IF

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

But make allowance for their doubting too,

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If ( Read more... )

Winter Conversation

I listen to you explain the difference
between a right brain thought and a left.
I am distracted by the smell
of cold on your face.
I lick it away like a child
with an ice cream cone
sticky fingers and sweet tongue.

Aware that I have been here before
I pause in your words.
I have slept in this flesh,
dreamed these winter bones.

Waking in ( Read more... )

 Poem of the day ( Read more... )

 Autumn

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a grayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

--Emily Dickinson

School started up again yesterday for the fall semester.  Before class I sat outside in the courtyard reviewing my notes and watched a reception occur on the other side of the courtyard.  They were serving little snacks and drinks, everything from soda to wine to Heinekin.  My guess is it was something for the day MBA students.  There are times I ( Read more... )

The Courage of Women

I think of the courage of women,
how they endure,
how they walk miles to carry back water,
silence their pain, apportion
what's left of the rice.
Keepers of eggs without shells,
they know how fragile the days are
how hope can spill into the ground.

--Jane Glazer

And with that, I am off to NC for 4 days!  See y'all later!

Happy birthday Dorothy Parker!  In honor of Dorothy's birthday, I'd like to present the following poem ( Read more... )

Giving

You think I give myself to you?
Not so, my friend, you do not see
My single purpose and intent--
To make you give myself to me.

--Nora B. Cunningham

2 Poems to share today.  Stay cool, everyone!

Love-Sweetness

Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
In gracious fostering union garlanded;
Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
On cheeks and neck and eyelids ( Read more... )

Domesticities

We ate from the dish of eyes
and as eyes met, making out
light by darkness, we hungered:
the dish is a questioning of the dish.

We drank from the cup of hands
and as hands met, reaching down
for what was up, we thirsted:
the cup is a questioning of the cup.

We slept in the bed of flesh
and as flesh met, melting back
to the lost action, we kept
( Read more... )