poetry – The Hermits' Rest

Beltane Invocation

Beltane reminds me how I’m part of the whole. Sometimes you just need to stand in the woods and feel like you’re a part of it. Bugs, birds, buds, and me. It helps you gain perspective. So I wrote a little invocation with pictures.

Look at the world from a new perspective

Ooh, We Did Activities

Today Lee and I made up for yesterday and engaged in vacation-like activities, which is sort of unlike us. We even got out of the condo before noon, which may be a Lee record. I say this lovingly, of course.

We just knew if we left we’d discover something as fascinating as this plant, called pumpkin on a stick. I want one!

First we headed off to our favorite local spot, Brookgreen Gardens, which I have written about before but am too lazy to link to it. It’s an amazing old plantation that has been painstakingly turned into a wonderland of sculptures surrounded by gardens that set each sculpture off perfectly. We were disappointed to find that the main indoor exhibit area was closed, because they were switching out exhibits, but happy to learn the new exhibit opens next Saturday, so we can go then.

Luckily my childhood favorite poem is still here to see.

Instead, we walked over to the permanent sculpture exhibit, the Offner Sculpture Center, which we’d never been to before. That was wonderful! There were many studies for the larger works on display in the gardens, plus interesting bronze medals, and many other works by a variety of mostly 20th Century American artists. There were many by Anna Huntington who started the collection, and also a great many by Richard McDermott Miller, who had many fascinating self portraits and human figures. There was also a film about how bronze sculptures are made, featuring him. Quite interesting.

Anna Hyatt Huntington liked statues of horses a lot, so there are many here (and many large ones in the gardens for horse people like me to enjoy.)

After the sculptures, we ate in what was once the plantation’s old kitchen. Everything was fresh and delicious, and we had a nice conversation with the woman who was working there. This is a very out-of-the-way spot, so it was quite serene. And there were brazen birds who wanted to share our food.

We will be going back there for a night exhibit, perhaps, and also to see the zoo, which has a new red wolf exhibit. That will be interesting. Yeah, I can come up here and just go to this one place repeatedly and be adequately entertained!

After a bit of a rest and some sun gazing, we went to Topgolf, which was our reward for doing the annual tedious sales presentation. (This is a building you go in where you eat, drink, and try to hit golf balls into targets.) We lucked out and got a reasonable, fun couple to play with and ended up having a good time. Whew—I was worried my obnoxious new acquaintance, Steve, who crops up everywhere I go, would be paired with us and I’d drink too much. I was a bit concerned when I saw the couple brought their own clubs, but I ended up second, because the husbands were trying too hard. Kathy, the wife, had paid attention at her one lesson and drove straight and true. Of course, I was so busy watching that I didn’t get any photos of her.

I was glad that rain held off until this evening. We got a full day of fun in before I have to go back to work. I always feel better when I get to surround myself with art, gardens, and really cool insects..just look at this immense grasshopper!

Eastern lubber grasshopper
(*Romalea microptera*) which can be three inches long!

Book Report: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

Five Stars Plus

My friend Louise, who is a frequent commenter here, sent me this book after I’d commented that a short film based on it looked sweet. Sweet. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (2019), by Charlie Mackesy, is way more than sweet.

Everyone with a tender heart, even one hidden deep under layers of armor, should read this book. You deserve to spend time in the world these characters reside in. You need to hear the reminders that love and kindness are what truly matter and that we all are worthy of these things.

The book is gorgeous, too. It’s printed on beautiful, thick paper. The text and images are all hand drawn in the minimalist pen and ink of the author/artist. Your eye just wants to linger on the images, many of which say volumes with no words.

This is the page shared on Amazon, so I feel okay with sharing it.

Louise knew I’d treasure the book, and I’m so grateful she sent it. Lee read it, too, and he also laughed at the mole’s love of cake. I cried at one of the few things the fox said. He treasures friendship as much as I do.

I can think about the dear characters in the book as I walk through the tall, soft grass in my own wild places.

I’m passing the book around the family, then I’ll leave it in the tack room for guests to find and enjoy. I encourage you to buy it and share it. Give it as a gift to a friend you treasure. I know I’m gonna drag my local friends into the tack room to sit with a few of these poetic pages and remember the world we want to create.

By the way, you’re fine just as you are.

Who’s a Poet?

Note that I do not consider myself a poet and never have. On the other hand, I’m a writer, and words come out of my fingers like water flowing from a spring. Ooh, a simile.

