Blue

Blue

There is the satisfaction that comes from training hard
and finishing a marathon
and there are the wide blue eyes of pleasure
as a baby discovers the world in his mama's face.

This poem is after Mary Oliver's poem "Yellow" from the book Evidence.  The photo is mine.  If you would like more information about Mary Oliver, click here.

Raccoons

 

 

 

Raccoons

 

A late spring night and the raccoon mama

has come again to the shadows in front of my house

as she has for the past eight years,

with her kits tumbling, wearing their masks.

 

Don't think they are a casual part of my life,

 

these white-ringed tails in the dark.

 

 

(This poem is after Mary Oliver's  "Snowy Egret"  from Evidence.)

 

Words in colour will take you to another website for additional information, if you click on them.

The photo is not mine.  It is used with permission under a creative commons license.  The photo is owned by vladeb and is from vladeb's photostream, which can be found online.



Sunrise

SUNRISE

...and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(New and Selected Poems, Volume I)

This photo is mine.

Song for Autumn

Song for Autumn

~ Mary Oliver

In the deep fall
    don't you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
    the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
    freshets of wind?

All photos are mine.

Mary Oliver, Paying Attention

 

"To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."

Happy Birthday to Mary Oliver, who  is 76 today.  She is one of my favourite poets because of her abilities to connect the soul and the landscape.  She is the favourite poet of many, has authored more than twenty books, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in the US.

Here is her poem:  The Morning Walk

There are a lot of words meaning thanks.
Some you can only whisper.
Others you can only sing.
The pewee whistles instead.
The snake turns in circles,
the beaver slaps his tail
on the surface of the pond.
The deer in the pinewoods stamps his hoof.
Goldfinches shine as they float through the air.
A person, sometimes, will hum a little Mahler.
Or put arms around old oak tree.
Or take out lovely pencil and notebook to find a few
touching and kissing words.

This poem is from Mary Oliver's book Long Life:  Essays and Other Writings, published in 2004 by First Da Capo Press, Cambridge, MA.

Faces of Tulips

My best friend sent me a link to Abbey of the Arts, a guide to transformative living through contemplative and expressive arts.   I was so stunned by the vibrant reds of the tulips contrasted with the ethereal blacks and whites of Christine Valters-Paintner’s photos that it has taken me a few days to want to share them.

Keeping them all to myself seemed necessary; I wanted to secretly enjoy them first.  How selfish!  But delightful!

Look at what she does with a camera; how she lets the photos speak.  Completely lovely!

She begins her Visual Meditation: “The faces of tulips” with a poetic excerpt from Mary Oliver, one of my favourite writers.

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips

~Mary Oliver

Explore the website and enjoy Christine's photos and words.  These photos are Christine's.

Mary Oliver, Comment on Creativity

“The most regretful people on earth are those

who felt the call to creative work,

who felt their own creative power restive and uprising,

and gave to it neither power nor time.”

~ Mary Oliver

I love this quote.  It inspires me.  It admonishes me to relinquish my self-imposed craving for perfection and propels me to release what churns inside of me, regardless.

Part of me has always dreamed of being a great writer; part of me has always been terrified of publicly sharing my writing.  I recognize the vast difference between great writing and average writing and have not wanted to be discounted as mediocre.  For years, for decades actually, all I wrote on a personal level were thoughtful notes, interesting letters and soul-searching journal entries.  On a business level, I crafted pleas for crucial funding, wrote substantial reports and weighty grant proposals, and plenty of those.

Nevertheless, I need to write!  Something in me struggles to be heard, to be seen in words.  Something in me desires and loves words – adores shades of meaning, the play and juxtaposition of sounds in a sentence, the vibrant images, the palpable feelings, the delectable tastes and invigorating fragrances that words evoke.  Like painting or photography or creating pictures in any medium, writing crafts bursting-ripe word images.

Writing skills will improve with constant use, with relentless re-writes, with diligence and discipline and self-acceptance.  My writing cannot be termed “great”, but it is essential and deeply satisfying to me.  However, I believe in myself and in my own gifts and abilities.  As I generate my own words and thoughts and stories, asking for direct criticism from others, I will discover and nurture my own creative work.

I need to write; I feel my “own creative power restive and uprising”, as Mary Oliver says.  Writing pulls me along into the muddled mystery of life, pushes me into chaotic creative exertion.  When I provide vigour and time, my writing urges an artistic spirit to spill out from me and to flood my life.  Juicy joy!

I’ll coax and entice you to join me on that inventive journey.  And ask…

How are you giving power and time to your own creative work?