"Love After Love"

From a West Indian poet during National Poetry month:

Derek Walcott was born in St. Lucia and now lives in Trinidad where my daughter and her family lives. My favorite poem of his is one I've treasured for a long time. It gave me hope that I could be found when I felt lost and then it gave me back my heart when I was in need of that gift. I've loved it ever since and it means more to me each tine I read it. It's wise.


Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door,
in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread.
Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott
From Collected Poems 1948-1984

Has a poem ever helped you through a tough time?

" The Necessity for Irony"

From an Irish Poet during National Poetry Month:

Another of my favorite poets is Eavan Boland, an Irish poet who writes about myth, history but also her life and the experiences we all have. She writes in a fresh way that makes things, nonetheless, familiar.


The Necessity for Irony

On Sundays,
when the rain held off,
after lunch or later,
I would go with my twelve year old
daughter into town
and put down the time
at junk sales, antique fairs.

There I would
lean over tables,
absorbed by lace, wooden frames,
glass. My daughter stood
at the other end of the room,
her flame colored hair
obvious whenever-
which was not often-

I turned around.
I turned around.
She was gone.
Grown. No longer ready
to come with me, whenever
a dry Sunday
held out it's promises
of small histories. Endings.

When I was young
I studied styles: their use
and origin. Which age
was known for which
ornament: and was always drawn
to a lyric speech, a civil tone.
But never thought
I would have the need,
as I do now, for a darker one:

Spirit of irony,
my caustic author
of the past, of memory,-
and of it's pain, which returns
hurts, stings-reproach me now,
remind me
that I was in those rooms,
with my child,
with my back turned to her,
searching- oh irony!-
for beautiful things.

Eavan Boland
From The Lost Land


This reminds me to cherish each moment of now less I search for beautiful things and miss what's most important in my life.


Dedicated to my daughter.

New Awning, New Room

After the profound poetry I've been re-reading for postings this month, something simple and wonderful happened. Our balcony faces south so the good news is it has sun all day. On hot days, some of which we've been conjuring up lately, it's too hot to sit out mid-day. But, last week our local Home Depot type of store had a special on awnings and one of them coordinated beautifully with our apartment colors and my next door neighbor and I decided to buy one each.

The men came today to put it up and I love it! It provides just the right shade to use the balcony for all three meals and projects and lounging and reading, etc. So one awning provides a whole new room. That's all from my little corner of Italy. Nothing heavy, deep or real just a new way to enjoy my life here. Simple pleasures, wonderful enough in their own right.

"The Wild Iris"

From an American Poet during National Poetry Month:

Louise Gluck is one of my favorite poets. One I go to when I want to enter a new world, want to see things in a new way or to be amazed and delighted. My copy of one of her books, The Wild Iris, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1993, is worn by my many returns to it's pages. The signature poem of this remarkable series is entitled "The Wild Iris" and, like all the poems in the book, speaks in the voice of the flower.


The Wild Iris

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Here me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.

Louise Gluck


How remarkable to see the world through the eyes of an iris, to hear its descriptions of the world, to recognize its wisdom.

"I Said to Poetry"

From an African American author during National Poetry month:

I Said to Poetry

I said to Poetry: "I'm finished
with you."
Having to almost die
before some wierd light
comes creeping through
is no fun.
"No thank you, Creation,
no muse need apply.
Im out for good times--
at the very least,
some painless convention."
Poetry laid back
and played dead
until this morning.
I wasn't sad or anything,
only restless.

Poetry said: "You remember
the desert, and how glad you were
that you have an eye
to see it with? You remember
that, if ever so slightly?"
I said: "I didn't hear that.
Besides, it's five o'clock in the a.m.
I'm not getting up
in the dark
to talk to you."

Poetry said: "But think about the time
you saw the moon
over that small canyon
that you liked so much better
than the grand one--and how suprised you were
that the moonlight was green
and you still had
one good eye
to see it with

Think of that!"

