Familia! I have not been able to talk to you much (I know, I’m giving myself self importance..but whaddaya gonna do.. you gotta pat yourself on the back now and then) – I have been using the juice I have for a poetry projetc and been writing them here.. I’d like to think that you have a little house in my head and my right eye is your bedroom skylight.. and the poems I have written so far in October are one frame of the view you get when you lay in your bed awake and dream.. sometimes you’ll see the dark night, sometimes bright blue sky.. sometimes rain clouds, and sometimes clouds shape like avocados and open mouths. Anyway! Hope all is well out there in your little house wherever it may be! I have been me-ing a lot these days and that has been some what ridiculous. the cat makes me laugh.. the bricks are all poets… and someone taught the street corner to sing at nights…Look the bottles are drunk, the cab driver is living on the moon, and I cry every time I see someone mowing their lawn…
One Hundred and Eighty 10.19.16
Mary Oliver
Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?
Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.
It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.
But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?
Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.
When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking
to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,
as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?
One Poem At A Time 