May First, 2024

It’s hard to let go of National Poetry Writing Month. Last night I was glad to watch an array of people reading a stunning array of poems to close out the month and help raise funds for poetry in the schools and other good causes. Thank you Academy of American Poets for that fine ending to April.

I sat awhile today watching the birds. I finally made a list (see at the end of this) and found I had identified by sight sixteen species of birds in just a couple hours and it was a good thing. Beautiful songs, varying behaviors, coming to the little space where I provide food and water with lots of places for them to hang out safely. I was quite honored by their presence, humbled really. There’s so much good and beauty in the world if we stop and look for it.

The still light of afternoon
shimmering with song, of
so many birds. I weep
for their colors, for knowing
their names, that they come
here to my tiny yard.
Perhaps the clatter of life grinds
but here we are and I am
second coffee to the left
a hedgerow of spent daffodils
separating me from the road
So much today is flying
even the sotto voce clouds
even as they whisper by

Below: Rose-breasted Grosbeak and Baltimore Orioles.

I saw:

• Ruby-throated hummingbirds
• Red-bellied woodpecker
• Downy woodpecker
• Blue jay
• Black-capped chickadee
• Tufted titmouse
• White-breasted nuthatch
• Gray catbird
• American robin
• House finch
• White-crowned sparrow
• Baltimore orioles
• Red-winged blackbird
• Common grackle
• Northern cardinal
• Rose-breasted grosbeak

May First, 2024

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 27

Really? A sonnet? An American sonnet you suggest, NaPoWriMo? I had a day. So here ya go.

Woke up this morning wanting to paint
Wanting to use the vacuum cleaner
Not wanting to think it had been awhile
Made breakfast to let me feel normal
Sat down and painted a landscape
some clouds, some blue sky, some hills
why so pastel hills, I wonder
why is my palette so messy? so of course
I spent time cleaning all the corners
dug out two blues and spread fresh paint
Noting that a couple tubes were almost spent
Of course I went to the art store and
then the grocery store, just to feel normal.

From the Quote Box:

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 27

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 7

Woke today to weather maps that promised: “incomplete obscuration of the sun during totality” which of course is the moon’s job. Half of the weather service seems focused on how to describe statistics so you spend enough time trying to figure out what the percentages are describing and what it means to you, perhaps until you lose interest. The other half are apparently celebrating poetry month with seven syllable phrases like “incomplete obscuration”. Here, it’s going to be too cloudy but have a free haiku line.

On the other side
of these clouds
Where we imagine
Our long gone family,
Our cats and dogs, our beliefs,
Some off-screen
Coincidence of sun and moon
And us plays out unseen
These things, like so much
Of each long life that
nightly fills the darkness
With if onlys

After weeks of watching
The hopeful weather reports
Of course it’s cloudy

This time, memory
Of the last eclipse we saw
Will have to suffice

weathermen forecast
incomplete obscuration
clouding the future

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 7

Long way ’round back home

I went and did a couple errands with mom and then we had dinner. We were admiring the variety of clouds and she suggested we go to my normal look out near her to take some photos. Brought her back home and then took the long rambling way back home, stopping a few times to take more photos. Got home and did this, which really didn’t look like any of the clouds specifically but the landscape was pretty close, what there was of it.

Long way ’round back home

Sunday Concert – or All About Lyrics and Music

This morning I squeezed in a little time with a couple fountain pens. One, the Pineider Avatar TTT needed cleaning so I could move it from blue to red ink (Diamine Poppy Red) and the other, my Sailor Pro Gear – Stellar Black Hole needed a refill. All successful and writing well and minimal mess!

Then I put on “real” clothes after some reinforcing coffee and breakfast and picked up Mom for an afternoon concert at Troy Music Hall.

The program was “Music for Peace in a Time of War” with two pieces. The first was Franz Joseph Haydn’s Missa in Tempore Belli, which was written in 1796 in the period of war in Europe following the French revolution. I found it interesting to have parts of a mass in waltz time but it did make for very lyrical parts. After intermission the baritone soloist Philip Lima read a poem by Charles Anthony Silvestri, Peace is Fire! Then “Dona Nobis Pacem” by Ralph Vaughn Williams began.

Afterwards I looked up what had been mentioned, that Williams had served in World War One (in his 40’s!) and then was very affected when the signs of a second world war were apparent. This was written and first performed in 1936. It is written around three Walt Whitman poems, a mass, the bible and a political speech.

