Blackberry Eating

Blackberry Eating

I love to go out in late September

among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries

to eat blackberries for breakfast,

the stalks very prickly, a penalty

they earn for knowing the black art

of blackberry making; and as I stand among them

lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries

fall almost unbidden to my tongue,

as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words

like strengths or squinched, or broughamed,

many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,

which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well

in the silent, startled, icy, black language

of blackberry eating in late September.

Galway Kinnell

i ran across this poem recently and it occurred to me that i had a whole series of blackberry images from last summer in oregon that i hadn't shared....

 when we camped along the rouge river, they were EVERYWHERE!  plump, juicy and ripe for the picking.

  big bags of them ended up in our little motorhome freezer - the best kind of souvenir!

 oh, the joys of summer....

Word Collecting

here i am

inhaling the delicate silence and

teetering on the edge of darkness

juggling the insistent words

 of my own secret dialogue

feverish with the sound

 of my own tremulous voice

yet paralyzed...

 in the fragile echo of hope

it’s a precarious balance

this life that we live….

 about a year ago i started collecting words – any time i ran across words that spoke directly to me, words that carried more than a mediocre dose of meaning i would write them down.  

 eventually  i started combining the words into simple phrases – just for fun.  i made a whole slew of 2-5 word sequences that fit together in a provocative way.  i typed the whole list up a while back and ended up with several pages of seemingly nonsensical jargon. 

 it’s fun to play with these little phrases and combine them in new and interesting ways.  somehow this little poem came out of my play and, for me, it holds more meaning that i ever would have guessed.  you should try it sometime!

i so appreciate all of your thoughtful and insightful comments on my last post.  lately some of my posts have been stretching the edge of my comfort zone... remember, my word-of-the-year is "venture!"

thanks for being there!!!!

 (all iphone macros)

Spirituality

i haven’t spoken much about this topic directly in this space…. although its undertones and ramifications are very often present in my words and in my photos too.

 the spiritual dimension of life is so rich and real and huge and mysterious….and ethereal and powerful and….

 i have to admit that i did not fully delve into this dimension until i left the confines of religion behind.  i hesitate to use that word (“confines”) but i feel now that religion was keeping me in a box that i no longer fit into.

 i know there are those that see that very same box as a comforting support system.  i am perfectly fine with that but for me i had to step out of it.  for me the freedom of leaving the box (though very difficult to do at the time!) has been exhilarating.  freeing.  opening me up to the wholeness and beauty of life and the spirits of all other creatures regardless of their beliefs.  my heart has been opened in a true and profound way.  and this is a very good thing.

 i have more to say on this subject, but i will leave it for another day.  i will just say that the more i learn, the more i do not know and the more accepting i become of the vast mystery of life.

Evolving

it’s the first day of school today.  3 years ago on this day i cried.  i was so used to being part of the educational establishment… i felt so lost and isolated,  like my identity had been stripped away, leaving me fragile and vulnerable. 

i still get sad when i think about how it all went down (i have told this story before) and especially when i think about the children that have so little chance for the support they need, their difficulties becoming whitewashed in the maze of ever-growing class sizes.

but i’m evolving.  i had to move on.  and though my path lately has been frought with frustrations of one sort and another, i’m getting that that is all part of the process and that the past is the past and each day i need to wake up and be open to what the day presents me, all the while moving forward, be it sometimes only an inch at a time.  deep breath.....