Monday, December 31, 2012

A Fool and a Cigarette

image by R.A.D. Stainforth


"I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes."
 ~Carl Sandburg, "Prairie," Complete Poems, 1950



When we are 16 we smoke all our tomorrows
like cheap cigarettes and strawberry hill wine
at an endless hangout at the corner store...

yet when we are old we smoke all our yesterdays
like one fine cigar and rare expensive wine
at a place we wish we had gone and can no longer afford.




"Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward." ~Soren Kierkegaard



Wishing Tess and everyone at The Mag a wonderful and Happy New Year!








Sunday, December 23, 2012

Merry Christmas To All

"There are no strangers on Christmas Eve."
  ~Mildred Cram and Adele Comandini



To all my friends in bloggerland I want to simply say:
"Merry Christmas!"


Thursday, December 20, 2012

Of Snow and Ice



The color of springtime is in the flowers; the color of winter is in the imagination.
  ~Terri Guillemets


Winter's paradox is a dazzling dame in chiffon so white
with supple lips of silence and sparkling yet peircing eyes.
Her graceful beauty is a fascination for all who long to see
yet when the cold winds blow she is as harsh as she can be.

Her hair flows like a flurry her skin soft like sheets of snow.
She has a polished elegance that we all wish we could know.
Her graceful beauty is a fascination for all who long to see
yet when the cold winds blow she is as harsh as she can be.

She glides like dancing snowflakes and has tenure where she lay.
Her awe becomes beguiling when we hope that she might stay,
for her graceful beauty is a fascination for all who long to see
yet when the cold winds blow she is as harsh as she can be.



Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Like a Lightning Crash

Photo by Andy Magee



Respecting the rain is not an observation that one does automatically like waving to a passerby or holding the door for another.  It is an appreciation one acquires when experience has led them to a knowledge that before did not exist.  This true regard does not come slowly like guitar lessons nor learning to love martinis, it is a split second shift of knowing.  Fast like a lightning crash it happens, the moment that the wheels and the road no longer have the right connection.  Looking back in slow motion, it is almost like a dance; a glide to the left and then maybe another swift move to the right, but when it happens, it is NO dance!  One finds them self screaming and holding the wheel as if it were the ledge of a building they were about to fall off of.  And it is like a fall, a horrible fall.  Once the movement has stopped, depending on what the object of destination is.  It could be a road sign, a ditch or another car even, but it all happens too fast for complete recall. You just know when it is over you had no control of the outcome.  No control at all!  From that moment forward you never take driving in the rain lightly.  You have a new found respect for the relationship between a wet road and your car. 



There are moments in life
that change the way
we see the road ahead.
A briliant light of knowing
that peirces through
our blindness
like headlights
in the night
it is a hearkening
that is birthed
not from words
but deeds
life's way where
the thud of a fall
can knock the sense
into a soul faster
than any words
could ever prove
the truth.




Monday, December 17, 2012

There Are No Words


"Sorrow makes us all children again - destroys all differences of intellect.  The wisest know nothing."  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson



In respect of the traumatic events on Friday, I simply have no words.  The only words I have to offer are prayers coming from my heart for all the families in grief.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Farewell Again Autumn


"Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze."
~Emily Dickinson


Dearest Autumn my love so fair
how I wish you would never leave.

Your colors a bounty beyond compare
in your arms I long to cleave.

Our time together too short once more
a twirling dance I don't want to end.

But like a fickle kiss you will ignore
and leave me alone over and over again.

So with these words I take one last gaze
to your mystery and all your charms.

For my heart you always swiftly take
as I await you with open arms.



I know that autumn is long since gone, but it is my favorite season, and when the words came I went with it like the wind.

What is your favorite season?

Friday, December 14, 2012

Journal Junkie


My name is Carrie and I am a journaloholic. Yes, these are ALL my journals, and frankly, there are more somewhere lost in my apartment. I do not remember when it all began.  Maybe it was when I kept note pads all over the place and would wake up in the middle of the night scrambling to find something to write down an idea with.  I am not really sure it just crept up on me and the next thing I knew I was loaded with them.  Now that I am aware of my problem, I try to resist the temptation to purchase again one more for my collection.  It is hard but I think I can do it, with the help of my fellow bloggers, and the fact that my check book stands strong with a firm no!



