For Rick Harmsen. Lifted up now.

Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes - Up where we belong 1983

Who knows what tomorrow brings
in a world few hearts survive
All I know is the way I feel
when it's real I keep it alive the road is long
There are mountains in our way
but we climb the stairway every day

Love lifts us up where we belong
where the eagles cry on a mountain high
love lifts us up where we belong
far from the world below up where the clear winds blow

Some hang on to used to be
live their lives looking behind
All we have is here and now
all our lives out there to find
The road is long and there are moutains in our way
but we climb the stairway every day

Love lifts us up where we belong
where the eagles cry on a mountain high
love lifts us up where we belong
far from the world we know
where the clear wind blows

Time goes by no time cry
life's you and I alive

Love lifts us up where we belong
where the eagles cry on a mountain high
love lifts us up where we belong
far from the world we know
where the clear winds blow

Love lifts us up where we belong
far from the world we know
where the clear winds blow

Love lifts us up where we belong
where the eagles cry on a mountain high

A slow song for deep winter.

Trees are singing near my house.

Under weight of falling snow

and eight miles of air they

sing slowly from the heart.

Branches crack and saplings whip around

leafless and brown when wind dances.

No bird could cling to these wild things.

They are singing a song of cold and sleep.

Loss is their melody now and nothing more.

No spring, no summer in this tune, only ice.

Stars hum descant as trees sing—

I learn my place in this deep and subtle art.

Trees near my house sing slowly from the heart.

OUT OF TIME

(A holiday thought)

My old clock used to tell the time
and subdivide diurnity;
but now it's lost both hands and chime
and only tells eternity.

----------------------------Piet Hein

(click on the name to find out more about this amazing guy and read more of his "Grooks.")

No place like...

Into time you throw your best self, your worst self, the self you thought you’d lost on a school trip in the eighth grade and the self that only speaks in Pig Latin.  All of your selves move forward into time where we all place our boats, our little boats with leaky hull and broken spar, our 32 foot yachts, our sturdy rafts.  We sail as far as we can.  We sail until the sea takes us and then we dive into ocean depths, down into a blueness that can never be taken back.  Time takes us on this journey and Home is always forward, home is always the way out.  It is the round opening we climb through to find the light, it is the ground beneath our impossibly small feet.  Home is the breath and the hair we brush.  Home is the small boat we wake up in each morning and the dark line of thunderclouds roiling on a distant horizon.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------(Rhonda)

The Hospice Nurse, Remembering

One death in the city.

Two in the country.

Three by the light of the silvery moon.

Four crying peace.

Five hearing angels.

Six hearing gunfire.

Seven never born.

Eight never lived.

Nine holding tight.

Ten letting go.

Letting go.

I believe that Schroedinger’s cat is still alive…

A tattered old lady (yes, with pearls),

thirteen boys and girls from a nearby elementary school,

Michael and his famous dog Curly

and one lone swan flying in from Charleston, South Carolina;

all of them converged last evening

(just at sunset)

in Times Square.  NYNY

They danced together for a short while,

whirling past tourists and other ravenous beasts,

while the swan let loose a song of towering majesty.

I saw this myself

(this delicious pinpoint moment

in the space-time continuum)

with one eye fixed firmly on the truth,

the other eye on some kind of wonderful.

Bones and Books

On each of your bones is a luminous script.

In the curve of each letter—

in the remotest part of each letter—

lie small cities which never see sun

but rely instead on light gathered from

a vast underground river: the inner life.

Within these cities

philosophers and poets are held in high esteem. 

Here books are made from the white ground underfoot

and the daily diet is rich in verse and literature—

thoughts artfully cooked into casseroles and stews—

—creation seasoned with a dash of whimsy.

---------------------------------(rhonda)

My insistent self--a haiku from Al Black

My insistent self


Begs me for attention like 


A leg humping dog




from friend Al Black, who knows how to turn a phrase!

This Igneous Life

 The hard time spent chained to stone

taught me patience.

Through years of lonely communion

with stone I learned listening.

When stone finally weathered and broke

I knelt down on its bones and wept.

-----------------------------------------(rhonda)




The Photo prompt is from a blog called Poets United.  Click on the link below to see the artist who provided the photo.
Photo from Ella's Edge