wintah, summah, snow er shine

Song (Wintah, summah, snow er shine)
BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

Wintah, summah, snow er shine,
Hit's all de same to me,
Ef only I kin call you mine,
An' keep you by my knee.

Ha'dship, frolic, grief er caih,
Content by night an' day,
Ef only I kin see you whaih
You wait beside de way.

Livin', dyin', smiles er teahs,
My soul will still be free,
Ef only thoo de comin' yeahs
You walk de worl' wid me.

Bird-song, breeze-wail, chune er moan,
What puny t'ings dey'll be,
Ef w'en I's seemin' all erlone,
I knows yo' hea't's wid me.

the dance

The Dance
  by William Carlos Williams

When the snow falls the flakes
spin upon the long axis
that concerns them most intimately —
two and two to make a dance

the mind dances with itself,
taking you by the hand,
your lover follows
there are always two,

yourself and the other,
the point of your shoe setting the pace,
if you break away and run
the dance is over



Breathlessly you will take
another partner
better or worse who will keep
at your side, at your stops

whirls and glides until he too
leaves off
on his way down as if
there were another direction

gayer, more carefree
spinning face to face but always down
with each other secure
only in each other's arms

But only the dance is sure!
make it your own.
Who can tell
what is to come of it?

in the woods of your
own nature whatever
twig interposes, and bare twigs
have an actuality of their own

this flurry of the storm
that holds us,
plays with us and discards us
dancing, dancing as may be credible.

hold both realms in your being

"Landscape as a centering. The recognition of a region as a founding of the world."

— William Everson, Birth of a Poet

Birth of a Poet is a transcription of William Everson speaking to students at UC Santa Cruz in 1975-76. Part of his advice to budding writers was to learn from and focus on the regional element, what it means to be a poet living on the Pacific coast. He embraced the cycles of nature. Of "the world" of society, he said,

"You must not let that outside world, with its emphasis on the linear, deny you your deeper self, which is of the cyclical mode. Your course in life must always be to hold both realms in your being. Your vocation is the process by which you bring them together."

as if she were the sun

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”

― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

look carefully

“Look carefully; record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful.”

― Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

but tomorrow, dawn

“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.” 

― Billy Collins

a room in the past

A Room in the Past
by Ted Kooser

It’s a kitchen. Its curtains fill
with a morning light so bright
you can’t see beyond its windows
into the afternoon. A kitchen
falling through time with its things
in their places, the dishes jingling
up in the cupboard, the bucket
of drinking water rippled as if
a truck had just gone past, but that truck
was thirty years. No one’s at home
in this room. Its counter is wiped,
and the dishrag hangs from its nail,
a dry leaf. In housedresses of mist,
blue aprons of rain, my grandmother
moved through this life like a ghost,
and when she had finished her years,
she put them all back in their places
and wiped out the sink, turning her back
on the rest of us, forever.

"no need to sparkle"

A snowflake was caught between two spent morning glories. We leave the flowers to dry on the vines, and then in the spring we crumble them open and scatter the seeds on the ground to grow into this year's vines. A second after this shot, the snowflake was lifted off by the wind, like a seed. 

As the snowflake rested with the seed pods I thought of Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own when she was settled in and absorbed in a good luncheon at Oxbridge: "No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself."

gate

Sometimes a gate invites you into what is beyond. Sometimes you pause and examine it for a while. You may even forget where you were going, or that you were going anywhere. I thought I was heading into the walnut grove, but I got waylaid by the raindrops on the pines. (See Jan. 30.)

hear the light

“Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.”


― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

amazing possibility

I came to the meadow in the morning, in falling snow. If I had not kept moving, my own arms would have filled with amazing possibility, like this grass.

life

When we moved to the farm eight years ago, the big spruce in the background was not much bigger than the little one in front. The change happened very slowly. But it did change.

living fully with incompleteness

Do you see? The frail bones of dill are just the beginnings of proper baskets. The warp is there, but there is no weft. Yet, impossibly, snow accumulates in these baskets that are incomplete as perfectly as if they had weft and woven sides. I can't see the arms of snowflakes locking together, but I know they are doing it. I want us just like this, filling in and up even if all we have is just the skeleton of wholeness. We do not need everything to be in place in order to live fully.

in truth and lies lies truth

I support your right to live and grow, even though we are quite different. If we weren't, how would I see and know another of the world's infinite truths, except through you? If you try to deceive me, and even succeed, that is another fact about this life we live. What I do with it is what matters, more than that you wanted to deceive me in the first place. I can learn to see through you.

sun moon stars rain

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men (both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

— E.E. Cummings

place

It is the complexity of the life of a place uncompromisingly itself, which is at the same time the life of the world, of all Creation. One meets not only the weather and the wildness of the world, but also the limitations of one's knowledge, intelligence, character, and bodily strength. To do this, of course, is to accept the place as an influence.

— Wendell Berry, Imagination in Place 

cling loosely

Goethe said:

“To live within limits. To want one thing. Or a few things very much and love them dearly. Cling to them, survey them from every angle. Become one with them - that is what makes the poet, the artist, the human being.”

At the same time, we must let even the small things go that we become one with, for all of this is impermanent. Cling loosely.

body and spirit

Embrace your physical and spiritual natures as one.
Is it even possible to separate them?

— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, translated by Robert Brookes

riches

You might notice that in some ways the effects of our winter experiences are similar. You write of a constant sense of fullness, an almost overabundance of inner being, which from the outset counterbalances and compensates all deprivations and losses that might possibly come. In the course of my work this last long winter, I have experienced a truth more completely than ever before: that life's bestowal of riches already surpasses any subsequent impoverishment. What, then, remains to be feared? Only that we might forget this! But around and within us, how much it helps to remember! 

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letter to Lisa Heise, May 19, 1922

Is it prickly, or soft?

You won't know without touching.

Let's live the New Year as fully as we can!