If we live life passionately, what does that mean? And how do we sustain the passion for the everyday, the mundane, the sprouts pushing up out of the garden soil, the first sip of coffee in the morning, the sheet danced by wind on the clothesline--if we have a clothesline anymore in our backyards?
Can you answer these questions? I invite your responses as I take stock of why I blog, why I write poems, why I do much of anything. I'll feature your responses in a later post. And you can respond however you wish. Poetry would be welcome. Koan? Recipe. Memory. Favorite quote.
(Passion Flower at the edge of the garden)I've tried to upgrade this blog, same old blog, same old template, and now I don't like the changes, so bear with me. I'm not blogger-literate.
In the meantime, here is a bit of the day scooped out and placed on this computer screen for you.
Black dirt I've watered
and watched.
Waiting.
Thunder across the hills.
Come wind and rain.
But not before I've snatched
the sheets off the line
and the blue jeans
the underwear,
and hustled them back
inside where the pot's
boiling chicken bones
down to a stock
that smells like
my grandmother's house
so many childhoods ago
when I knew nothing,
nothing at all
about how the wind shifts
and leaves us
with what's left....
(Two bowls of borscht. )
3 comments:
If I did not write I don't think I would have any passion for the world. The more I write, the more I pay attention to the angle of sunlight in a certain season or the way the wind sounds in certain corners of my house. Writing poetry is the way I stay aware, and that awareness allows me to love every facet of the world around me.
Oh, you set the bar high with that lovely poem that does, indeed, express your passion for the everyday.
I know that as I chronicle my usually rather limited world, taking yet another picture of the sunrise -- always beautiful, always different, ironing the linen hand towels -- again -- and enjoying the familiar smell that takes me back sixty something years to my grandmother's kitchen, all these thing I write about or capture in pictures still bring me joy -- in my blog I'm usually saying "Look at this!" or "What about that?" or, less frequently, "Damn!"
How to sustain the passion? For me, the camera is a great tool to help me notice things -- the line of crystal drops on the clematis vine, the translucent tutu of the peony petals, the magic of looking through a door or a window...
Thank you, Vicki. I especially love "the magic of loking through a door or a window..". I've been entranced by this ever since I can remember. And how what one sees reflects and echoes again and again on into infinity.
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