"I'll join the church!" I said,
huffily, turning my face to the wall.
"I'll learn how to pray again!"

"Let me ask you," said Poetry.
"When you pray, what do you think
you'll see?"

Poetry had me.

"There's no paper
in this room," I said.
"And that new pen I bought
makes a funny noise."

"Bullshit," said Poetry.
"Bullshit," said I.

Written by Alice Walker

Alice Walker is a wise woman and a poet/ writer who understands the world around and within her. You know what she's saying, don't you? But, April is the month that celebrates the taking of pen to paper (or cursor to screen) so that poetry can say to us: "think about the time…" and we do and we capture it.

Do you write poetry?

Eat Locally

Barbara Kingsolver's first non-fiction book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year Of Food Life is a great read that really made me think. It presents her disturbing research about the current state of the food industry and chronicles her family's year of eating food grown either in their own garden, in their neighborhood, or doing without it. Revolutionary concept these days and not easy, as her book describes. But she also shows it can be delicious fun. She includes favorite family recipes with most chapters. 


Turns out that eating locally is not only good for our bodies but good for our planet since it uses less fuel to get to our plate and maintains diversity. Farmer's markets are plentiful here in Italy (ours is on Wednesdays) and in most States as well. Our stalls carry the veggies and fruits picked that day by our local farmers and sold by them or their family. They sell direct, I know their name, I hug the woman who calls "Bella, Bella" as I approach. The food is fresh, I can get cooking suggestions or recipes, the food is abundant. 

Local food is different, more diverse, not just chosen for its ability to survive long distances. For example, delicate edible flowers or a tomato that looks like a little soft green pumpkin but is the yummiest, juiciest, tastiest tomato ever! The older women selling them swoon over them and get me over my American reluctance to buy tomatoes that aren't red and I buy them and then get oh, so rewarded with every caprese sandwich or salad I eat. Local food hasn't had to survive long trips from wherever during which time all its nutrients fall out. It still has its nutrients. It's food not just food cadavers. 

Do you know where your food comes from? Who has grown it? Have you been surprised or delighted by your food lately? Wouldn't you like to be?

Then, delight your senses, make your body healthier, support local farmers, save the environment and heal the planet. Eat locally grown food.


Do you have a farmers' markets in your area?

Spring Gratitude

Poems added for National Poetry month


I thank you God for this most amazing day, 

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, 

and for the blue dream of sky 

and for everything which is natural, 

which is infinite, which is yes. 


~ e. e. cummings




These photos are from a trip this weekend to friends in Arsita, Italy up into the Apenine Mountains on a perfect Spring day.


Gran Sasso

Winding Mountain Road

New Green on Old Stone

Peach Tree Blooms

Daisies in Ancient Cobblestones

Tile Roofs and Mountains

Spring Clouds on Gran Sasso

Threshold of Spring
Rilke

Harshness gone. All at once caring spreads over
the naked gray of the meadows.
Tiny rivulets sing in different voices.
A softness, as if from everywhere,


is touching the earth.
Paths appear across the land and beckon.
Surprised once again you sense
its coming in the empty tree.

(Uncollected Poems)

Taken  from A Year With Rilke 

posted  today 

by Lorenzo and Ruth.

"Remembering"

To celebrate National Poetry month


Remembering


And you wait. You wait for the one thing
that will change your life,
make it more than it is--
something wonderful, exceptional,
stones awakening, depths opening to you.

In the dusky bookstalls
old books glimmer gold and brown.
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.

And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.



Rilke




This wise poem by Rilke reminds me to be grateful for my life just as it is. It is already exceptional; stones awaken and depths open to me in the family and friends with whom I have the great honor to be in relationship. On this journey through remarkable lands, I've discovered treasures, and one of them is me "in all my longings and hesitations". I have enough. I am enough. 

For more inspiration by Rilke, give yourself the gift of  "A Year With Rilke" generously posted by Lorenzo and Ruth.