I also have a bit of a pen, pencil, and writing paraphernalia fetish, but that is an entirely different story....or should I say "horse of another color". :-)
Do you have writing tools that you must have?

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Home Made


Linking with Poetry Jam go there if you are hungry for more. :-)



"For the spirit of Christmas fulfils the greatest hunger of mankind."
 ~Loring A. Schuler




That is where all things big and small are made.  This place we call home.  It is a little different for us all, like an assortment of cookies for a Holiday party at Christmas Eve.  For some it is a wonderful mix in a bowl and others it is a burned and crumbly mess, but it is what it is.  All our integrity, hopes, cares, sense of what matters are born and bred here, like the mixing of the oatmeal, the sugar, and the butterscotch chips.  We become a batch stirred and baked for all to see when we leave those kitchen walls. 
In the kitchen I grew up in, my father was the nurturer and cook.  He was the one that tucked us in bed, wiped on the vicks vapor rub when we were sick, checked to make sure we were covered up at night, and baked us cookies and fruit cake to give our teachers at Christmas time.  It was a wonderful ritual that we had every year to make a batch of butterscotch cookies to enjoy and share with others during the Holiday season.  My father being an aeronautics engineer was a true perfectionist.  Things were always in their place and measured perfectly, so you can imagine that baking cookies was quite the endeavor.  It was an experience that I consider to be a beautiful gift of time with my Dad.  We made more than butterscotch cookies all those Christmas's ago, we made wonderful memories that are a little morsel of the person I am today.
My Dad and I Christmas 1982.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Drifting Apart



"We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty,
driven from end to end."
~Blaise Pascal



 
We were two different countries
 within the same continent you and I.

Your ways were not my own,
although we stood there side by side.

My gravel roads led to your winding highways
that seemed to never end,

and I knew where you were going
just as you understood where I had been.

Yet somewhere between the new frontier
and old roads in need of repair,

an ocean grew amidst this continent
like the shifting plates of hearts and cares.




I have married twice and both times it has been a process much like shifting plates of the earth crust.  The ground has shifted beneath my feet, and I have been unable to remain in the place that I once stood.  I guess I could look at it as a loss or an utter failure, but I choose not to.  I have learned more from these 2 different and both difficult men than they will have ever truly learned from me.  I have come to understand that there is no perfect person and we are all products of our past and the places we come from.  We do not get to have a road map of the human heart.  I only know that  I love them both and always will.  Yes that sounds crazy, but I have always believed that if you truly love someone, and I am not talking about romantic love, I am speaking of the love that one has for a fellow human being in this life, then that love never ends nor stops.  You cannot turn love off like water in a faucet, nor should you even try, but you can learn from relationships good or bad and you can hope to make better decisions moving forward in the future.


Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Life Lessons

Object to be Destroyed by Man Ray


The Mag #146


In our living room we had a beautiful piano with a metronome that my mother made my brother use when he learned to play.  Of course, he really did not choose to take piano lessons, this was a dream of my mother's.  She played beautifully by ear, and wanted him to master the piano by the book, correctly note by note.  Although he became quite good, I think he resented the tedious practice he invested in a dream that was not his own.  Sadly, my mother passed away when my brother was merely 15 years old, and though he had already given up the lessons a year or two earlier, he would never touch that piano again after her death.  It always seemed like such a shame to me, that such talent would be wasted, but it was not my decision to make.  He had endured the many hours of practice, not for his own dreams, but for our mother's longing to pass down a legacy of musical craftsmanship. 

Many years have passed now, and both my brother and mother have been gone for over 10 years.  I have raised children of my own, followed my own dreams, and dealt with my own misguided hardships along the way.  It is in those experiences that I have learned that nothing is ever insignificant, meaningless nor wasted time.  Each moment and everything that happens has a bigger purpose at its core.  Sometimes we learn things in the empty spaces, the cracks in the china that cannot be seen,the notes that were never played, and the piano lessons that were never completed.  My brother may not have appreciated the gift he had been given, but its blessings have expanded outward like ripples in a pond.  What he experienced, and how he dealt with it, influenced my reaction to many things in my life as well.  Whenever I have been faced with a difficult situation or a chore I did not want to deal with, I have indirectly responded to many of the struggles remembering the loss he sustained.  All the drudgery of practice and pushing the keys of a dream that he never truly held within his heart and hands seemed aimless, but it was not.  It taught me a great lesson about life, beauty, and the significance of everything.