Both pieces were well received by the audience who gave a standing ovation at the end.

Afterwards Mom and I took ourselves to Dinosaur BBQ for a delicious dinner. Brought her home, came home myself to the delightful music of Paul Simon:

Peace like a river ran through the city
Long past the midnight curfew
We sat starry-eyed
Oh, we were satisfied

And I remember
Misinformation followed us like a plague
Nobody knew from time to time
If the plans were changed
Oh, if the plans were changed

You can beat us with wires
You can beat us with chains
You can run out your rules
But you know you can’t outrun the history train
I‘ve seen a glorious day

Four in the morning
I woke up from out of my dreams
Nowhere to go but back to sleep
But I’m reconciled
Oh, oh, oh, I’m gonna be up for a while
Oh, oh, oh, I’m gonna be up for a while
Oh, oh, oh, I’m gonna be up for a while
— Paul Simon

still a little damp and unflat, but it will get there:

But seriously folks – Paul Simon…

…One and one-half wandering JewsReturned to their natural coasts
To resume old acquaintances
And step out occasionally
And speculate who had been damaged the most
Easy time will determine if these consolations
Will be their reward
The arc of a love affair

Waiting to be restored
You take two bodies and you twirl them into one
Their hearts and their bones
And they won’t come undone
Hearts and bones
Hearts and bones
Hearts and bones

Sunday Concert – or All About Lyrics and Music

May third

Another rainy morning and gray afternoon. I went out in a break and pried up some small pieces (well, one was big enough I had to “roll” it along one edge to move it) of marble, laid out as stepping stones in the yard long long ago. There wasn’t a fancy sunset tonight at all, so I did this based on a photo from a few weeks ago.

May third

May Day!

Happy May Day to all the workers of the world! And Happy May Day to everyone who wrote during National Poetry Writing Month. Big shout out to Maureen the founder of the feast over at napowrimo.net, celebrating twenty years of making poetry happen in April. What a wonderful month of encouragement and inspiration and resources she provides. Rest now until next year!

clouds cannot bear it
clasping themselves as they fly
iron weight of rain

There’s always a chance a haiku will pop up still but this painting was inspired by the drippy, blowy, dark clouds I saw on the way home today. It was not raining but the sun was only hitting parts of the hills.

May Day!

NaPoWriMo 2023 Day 29

The penultimate day of National/Global Poetry Writing Month. This morning I had a surprise waiting for me — a bear had come visiting and couldn’t figure out how to undo the two bungee cords that I secured the almost completely empty metal trash can where I stored my sunflower seeds. So, the bear did what bears do and pried up the lid of the can and bent it in half so he could reach in.

This afternoon I went to Colonie to watch The Return of the Jedi with my former co-worker Chris and his mother. So much detail to see on the big screen. I felt that having watched all the recent additions to the tale, there was even more to see and enjoy here. They have done an impressive job of continuity in the new stories and it doesn’t hurt at all what went before. Just my opinion.

Then dinner with mom and home to paint and write. Hopefully the bear won’t find anything more to investigate. I threw the cupful or so of see left into the thick of the dog roses out front.

In spring, bear visits.
too groggy to untie cords
he bends back the lid.

In spring, bear visits.
he slept long until hungry
and he smelled birdseed

In spring, bear visits.
bungee cords were too strong but
the lid bent in half.

In spring, bear visits.
He broke open the trash can
for a cup of seed.

NaPoWriMo 2023 Day 29

NaPoWriMo 2023 Day 26

Mom and I went to a garden center and had a good time looking at the first wave of plants. I went because I needed a couple “models” for painting now that the daffodils are past, and I need to think about what to put where the shrubs were. The shrubs now piled along the driveway. It was bright and sunny when we were out and when I got home there were big clouds and spits of rain.

There are days I am
here I am here I am here
other days, barely.

first shop for flowers.
a cart follows us around
who snuck all those in?

piles of pruning,
labor of an afternoon,
line the driveway

cutting it away
putting stuff for donation
but where does it go?

NaPoWriMo 2023 Day 26

NaPoWriMo 2023 Day 24

this month seems to be flying by with all the haiku and paintings stacking up. Today’s painting is not based in reality, unlike yesterday’s.

morning came too soon
because sleep spent the night
avoiding me

early breaking news
brought giggles to many
and schadenfreude

come out to the sun
in between the rain showers
look for new green shoots

Clouds hurrying past
One potted plant has new shoots
showing finally

NaPoWriMo 2023 Day 24