Monday, December 16, 2013

To the Long Nights Full Moon, and the approaching Winter Solstice!!



Merry (almost) Winter Solstice to all!!  This poem goes out with love to Annie Gartlan and John McArthur, for just being friends in that true sense of the word, and for knowing and understanding snow in Steamboat Springs, Colorado!  xo  Elizabeth

Report from the West

Snow is falling west of here. The mountains have more than a
foot of it. I see the early morning sky dark as night. I won't lis-
ten to the weather report. I'll let the question of snow hang.
Answers only dull the senses. Even answers that are right often
make what they explain uninteresting. In nature the answers
are always changing. Rain to snow, for instance. Nature can
let the mysterious things alone—wet leaves plastered to tree
trunks, the intricate design of fish guts. The way we don't fall
off the earth at night when we look up at the North Star. The
way we know this may not always be so. The way our dizziness
makes us grab the long grass, hanging by our fingertips on the
edge of infinity.


Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Happy Birthday week to Micah who turned 12!!!! With love from mom ~

This week, I am featuring my son's quotes over the years, which are poetry:



“Our house is a whole universe to the spider. I wonder how long it would take a spider to get to CA.”

“The first place I’ll never go.”


“The teabag is watching you.”  Age 3 and a half.

“I was born unusual.”  Age 5

"Lustrous Orb" was declared as a gift to his Pokemon, at a Pokemon party for Lugia when he was 6.

“We have no choice but to travel at that speed.” Micah said this at the Poetry Center in reference to tesseracts when he was in 4th grade.

Micah said to me on Mother’s Day 2009, “Mom, there is a continent named Mazurksy”.

“This Is NOT a Surprise Party.” August 22nd, 2010

Micah said to me, “I love you more than the universe’s stretch.”  August, 2011

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

thanks & gratitude within the circle of this life! and happy hanukkah ~


Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Here's to our new dog India!



If Feeling Isn't In It

You can take it away, as far as I'm concerned—I'd rather spend the afternoon with a nice dog. I'm not kidding. Dogs have what a lot of poems lack: excitements and responses, a sense of play the ability to impart warmth, elation . . . .
                                                                                   Howard Moss

Dogs will also lick your face if you let them.
Their bodies will shiver with happiness.
A simple walk in the park is just about
the height of contentment for them, followed
by a bowl of food, a bowl of water,
a place to curl up and sleep. Someone
to scratch them where they can't reach
and smooth their foreheads and talk to them.
Dogs also have a natural dislike of mailmen
and other bringers of bad news and will
bite them on your behalf. Dogs can smell
fear and also love with perfect accuracy.
There is no use pretending with them.
Nor do they pretend. If a dog is happy
or sad or nervous or bored or ashamed
or sunk in contemplation, everybody knows it.
They make no secret of themselves.
You can even tell what they're dreaming about
by the way their legs jerk and try to run
on the slippery ground of sleep.
Nor are they given to pretentious self-importance.
They don't try to impress you with how serious
or sensitive they are. They just feel everything
full blast. Everything is off the charts
with them. More than once I've seen a dog
waiting for its owner outside a café
practically implode with worry. “Oh, God,
what if she doesn't come back this time?
What will I do? Who will take care of me?
I loved her so much and now she's gone
and I'm tied to a post surrounded by people
who don't look or smell or sound like her at all.”
And when she does come, what a flurry
of commotion, what a chorus of yelping
and cooing and leaps straight up into the air!
It's almost unbearable, this sudden
fullness after such total loss, to see
the world made whole again by a hand
on the shoulder and a voice like no other.