Thought for the Day

“Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.” 
― Thích Nhất Hạnh

Lunch Line

Lunch Line

young girl waits
turns to classmates
bumps and grinds
a game of pretention
masturbation
she giggles
shocking us who
are waiting too

Poetry Workshop With Ruth Moose

Why write a poem?  Ruth says, "because I was given it to write."  She wrote the book, "Laundry."

Laundry 
Ruth Moose

All our life 

so much laundry; 

each day’s doing or not 

comes clean, 

flows off and away 

to blend with other sins 

of this world. Each day 

begins in new skin, 

blessed by the elements 

charged to take us 

out again to do or undo 

what’s been assigned. 

From socks to shirts 

the selves we shed 

lift off the line 

as if they own 

a life apart 

from the one we offer. 

There is joy in clean laundry. 

All is forgiven in water, sun 

and air. We offer our day’s deeds 

to the blue-eyed sky, with soap and prayer, 

our arms up, then lowered in supplication.

Those Winter Sundays

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 rise and dress, 

fearing the chronic angers of that house, 

Speaking indifferently to him, 

who had driven out the cold 

and polished my good shoes as well. 

What did I know, what did I know 

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Note:  Your Daily Poem 
           Library of Congress
           Writers' Almanac
           Academy of American Poets

Child Sexual Abuse

Workshop

Blacknall Presbyterian Church -- Wednesday

Great Poem by Amy Lowell

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171725

Patterns

BY AMY LOWELL

I walk down the garden paths, 

And all the daffodils 

Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.   

I walk down the patterned garden paths   

In my stiff, brocaded gown. 

With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,   

I too am a rare 

Pattern. As I wander down 

The garden paths. 

My dress is richly figured,   

And the train 

Makes a pink and silver stain   

On the gravel, and the thrift   

Of the borders. 

Just a plate of current fashion, 

Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes. 

Not a softness anywhere about me,   

Only whale-bone and brocade.   

And I sink on a seat in the shade   

Of a lime tree. For my passion   

Wars against the stiff brocade.   

The daffodils and squills 

Flutter in the breeze 

As they please. 

And I weep; 

For the lime tree is in blossom 

And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom. 

And the splashing of waterdrops   

In the marble fountain 

Comes down the garden paths.   

The dripping never stops.   

Underneath my stiffened gown 

Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin, 

A basin in the midst of hedges grown 

So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding, 

But she guesses he is near, 

And the sliding of the water 

Seems the stroking of a dear 

Hand upon her. 

What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown! 

I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.   

All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground. 

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,   

And he would stumble after, 

Bewildered by my laughter. 

I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes. 

I would choose 

To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths, 

A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,   

Till he caught me in the shade, 

And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me, 

Aching, melting, unafraid. 

With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,   

And the plopping of the waterdrops, 

All about us in the open afternoon 

I am very like to swoon 

With the weight of this brocade, 

For the sun sifts through the shade. 

Underneath the fallen blossom 

In my bosom, 

Is a letter I have hid. 

It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.   

“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell   

Died in action Thursday sen’night.” 

As I read it in the white, morning sunlight, 

The letters squirmed like snakes. 

“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman. 

“No,” l told him. 

“See that the messenger takes some refreshment. 

No, no answer.” 

And I walked into the garden, 

Up and down the patterned paths, 

In my stiff, correct brocade. 

The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,   

Each one. 

I stood upright too, 

Held rigid to the pattern 

By the stiffness of my gown.   

Up and down I walked,   

Up and down. 

In a month he would have been my husband.   

In a month, here, underneath this lime,   

We would have broke the pattern; 

He for me, and I for him, 

He as Colonel, I as Lady, 

On this shady seat. 

He had a whim 

That sunlight carried blessing. 

And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”   

Now he is dead. 

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk 

Up and down 

The patterned garden paths   

In my stiff, brocaded gown.   

The squills and daffodils 

Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.   

I shall go 

Up and down, 

In my gown. 

Gorgeously arrayed, 

Boned and stayed. 

And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace   

By each button, hook, and lace. 

For the man who should loose me is dead, 

Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, 

In a pattern called a war. 

Christ! What are patterns for?

Pope John Paul Had a Romantic Side

    This fascinating article on Pope John Paul was posted on the BBC this morning.  Letters have been found of his decades long friendship with a Polish woman.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35552997

He Wrote Back

Once upon a time,
a black woman and a white man
got married in Washington, D. C.
The police arrested them and
sent them to jail.

They had to leave the state.
One night the woman sat down
and wrote a letter to Bobby
Kennedy.
He wrote back.
And that's what led to the overturn
of laws in the U. S that
kept black people and white people
from getting married.