The Gamut

Soft you day, be velvet soft,
My true love approaches,
Look you bright, you dusty sun,
Array your golden coaches.

Soft you wind, be soft as silk,
My true love is speaking,
Hold you birds, your silver throats,
His golden voice I'm seeking.

Come, you death, in haste do come,
My shroud of black be weaving,
Quiet, my heart, be deathly quiet,
My true love is leaving.

~'The Gamut' by Maya Angelou. This poem somehow strikes me as being sweet and rather old-fashioned, even Victorian.

I would rather

Telephone call-

But I would rather listen to

The falling rain.

Cuando los angeles lloran

Cuando los ángeles lloran
lluvia cae sobre la aldea
lluvia sobre el campanario
pues alguien murió
Un ángel cayó
un ángel murió
un ángel se fue
y no volverá
Cuando los ángeles lloran
lloverá

Roughly translated as " when the angels cry, it rains on the village, on the bell tower; someone died, an angel died, and he will never return. When the angels cry, it will rain."

~From "Cuando los angels lloran" by one of my favorite Spanish bands, Mana. Written for activist Chico Mendez after he was killed for his efforts to stop logging in the Amazon.

Age

Wisdom doesn't automatically come with age. Nothing does- except wrinkles. It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.

~Abigail van Buren

Rain on Saturday

I am home alone on this rainy Saturday. I sit facing the wide glass door with the blinds open so I can see the thin, misty rain come down on the grass. It is incredibly precise, somehow; I think of the cold water outside and the hot steam curling from the coffee cup at my side.
I may be the only person in this lonely landscape of grass and wind and glass and rain. I can liken it to standing on the edge of an empty pier with the sea and sky open in front of me.
September 2002, Florida

Spaces

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

~Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet"

The first snow

Last night
I longed for Florida
but not anymore...



Written in Washington, D.C., the first time in my life I woke up and saw the world covered with snow.

White Oleander

Fabulous opening lines, from the novel "White Oleander" by Janet Fitch. The prose is magical and draws you in from Line 1.

The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot, dry nights, my mother and I. I woke up at midnight to find her bed empty. I climbed to the roof and easily spotted her blond hair like a white flame in the light of the three-quarter moon.
"Oleander time," she said. "Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind."

Death

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it,
with no finger in it;
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, 
with no throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.
~Pablo Neruda, " Nothing but Death."
One of the subjects that fascinates me, as it does us all, whether we realize
 it or not, I think.

Azaleas

I am late
But pink azaleas—
I must stop

Why, Georgia, why

Four more exits
to my apartment
but
I am tempted
to keep the car in drive
and leave it all behind....
~John Mayer, Why Georgia Why

Felt this way on a few of the many road trips I made...somewhere in the middle of the open road, the feeling would strike: just drive, drive, drive.
But coming home was never a disappointment.