My little work area of poetic inspiration

I’m bringing this up, because I heard a feature on the radio encouraging young people to submit applications for being the Texas Youth Poet Laureate. The woman promoting it pointed out that there are many types of poetry, not just the classical things, and all it takes do create poetry is to write down what’s going on with you in some sort of disciplined way.

There once was a woman called Suna
Who lunched on some sushi of tuna.
And as it’s her hobby,
She piled on wasabi.
Her face turned red as a petunia.

Yep, that’s the story of my lunch, all right. I have always loved limericks. I used to write acrostic poems, especially when my kids were little and did them in school.

A horse can be a challenging friend,
Particularly when he won’t tell you his thoughts
And you keep guessing what the deal is until
Changed attitudes suddenly bloom and
He is like the buddy you once
Enjoyed, oh so long ago.

That exhausts my abilities. I’m not good at free-form, and though I love to listen to it done well, I haven’t mastered the internal rhymes and repetition in good rapping. But, the lady on the radio said to just get started by repeating “I am” over and over, and boom, you’d have a poem. Okay, then.

I am a knitter and weaver of fabric and words
I am glad for all my experiences (bringing wisdom)
I am braver than I ever thought I could be (take the first step)
I am content with uncertainty and change (at last)
I love fiercely, freely, and without expectations (so hard)
I am here

Speaking of being brave, I think it’s brave to share poems you write off the top of your head in just a few minutes. But, I admit this was fun. How about you? Do you have a poem ready to spring forth?

Last night’s pool view. You can hardly tell you’re in a large city.

Almost There at Pope House

Every day it’s looking better at our future office. The hallway is empty.

It’s all clean! And the American flag is ready to go up.

The front reception room just needs two more blinds. And the bling hung on the chandelier.

We have a snazzy cover over the breaker box.

The upstairs ceiling is textured.

My office awaits floor repairs.

I see stair rails in the very near future. I celebrated by building the little bistro tables for the break area.

We hope we have space for two of these. They are small!

Yes, that’s a leftover screw I had trouble with. The second set came out better. I just need a stronger hand with the Allen wrench!

Book Report: Poetry E-book Edition

You may know that I am very fond of books, the physical objects. I like to hold books, feel the paper of the pages, smell that inky new-book smell, etc. But, some books aren’t available physically, including self-published books. I’ve always liked the idea of making one’s work available for friends and family, and don’t expect perfect copy editing, formatting and all that (what I DO mind is being charged a lot of money for a printed book, only to find it was not copy edited AT ALL, has eight random fonts, and is randomly justified).

Today I’m not talking about one of those! Instead, I’d like to briefly share a book of poems I just read, which I know I’ll re-read many times. Past Life: Poems is a collection of poems by my long-time online friend Ida Bettis Fogle. She’s always been a word person, as shown by her thoughtful posts that I’ve enjoyed for many years and her career as a librarian.

She published this collection of her favorite poems from the past 25 years to share with her friends. A lot of gushing has ensued, as members of our long-time group of mothers pointed out their favorites. Why were they so enthusiastic?

Well, Ida has captured the experience many women of my generation had, both in childhood and as mothers. Many of her poems brought images back to my mind of similar events I’d been through…it’s like I continued her poems in my own head.

One of my favorites, “Three Minus One,” talks about the third child you never had but always wanted. The longing you feel for a child who almost seems real mirrors my own experience exactly.

There are poems about birth, vacation, scary things, and beautiful things, all the kinds of small but memorable things many of us have experienced as we go through life. Ida celebrates moments and captures them for the rest of us to share. And it is formatted normally with only one typo (that I didn’t notice).

If you need something to take your mind off the present and take you back to a past that is real, but not all bad, you might really enjoy Past Life. I found it worth much more than the four dollars and odd membership process in Smashbooks that was required to obtain my PDF. (And if you are a poet or other kind of writer, this may be a way for you to share YOUR work with others.)

Nature Heals: Five Vitamin Bs

After a long day of working through my mental paralysis, I came home to do the usual chicken and horse chores. I decided to really look hard at what I saw on the path and just live in the moment.

