I know I said I'd post last week about my friend Oi Yin, who died recently of pancreatic cancer.  I actually started a post and had to delete it because it just sounded so bitter. I was angry, and really just couldn't get past that. It's just a terribly unfair situation for her family.

Her husband, Raf, used to sit next to me at work.  He was a ( Read more... )

Last week pretty much sucked, and I'm really hoping this week will be better.  I was looking through some poetry I'd saved and found this poem which cheered me up a little.  This is such a depressing time of year - I try to remember to find joy and hope where ever I can.

The Darkling Thrush
by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was ( Read more... )

February: Thinking of Flowers
by Jane Kenyon

Now wind torments the field,
turning the white surface back
on itself, back and back on itself,
like an animal licking a wound.

Nothing but white--the air, the light;
only one brown milkweed pod
bobbing in the gully, smallest
brown boat on the immense tide.

A single green sprouting thing
would restore me. . . .

Then ( Read more... )

This is a bit late (Imbolg is usually celebrated on February 2nd), but I just got around to having my own personal Imbolg ritual tonight.  Originally I was going to celebrate with my friends, but the snow put a halt to that.  Yes, Imbolg is a celebration of the beginning of spring.  It's always a bummer when your "Welcome Spring!" ritual gets ( Read more... )

Those Winter Sundays         
by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would ( Read more... )

The Lanyard - Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
( Read more... )

May Day, by Sarah Teasdale

A delicate fabric of bird song
Floats in the air,
The smell of wet wild earth
Is everywhere.

Red small leaves of the maple
Are clenched like a hand,
Like girls at their first communion
The pear trees stand.

Oh I must pass nothing by
Without loving it much,
The raindrop try with my lips,
( Read more... )

This Imbolg has been very meaningful for me.  This year has gotten off to a rough start from a spiritual perspective - lots of tension, lots of questioning, and not feeling a lot of reassurance from the God and Goddess.  Usually I can feel their presence in my everyday life, sometimes through people I meet, sometimes through nature, sometimes ( Read more... )

You are tired ( Read more... )

Heart Prayer

You can only pray what's in your heart

so if your heart is being ripped from your chest
pray the tearing

if your heart is full of bitterness
pray it to the last dreg

if your heart is a river gone wild
pray the torrent

or a lava flow scorching the mountain
pray the fire

pray the scream in your heart
the fanning bellows

pray the ( Read more... )