You have to read a lot of poems - till you come to the one that is the poem that is sitting there waiting for you - like a rock - like a bird - like a footprint from someone else - someone else who wants to walk around inside your heart - and talk.
@ Andy Costello
March 1, 2022
(a) Andy Costello
March 1, 2022
March 3, 2022
DIGGING
By Seamus Heaney
Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping
sound When the spade sinks into gravelly
ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the
flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years
away Stooping in rhythm through potato
drills Where he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the
shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly. He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge
deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked, Loving their cool hardness in our hands. By God, the old man could handle a
spade. Just like his old man. My grandfather cut more turf in a day Than any other man on Toner’s bog. Once I carried him milk in a bottle Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up To drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods Over his shoulder, going down and down For the good turf. Digging. The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and
slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I’ve no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it.
Seamus Heaney,
"Digging" from Death of a Naturalist. Copyright 1966 by
Seamus Heaney. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC,
http://us.macmillan.com/fsg. All rights reserved.
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March 3, 2022
Reflection
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
March 2, 2022
BROWN
Brown: the color of earth, the color of humility, the
color of wood, the color of foundations – the down below. Brown: fundamental and non-splashy. It’s there, but there
and not noticed. I ask tiny kids in classrooms, “Favorite color?” and as I speed around the room, out come all the
colors, but rarely brown – even from brown kids. Brown – the color of food before it grows – earth – soil
– and the color of food when it’s all finished, and it comes out of the bowels
of our earth. Brown – can’t picture any flags with brown in its fabric
– yet the soldiers below – wear brown uniforms. The big shots know that those
who die for and with the flag will be fighting
in mud and holes – down there - down in
the earth. The parents know that’s the
color of graves – on all 4 sides of the rectangular hole that the casket is lowered
into. Brown – a nice sound – a poet’s word – rhymes with town,
clown, down, and sounds like crown – feels like solid, wood, earth, doesn’t
feel like water or sky. Brown …. Too many of us have not experienced dirt roads – country
roads – back roads – that are twisty, narrow and can get washed out. The metaphor is lost with macadam and super-highways and
city streets. “Afoot and light hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.” Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road, I
A penny for the Old Guy I We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together As quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar. Shape without form, shade without color, Paralyzed force, gesture without meaning.
from T.S. Eliot
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
March 1, 2022
Reflection
March 1, 2022
Thought for Today
“Beneath the cross of Christ, one learns to love.”
