Transfiguration
Today’s poem was written just for me. (And every other woman I know, but mostly me.)
**
Transfiguration
by Kate Baer
I dreamt myself into a mother,
but when I became her, I had to
dream her back into a woman
back into a woman
back into a woman
again.
Heavy by Mary Oliver
Luke Knight, We sit and watch. via The Auction Collective
Heavy
by Mary Oliver
That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,
as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
“It is not the weight you carry
but how you carry it—
books, bricks, grief—
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?
Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?
How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled—
roses in the wind,
The sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?
Doris Derby, Photographer
Doris Derby went behind the scenes of the Civil Rights movement, to capture the everyday lives of women and children.
A parishioner of the Union Baptist church in South Carolina in 1972.
Sleeping children in Rome, Miss., in 1968
Outside a Black-ownded grocery store on a Sunday in Mileston, Miss., 1968
Alice Walker
For the Love of Dogs
Pasaba Por Alli, Tomasa Martin via Saatchi Art
“Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly anxious or low or shameful, I just press my head into my dog’s belly and listen to her heartbeat. She sleeps so soundly, so entirely and her heart is so steady, it makes me feel fixed. She’s taught me, through our almost eleven years of living together, to not take myself so seriously all the time. About five years ago I realized that when I look at her, I immediately smile, and I wondered what would happen if I did that for myself. If I smiled at myself when I looked into the mirror. I do it all the time now and let me tell you, it is life changing.” - Ada Limon, The Slowdown.
Urban Softness
Gregory Prestegord, Paris
Gregory Prestegord, Soft Orchestra
Gregory Prestegord, Dancer
After the Opera
Matthias Lupri, After the Opera
Matthias Lupri, Tanglewood, Sunflowers and Camilia
I think this is Matthias Lupri, but I don’t know for sure. I couldn’t see through the window and can’t find it online!
Covid Days
Art: Philip Geiger
“And then it is another day and another and another, but I will not go on about this because no doubt you too have experienced time.”
Perhaps the World Ends Here
Carrie Mae Weems - Untitled, from The Kitchen Table Series, 1990
Perhaps the World Ends Here
by Joy Harjo
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
Alone
Les Goodman
***
Alone
by Jack Gilbert
I never thought Michiko would come back
after she died. But if she did, I knew
it would be as a lady in a long white dress.
It is strange that she has returned
as somebody's dalmatian. I meet
the man walking her on a leash
almost every week. He says good morning
and I stoop down to calm her. He said
once that she was never like that with
other people. Sometimes she is tethered
on their lawn when I go by. If nobody
is around, I sit on the grass. When she
finally quiets, she puts her head in my lap
and we watch each other's eyes as I whisper
in her soft ears. She cares nothing about
the mystery. She likes it best when
I touch her head and tell her small
things about my days and our friends.
That makes her happy the way it always did.
Reasons to stay alive
Lora Mathis
“The key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept thoughts, but don’t become them. Understand for instance, that having a sad thought, even having a continual succession of sad thoughts, is not the same thing as being a sad person. You can walk through a storm and feel the wind but you know you are not the wind.
Hope isn’t about waiting for a hypothetical future. Hope is finding the goodness in the dark and protecting it like a flame.
”
Some Nights
Marie Grace Soriano
***
Some Nights
by Kate Baer
Some nights she walks out to the
driveway where the lilacs bloom and
lies down on the warm pavement even
though the neighbors will see and wonder
what kind of woman does such things.
There she stares up at the slender moon
and thinks about the baby albatross filled
with discarded spoons or the time a friend
asked what she was working on these days
and she answered, “Who has the time?”
even though she meant something else
entirely.
Across the lawn the crickets sing while the
earth lets out its tired breath and wanders
through the trees to greet her.
***
Hope, and Other Illusions
Photo: Library of Congress
***
Lone Pine, Calif. May 1942--Three Japanese-American girls with suitcases, who have just arrived by train from Elk Grove and who will be transported by bus from Lone Pine to Manzanar, a war relocation authority center where they will remain for the duration of war.
Royal Academy of Arts
Spirit, photograph - Sarah Collis
Mutabil, oil - Anthony Daley
The Thinker, Toad Dynasty, oil on linen - Anna Dickerson
Landscape in Blue, Mixed media | Tapestry - Elaine Wilson
Gully Shadow, Norway, Print - Emma Stibbon
Snowline, Svalbard, print with hand colouring - Emma Stibbon
Above us Only Sky
“Sheep in Congress” by Yoel Robert Assiag
“Pink-Footed Geese Meeting the Winter” by Terje Kolaas.
“Pink-Footed Geese Meeting the Winter” by Terje Kolaas.
2021 Drone Photography Awards
A Seasonal Shift
Image: The Wildwood Moth
I need to manifest a seasonal shift. Away from panic and towards restoration.
I’m jealous of people who love Autumn. Who welcome the change of weather and the coziness of it all. For me, it’s always been a season of dread. I feel like I’m bracing myself - for the school year, for winter, for the **Christmas season** … oh god help me, I’m already spiralling. Experience has taught me that autumn is fraught with anxiety and exists only to make you stronger and better prepared for the apocalypse.
And so far, this September proven itself to be as wicked as ever.
Maybe I need to change the narrative. Is it possible that all of the season’s shittiness cafme in the first few weeks and the rest will be easier? Maybe the tides are turning. Maybe this is the first year that autumn will bring coziness and comfort. One can only hope.
An autumn wish list:
A healthy and happy family
More music, more candles
All things navy
A solo weekend away