How Do I Love Thee...

Let me count the ways...63 of them. Nine artists, seven inchies each to create this very special Valentine mosaic. Thanks Harriet Swindell, Peggy Wade, PJ Dutton, Julie Snidle, Cathy Flesher, Carol Dickson, Bev Powell, and Lisa Gendron.

Painting Trees

When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,"
and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

~ Mary Oliver ~

Misty's self-portrait challenge

Inspired by Misty Mawn's self-portrait challenge and today's plans cancelled by ice, this is how I spent the day. The writing is Wild Geese, a favorite poem by the wonderful Mary Oliver.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

--Mary Oliver

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season.

The digital collage above was inspired by dj pettitt. The original can be seen here, look at November 5, 2008. When I first saw it, I was inspired to create my own version for Christmas cards this year. Thanks for the inspiration and the helpful tips, dj.

LK's Day of Sharing Song

“One”

Is it getting better?
Or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you now?
You got someone to blame
You say

One love
One life
When it's one need
In the night
One love
We get to share it
Leaves you baby if you
Don't care for it

Did I disappoint you?
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?
You act like you never had love
And you want me to go without
Well it's

Too late
Tonight
To drag the past out into the light
We're one, but we're not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other
One

Have you come here for forgiveness?
Have you come to raise the dead?
Have you come here to play Jesus?
To the lepers in your head

Did I ask too much?
More than a lot.
You gave me nothing,
Now it's all I got
We're one
But we're not the same
Well we
Hurt each other
Then we do it again
You say
Love is a temple
Love a higher law
Love is a temple
Love the higher law
You ask me to enter
But then you make me crawl
And I can't be holding on
To what you got
When all you got is hurt

One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters
Brothers
One life
But we're not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other

One

One

--U2

See the video here.


Link to more participating artists at LK's blog.

Rest in peace, LeeAnne.

For LK

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches

of other lives --

tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,

hanging

from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning,

feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides

with perfect courtesy, to let you in!

Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!

Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over

the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint

that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?

Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot

in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself

continually?

Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed

with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left --

fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away

from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is

the mystery, which is death as well as life, and

not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome

with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine

god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,

nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the

present hour,

to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,

to the tiplets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night.

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult

than the wakening from a little sleep.

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said

to the wild roses:

deny me not,

but suffer my devotion.

Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge-red,

hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,

caution and prudence?

Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.

A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next

is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,

upon the immutable.

What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daises,

and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,

I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb, I backtrack.

I float.

I ramble my way home.

~ Mary Oliver ~


(West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems, New and Selected Poems, Volume Two)

Hear Mary Oliver read this and many other lovely poems here.