New Blog

Here’s the url for my new blog.
https://bendingtowardwords.blogspot.com/

On This Night

Tonight Christians 

dip bread in wine

contemplate Good Friday,

and the crucified Messiah

Tonight Jews

tell the  story of fleeing Egypt

They pour a cup of wine 

for Elijah and wait 

for the Messiah

At that confluence 

between arrived and waiting—

in that space 

the Last Supper

and Passover  Seder 

lived as one —for a brief meal

Tonight another confluence

I stand with a foot

in two stories

Instructions to Myself

I stay tethered when walking

where brambles send out

tentacles and the suck of the sea

pulls sand into waves

that carve letters onto a beach

eroded by storms 

I remain on firm ground

Find flowers in rock cracks

and reflections in ponds

sprouting water lilies

I stay wary of the voice calling

to follow a different path

and remain where light ignites

each footfall and path 

The Kiss

Did you ever travel after your own words?  Say or write something and then discover that what you conjured up can be followed and then new paths discovered.

It’s as if I expose something new when I trail behind my words -picking up pieces and seamlessly fitting them together.

Recently I wrote about a dip in a road— not a new road or a flat road, but one that was pock marked, weathered, and tilted.

I unearthed a memory. Brushed it off  and rotated it so I glimpsed all facets. The road dipped  into a manmade holler and up again to flat ground. In that dip between I found myself. A short intimate moment. And when I read the words I wrote , looking at myself looking at me I followed my words to the end of that path.

I had found a missing puzzle piece.

Collage

You take from one place
And  paste pieces in another
to find a new place

Oh Me, Oh My

I’m a typical Red Sox fan. A common Boston sports fan. Today is Opening Day and Sales is letting up runs , home runs, as if they were free gifts. The Sox are batting  as if they held wiffle bats instead of wood  bats. Sales didn’t last into the fourth inning. No one on the Red Sox is hitting. They aren’t sharp on the field. The score is 2 to 7. And we, last year’s win it all team, owns the 2.

Woe is us. What kind of season will this be?
This will be a disaster.
And on and on it goes.
I am a true Boston sports fan.
Now if they can catch up I’ll smile and know that the Red Sox gods will not allow us to wallow in self-pity. We’ll know that all is well and the world is in its orbit.

Ugh! They just let up another home run. This is terrible. A summer disaster.

Book Club

We spoke of trade unions after discussing the book—

the fight for them, the riots and those who lost

their lives. With the passing of time they

lost ground and now falter with quiet voices,

hoping they can still be heard . 

We didn’t speak of other unions—between two

who love and lose love between the brambles

of living. Some dissolve and others limp. Some

last through hard times. And some sit beside beds

and watch life drip out of their beloved

and recall another time.

Expand

Just discovered a new book that fits me perfectly.

When One Religion Isn’t Enough: the Lives of Spiritually Fluid People by Duanne R. Bidsell

“  Each religious and spiritual path leads to its own mountain. Each mountain connects , no doubt, to others, perhaps offering a view of peaks more distant.”

Color Blind

I dream of the sun spiraling close
enough to warm my bones, to
toast my skin velvet color brown
Brown as milk chocolate or coffee
lightened with cream
Brown as sand wet with an ocean wave
or a color of Teak after polish
brings out a sheen
I look out my study window
and study a tree missing a limb
lopped off after a storm left it
limp. Its severed cream slice
faces a waning sun
I dream of my grandson— whose
deep brown skin speaks of African
ancestors and ships and a dark past
I imagine a melding of shades,
a palate of hues
from chalk white to ebony

I Give Up

After hours and hours I am sticking with Marginalia, The powers that be have put up the required wording and I’m good to go. Same place.

This may be the one!

Everything is screwed up. I may need to continue with this blog. Keep posted.

A Letter a Day

Still haven’t set-up a new blog, but I do have an interesting project for February.

Last year I took part in  INCOWRIMO 2018.  People from all over the globe partake in this fountain pen letter writing marathon. Thus far over fifteen hundred people have listed their addresses —and beginning on February 1, 2019 each participant writes one letter or postcard a day to someone on  the list or to someone they know. Fortunately, February is a short month.

If you are interested check it out—
incowrimo-2019.org

The new blog:

BendingTowardsWords.Com

Stuck

I cannot figure out how to make my blog Eu compliant. It may be that I have to shut this blog down and start a new blog that has the notice embedded. I’ll keep you posted.

Cold

It snowed    then frozen rain    then the cold    this morning our outdoor thermometer read two degrees     translated into -17 degrees real feel.
How do people who live in areas where this temperature is the norm survive?
I am not made for this cold. Even my car whizzes and shudders.

Until I looked up the coldest ever in this country —save for Alaska— and found out that Roger’s  Pass ,Montana owned that award—70 degrees, I thought that only Siberia experienced that type of cold. At —70 if you tried to spit into a bucket your spit would morph into ice before reaching the bucket. In Alaska a —80 was recorded.

By those standards our Day was balmy.

Waiting for the Cold

It is time to admit

that we of technological

acumen can do no more

than offer weather predictions 

and purchase milk and bread

Mary Oliver

 Mary Oliver looked at a landscape through a poetic lens. She watched the small changes in a pond with “risen lilies” and the ocean “galloping in the pitch” as well as when the ocean’s “salted waves with their soft, untroubled faces” gazed toward the shore.

