Friday thises and thatses

The courtyard, yesterday afternoon

Yes, we are lucky. For a rent some folks might be tempted to engage in criminal activity to pay on this exceedingly overpriced island, we get to come home through a lovely lush garden we call a courtyard. It is designed and sometimes tenderly attended to by a tall woman who has done the work for little or nothing in payment as she uses it as a showplace for other clients of hers who, I dare say, pay her well as she is a most professional landscape artist. Only about 15 years ago, the soil here was spent, the place was pathetic looking but for our trees, although they too needed some trimming. Now they get it, and when she isn’t here she has some of our lovely custodial staff trained to tend to things quite well enough on a daily basis.

I came across this last night; I just love this chap’s contribution to literature.

Song of the Open Road

I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I’ll never see a tree at all.

Ogden Nash

Righto; it is Friday, the snow has finished its major activity for the time being, and I thought I’d leave a whittery bit or two here. Have a lovely time of it, wherever you were.

Oh, you know those three words? Yes, you do; the three words that make up the most gorgeous phrase in the whole world? In some languages they keep it to two, but in English it is three. I heard those yesterday. This morning, remembering, I thought “Did I really? Was it just a dream?” But since often enough she speaks to me in dreams, in any case I know I heard them. Guess what I did? Soooooooooooo unoriginal: I said the same thing back to her, heart pounding the whole time. I love unsensible moments; my spirit gets so beamingly recharged. They are used so carefully that when they come … oh, it’s a treasure for my soul.

Umm … Okie McDokie. Whittering below.

A smile lives

A smile lives
almost permanently on my face
when not so long ago these muscles
nearly rebelled against such unfamiliar
activity

Shadows come
bolder in their limitations
in emphatic juxtaposition
to the light through which at intervals
they cut their keen and narrow paths

Suddenly a design forms
wherein every day is sacred
remembering again to keep it so
as snowflakes dance open and careening
in blessing on this gray half-lit afternoon

There is a voice heard through its constancy
shelter
in every woman’s face there is an aspect beloved
lines and mystery
surprise and history

Someone came once to say
it’s all good and though in me
and for me this is so
I would say that some of it is hard
and feels all wrong

My winterscape
driving snow predicting spring’s arrival
not so far away
longer light reveals hope
renewal comes again

Synapses

Where
a thick gathering of elders transformed
into pine trees
scent the breezes as they pass
like lives across this planet

Synapses
expanding through stars
universe connections
their sparks transmit across my imagination
enfranchising every broken transmitter

Gone
when did the wheel get formed
after someone sliced a log
they began to need more fallen trees
leading all the way to paper journeys