Poem of the Week CXLIX

It's all I have to bring today
Emily Dickinson

It's all I have to bring today –
This, and my heart beside –
This, and my heart, and all the fields –
And all the meadows wide –
Be sure you count – should I forget
Some one the sum could tell –
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

One Week...

No, not that Barenaked Ladies Song, that's how long I have until I will be MARRIED...

... (to this guy)

Ain't I blessed?

Poem of the Week CXLVIII

Forbidden Pleasure
C.S. Lewis

Quick! The black, sulphurous, never quenched,
Old festering fire begins to play
Once more within. Look! By brute force I have wrenched
Unmercifully my hands the other way.

Quick, Lord! On the rack thus, stretched tight,
Nerves clamouring as at nature's wrong.
Scorched to the quick, whipp'd raw--Lord, in this plight
You see, you see no man can suffer long.

Quick, Lord! Before new scorpions bring
New venom--ere fiends blow the fire
A second time--quick, show me that sweet thing
Which, 'spite of all, more deeply I desire.

Poem of the Week CXLVII

For Mother's Day, honoring the month of Ma(r)y...


Regina Angelorum
G.K. Chesterton

Our Lady went into a strange country,

Our Lady, for she was ours,
And had run on the little hills behind the houses

And pulled small flowers;
But she rose up and went into a strange country

With strange thrones and powers.

And there were giants in the land she walked in,

Tall as their toppling towns,

With heads so high in heaven, the constellations

Served them for crowns;

And their feet might have forded like a brook the abysses
Where Babel drowns.

They were girt about with the wings of morning and evening,

Furled and unfurled,

Round the speckled sky where our small spinning planet

Like a top is twirled;

And the swords they waved were the unending comets

That shall end the world.

And moving in innocence and in accident,

She turned the face
That none has ever looked on without loving

On the Lords of Space;

And one hailed her with her name in our own country

That is full of grace.

Our Lady went into a strange country

And they crowned her queen,

For she needed never to be stayed or questioned

But only seen;

And they were broken down under unbearable beauty

As we have been.

But ever she walked till away in the last high places,

One great light shone

From the pillared throne of the king of all the country

Who sat thereon;

And she cried aloud as she cried under the gibbet

For she saw her son.

Our Lady wears a crown in a strange country,

The crown he gave,

But she has not forgotten to call to her old companions

To call and crave;

And to hear her calling a man might arise and thunder

On the doors of the grave.

Ohio!

The first time I went to Ohio my mother had her midlife crisis during the 12+ hour drive. That was interesting. I can say that it didn't make me particularly excited about the state. 

However, since discovering the best thing to ever come out of Ohio*, I've actually come to think it's a pretty neat place. The land is beautiful (at least in the southeastern part of the state) and the people are kind, generous, and really good at cooking. yum.

Last weekend I was there with my sweet mother, grandmother, and fiance for a wedding shower thrown by my soon-to-be mother-, grandmother-, and aunt- in-law. Despite my minor, yet constant public-present-opening anxiety, it was a lot of fun, especially because my (little?) Buddy got to be there with me. 

Here are some pictures, courtesy of Aunt Lori:

*Chad Michael, if you really didn't get it. 

Poem of the Week CXLVI

(Poem on an accidental xerox of his hand)

In honor of my birthday tomorrow, another John Stone. I offer a special thanks to a dear love of mine, who makes poetry come alive...

Poem on an Accidental Xerox of Her Hand
John Stone
for Delese Wear

Dermatoglyphics is the fancy name
for the gentle science of reading palms

or, for that matter, soles: anywhere
genetics takes its chances and leaves lines.

Fortune-tellers make whole lives of such
cutaneous meanderings, of course,

taking the intersections of the world
as each presents itself, heart in hand.

I could have used some palmistry today:
A woman in Ohio, sending poems,

xeroxed not only the poet's finest frenzy,
but also, at the upper left, her hand.

That is the wondrous way the world may happen--
you start to do one thing and do another.

Up to now I haven't read the poem.
I've only sat here hoping to say sooth,

trying to glean a message from this map,
life line, love line, shape of her own sweet time.

La Ci Darem La Mano hums through my head.
For having seen their tracery in the air,

five slender ministers practicing their Braille,
I swear by the metacarpal hills of fortune

I would have know these fingers anywhere.