremolo' -

even the written wiki wisdom
is poetic prose -
those 'trembling effects'
the 'whispering', the 'slow vibrato'

defenses crumble
to the shivering sound.
under sensual stress
we surrender in bliss

Friday, March 02, 2012


He didn't know how to dance, but the scotch had softened him up a bit, and he swayed to the sounds of the band. No one was watching, he was still the only human being in the room, the very top floor, and it was dark except for the bandstand which was lit an eerie shade of blue. He wondered if the members of the band could even see him. Maybe they thought the two bartenders in the adjacent alcove were their only audience.

He listened now with everything he had, transfixed by the intricacies of the drums, a lacework of rhythms. His body was soft, and at some point as his hips drifted to the right, his feet followed. His hips swayed left, and his feet followed that way. So this was dancing. It wasn't so complicated. No counting out timing; the music flowed in synch with the world around him. Now, he too was in synch, his feet, his soul, with the guitar, the drums, the sax, and everything around him. His body in motion was aware of truths his mind had no words for.

Thursday, March 01, 2012


'Or like the snow falls in a river
A moment white - then melts forever...'

Robert Burns