She lived for years in Provincetown, MA where the ocean, dunes, shore fed her imagination. Where she lived with her partner, photographer Molly Malone Cook. When Molly was ill with cancer Mary Oliver spent her days taking care of Molly and at night went outside, sat on a bench and wrote poetry — with a flashlight for light.

Mary Oliver was out as a lesbian before it became acceptable. She was who she was without any excuses and her love poems—both personal, and beautiful celebrate love. She and Molly Malone Cook shared that love for forty years until Molly’s death.

Mary spent months culling through Molly’s photographs for a book that is both an eulogy and a celebration. Our World is a memoir and a deeply felt look at their love for one another. It is filled with Molly’s photographs. 

Oliver relates how they met in the Edna St. Vincent Millay kitchen at Steepletop —“ I took one look and fell , hook and tumble.”

Mary Oliver will be missed. Her careful eye for the details of nature will be missed. 

In her book, Rules for the Dance,  for poets and those who either want to read poetry or begin to write poetry she writes: “ Can you find words to make some living inch of the world vigorous, breathy, fibrous? Upon such bright straws the weight of your work leans. As with any enterprise, practice will make you better.”

And when she writes about other poets she writes about herself.

      “...Poets have, in freedom and in prison, in health and in misery, with listeners and without listeners, spent their lives examining and glorifying life, meditation, thoughtfulness, devoutness, and human love. They have done this wildly, serenely, rhetorically, lyrically, without hope of answer or reward. They have done this grudgingly, willingly, patiently, and in the steams of impatience.

       They have done it for all and any of the gods of life, and the record of their doing so doing belongs to each one of us.

       Including you.”

Rest In Peace , Mary Oliver.

       

The Hype

It’s happening. The local meteorologists have already begun the hype. The dreaded Arctic Vortex is on its way. This means cold cold temperatures and snow. The first of these snows is due to arrive dragging with it other water related phenomenon. There will be sleet, freezing rain, and ice. This ice will drape itself over and around tree limbs. This in turn will cause power outages. The cold temperatures will mean dwellings will lose heat quickly. Ominous warning, dire predictions. People will rush to the stores, buy up everything on the shelves. 

With an important  football game on Sunday the avocados, limes and peppers will be a hot purchase. Wings— barbecued, teriyaki, sesame covered, and any additional coating a chef dreams up will be for sale. Chips and cheese. Crackers. Celery and carrots for the weight and health conscious. And sweets. 

And there are people who are homeless who won’t be purchasing food for the game or for their house. They will hopefully find a warm place to sleep and a place to stay during the day. They always need to deal with ordinary cold weather with or without the hype.

A Personal List

winter sets in
and my pile of books grows higher
than the armrest of my chair
where poetry and history
weigh each other down
and memoir
chides fiction for a place
where adventure
hobnobs with personal stories
of daring and endurance
where how to be creative
feeds off spiritual books
and Bible commentary
where a softbound book
on learning bibical hebrew
sits on top of a book
on creating collages
winter sets up
genre bending

The Cycle

dusk

catches up to the moon

and leaves behind light

until dawn claims

her place

and brings in light

once again

Winter Walk Around Walden Pond

Ice cracks

as it stretches

beyond boundaries—

breaking a thin layer

of frozen ice 

with brazen force

To Snack or Not to Snack

Yesterday we watched the post-season patriot football game surrounded by food. what is it about post season football and the desire to consume food? Some snacks were healthy like the celery and carrot sticks dipped in hummus— but the carrot chips, even though they contained less fat then a bag of potato chips, can’t be placed in the category— healthy. And why does an open bag of chips have to be finished— even the crumbs? would shrimp be classified as food and not a snack?

of course the following day i swear off salty, fat laden, high calorie food. a conundrum — next week is  another play-off game. perhaps i will listen to my inner voice and refrain from those chips. or will i be swayed by the ad rhetoric and the advertising and believe that  this particular brand of chips is sugar free, low sodium, low fat and tastes marvelous? But in my heart i know these words are pandering to people like me.

ncidentally, the pats won. i did my part—ate, watched, and cheered.

A Marker

honey pot apple orchard 

closed for the season 

and set out their last apples—

“ambrosia” —a bit sweet

like a “ honey crisp”

i miss the tart taste of 

early “gravensteins”

harbingers of autumn

a bittersweet welcome

“ ambrosia” welcomes

the coldest months—

a reminder of the cycle

A Place of Prayer

wrapped in a cloak,

a tallit 

a womb like space

a tent

a sanctuary

we breathe silence—

we stand on holy ground

and seek 

pray 

Lovers

first 

cut out a shape

place it on bone white paper

stare at it long enough

until it needs another shape

a piece that indents

and juts out so they fit

together — feel just right

in their edges and empty places
in their soft lines

then place them on the paper

and glue them down

but not so tight they can’t be moved

adjusted, turned— 

A Tao of Waiting

an upside down world 

turned on its side

shaken, stirred

tumbled

until whatever 

is untethered

falls

off