It helped more than I thought it would to immerse myself in the life on the ranch. There were so many bees in the blooming clover and so many butterflies on the flowers and so many birds and so many bugs! The 5 Vitamin Bs: Blossoms, bees, butterflies, birds, and bugs.

evening primrose
these look like stars
fetching vetch
spider web blown by wind
shiny

The most common butterflies were Buckeyes, checkered whites, and sulphurs. I also saw a hairstreak.

buckeye and little wasp
checkered white
upside down
mating

And in the bird department, I was extra excited to hear a familiar call. The dickcissels are back! They’re one of those birds whose numbers are dwindling, so it makes me happy to know they like it here.

dickcissel
Sparrow of some sort
Blackbird flying

I also enjoyed the sounds of sparrows rushing out of the grass and the red winged blackbirds calling and flying around. They’re everywhere right now.

I enjoyed a lot of interesting bugs, but my favorite is this Texas flower scarab. It was vigorously digging away in this thistle.

Just enjoying the light on the grass, along with my friends the butterflies, bees, birds, and bugs got me in a better frame of mind. Thanks, Mother Nature!

Perhaps Grace Is What We Need Right Now

What was not an example of grace?
Me trying to get the varnish off between these grooves.

Hmm. Grace has always been a hard concept for me, at least the Biblical kind. As a person whose spirituality didn’t fit in with the Father God concept, I never felt the “grace” in the “Amazing Grace” song. I was more of the “chasing grace” kind, I guess, as in one of my favorite songs, “One Good Year,” which I listen to often:

Just give me one good year
To get my feet back on the ground
I’ve been chasing grace, but grace ain’t so easily found…
by Slaid Cleaves and Steve Brooks

Maybe you would like to listen to it. I just happen to be able to show you both of the writers’ versions. I guess if I don’t know what grace actually is, I can graciously share some music about it. Um. Okay.

Here’s the brilliant Slaid Cleaves singing this. Well worth a listen in these times.

And here’s my friend Steve playing it. Hey, listen to it. He needs the royalties.

Being Graceful

I do have a clue what physical grace is, and that’s what I put in my Instagram of the day. I was really impressed that Chris made a routing table out of stuff there was around the Pope Residence project, then got Randy set up making beautiful curved edges for all the trim. Next we have to mass paint it all, before installing.

Also, I stripped all the varnish off those trim pieces in the foreground. See, I can help!

I’ve been thinking harder and harder about what the heck grace actually is, because I think I’d like to both send and receive it. It seems to have to do with love, acceptance, and kindness, I think. I finally broke down and looked at Google to see what it was about. I still am not real sure about Divine Grace, but I did see a list of ways to exhibit grace, which is shortened from a blog post with a lot of helpful Bible verses, if you would like to see them.

How to Show Grace to Others

Words. Be kind and gentle in what you say and how you say it.
Look for Needs and Opportunities; simple everyday kindnesses and actions often help in great ways.
Let it Go. Letting it go is one of the easiest ways to extend grace to others.
Be There.
Forgive.
Learn to Ask for Forgiveness.
Watch the Way You Speak.
Gratitude.

That all sounds like good stuff to me. I am right now concentrating on 7 and 8. I’m trying to speak kindly to people who think getting infected with a scary virus is a joke. And I am remembering to be very grateful to still have work, be able to see at least some of my family, and live in a place concerned with safety.

Safety?

Some more grace. Here’s Randy rolling sealant on our brick. The brick stuff is actually nearly complete!

Our county judge has echoed the governor’s state of emergency recommendations and told everyone in the county to stay the heck home unless you have a workplace to go to, need food, or have to do something urgent. People had been being a bit jerky around here, apparently not grasping the concept of invisibly carrying a disease and passing it on to someone else, the fact that diseases have incubation periods, and that sort of thing.

I’m one of the people glad he did this, even though I had to go to the auto parts store today, because my windshield wiper broke. I didn’t want to die driving in the rain with no wipers. So, I was careful. Mainly I was VERY impressed that the store had my car’s wiper blades!

What else is there…I’m ready for a virtual meeting this evening, and hope to hang out on Zoom with online friends a bit, like I did last night! What fun that was. I’m grateful that the pandemic came when we have lots of online tools for connecting. Is that something you can actually be grateful for?

Postscript

I’m glad I asked for guidance on this topic. My friend from high school, Vickie Dixon, kindly shared her definition, which was helpful to me, and may be to you!

Grace is one of my favorite words. And it doesn’t have to have anything to do with religion. Although, for me, it’s a lot easier to give grace to others when I remember God’s grace given to me. It’s basically just treating each other with love even if they don’t seem to warrant it. It can’t be earned and none of us truly deserve it. We all hurt each other. It’s part of being human. Grace comes in when the person we hurt still treats us with love. A beautiful, and very difficult, way to live.
Vickie in North Carolina