poem

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Birthdays

As my birthday is now gone, I can say it was. I’m not fond of saying that it is. I’ve not been interested in birthdays since the milestone days: 18, 21, and 30. After that it has seemed mostly inconsequential, especially to celebrate. Not avoidance, more like a no matter. A shrug of the shoulders.

But today I did see this poem posted, a lovely toast to the days as we mark them gone.

Poem and photo posted by Mauri Fox & Kathy Gallo

I Am Not Old
I am not old…she said
I am rare.
I am the standing ovation
At the end of the play.
I am the retrospective
Of my life as art
I am the hours
Connected like dots
Into good sense
I am the fullness
Of existing.
You think I am waiting to die…
But I am waiting to be found
I am a treasure.
I am a map.
And these wrinkles are
Imprints of my journey
Ask me anything.
~ Samantha Reynolds

And this coat has special significance for me as it’s a coat that reoccurs in my life. It is the coat that was first found on Billy the priest as we were kid-adults together in Michigan. He was quite heavyset then, and the coat looked fabulous on him. (He was not a priest at the time.) One of the first novels I wrote, “Last House” has a character in it who has such a coat. He is a character of some merit and all of the people who read the MS loved him. He is also heavyset and a very proud and kind man. When I think of the coat I can feel it, so warm and wonderful, and furry.

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Christmas Noel

Winter morning with... Artist Roman Romanov

Winter morning with… Artist Roman Romanov

Crisp winter mornings

Christmas Light

Presents of laughter Joy and delight

Animals present and love does abide

The warmth comes from snow and memories sight

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Sometimes

(Only because it takes a while to dig yourself out)

When I think I can

I’ll transmute the poems in the air
the ones that haunt and suffocate
to paintings of English Gardens
or maybe a little stream where
silver fish glimmer and glimpse
the part of me that lingers there

When I think I can’t

I’ll slide the scale of dumbed down
notes to impossible depths of immortality
where the worn and sick climb
rocks of smooth and simple betrayal
not of human form but life
on songs that were not chiseled there

(And then sometimes you don’t quite make it)

Old Moss Woman’s Secret Garden

springrilke

Barn Owl photo by Benjamin Joseph Andrew—A Room With A View

“Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.”

~ Rainer Maria Rilke; (1875–1896) Bohemian-Austrian poet

 

It’s a surprise and it’s so very pleasing. Rilke does that by changing from the expected (a child who begins to grow) to the art that is represented— the poem.