Home
~ Elaine Feinstein

Where is that I wonder?
Is it the book-packed house we plan to sell
with the pale green room above the river,
the shelves of icons, agate, Eilat stone
the Kathe Kollwitz and the Samuel Palmer?

Or my huge childhood house
oak-floored, the rugs of Autumn colours, slabs of coal
in an open heart, high-windowed rooms,
outside, the sunken garden, lavender, herbs
and trees of Victoria plum.

Last night I dreamed of
my dead father, white-faced, papery-skinned
and frailer than he died. I asked him:
– Doesn’t all this belong to us? He shook his head,
bewildered. I was disappointed,

but thought I woke with salt on my lips then
and a hoarse throat, somewhere between
the ocean and the desert, in an immense
Mexico of the spirit, I remembered
with joy and love my other ties of blood.

The Lilies Break Open Over the Dark Water
~ Mary Oliver

Inside
that mud-hive, that gas-sponge,
that reeking
leaf-yard, that rippling

dream bowl, the leeches’
flecked and swirling
broth of life, as rich
as Babylon,

the fists crack
open and the wands
of the lilies
quicken, they rise

like pale poles
with their wrapped beaks of lace;
one day
they tear the surface,

the next they break open
over the dark water.
And there you are
on the shore,

fitful and thoughtful, trying
to attach them to an idea—
some news of your own life.
But the lilies

are slippery and wild—they are
devoid of meaning, they are
simply doing,
from the deepest

spurs of their being,
what they are impelled to do
every summer.
And so, dear sorrow, are you.

Water Lilies, The Getty Collection

This is amazing. Found on Tumblr.

Loki Look-Alike. Model: Alvir

Pandora’s Box
~ Eva Mae Hamilton

You were born
and
the box opened
and
they would not go back in
and
it was not just one thing
but
everything—
a seam rip-
per rending
right up the
middle, a lit-
tle tear down
the side,
another
spot worn to
translucence,
the fabric woven so
carefully
over a life-
time tattered,
you think you
can never
repair it
you think ev-
eryone
will see the
patches are
ugly the
darning a
weakness that
it will be
forever
unrecog-
nizable.

Weave that dark thread
through the warp, find
in the shadows
the glitter of
scissors needle thread thimble,
double stitch that
hole with golden
thread, add some lace
across that seam
there cross stitch this
patch with rainbow
joy and plaid patched love
until you have
a crazy quilt
a grand tapestry
tight with the story of you

Jaipur Handloom Work

Image credit: Jaipur Handloom

Witness
~ Denise Levertov

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.