Too tired for words

Kids, this has been a busy day.....week.....month....and were I asked to describe how I feel right this minute, I can't think of anything that says it better than this old gal does. 


Thank God for tomorrow. What a good idea God had, inventing Tomorrow, so one can start off fresh every single morning.


*This photo came to my inbox - source unknown. 

Song of the River

The Narrows, Stamp Falls

Song of the river wild,
Song of the rapids leaping
Through the chiseled rock-walled chasm
Green with weeping,
A plunging torrent
To the ocean seeping

Song of the sea-green foam
Song of the white froth dancing
Sun-dappled baby wave-tops prancing
In the sunshine, all my dreams
Romancing.

Song of the green rock wall,
A vessel for the river's journey,
Guiding the flow along the channel churning
To the ocean and as it's
Returning.

Song of the tall green trees
Rootbound and stoic in the deep crevasses,
Rooted in bedrock holding up the mountain,
Sentinels for every year
that passes

Song of the laughing brook
Below the rapids green, swirling and babbling
Huge salmon leap,
Fall back in shallows dabbling,
Plunge forth to lunge again,
Leaping and scrabbling

Song of the river wild,
You sing my tattered soul a new song,
Bless the silver beauty of this new day,
Make me know the path I'm on
Is not wrong.

Song of the seasoned soul
That knows the underlying message
Of the river:
Flow with me,
Not against me as we journey;
Travel lightly,
Not a taker,
But a giver.

I am posting this from way back in my archives, because it is my favorite river poem, and I know I cant write it any newer or better. This is my photo of Stamp Falls, my favorite place in the Valley, as it is the wildest.

Linked to Poetry Jam, where Peggy's prompt is : Rivers of Life

The Littlest Angel

[image from google]

A sad story this morning, kids. When my friend came to pick up Sebastian last night, he told me his youngest son and his wife had just lost their baby. The wife was five and a half months pregnant when the doctors discovered it was horribly compromised, with heart, liver and kidney problems so severe the baby would not make it, and the pregnancy had to be terminated.


The young couple was devastated, of course and are total wrecks right now. It was a baby girl, their first child, and they already had a nursery all ready for her.


They got to hold the baby after it was "born", and someone took a photo of her in her parents' arms. And in the photo, there was a halo around its head.


That is the part of this sad story that really blew my mind. Instantly, I said, "A baby angel!" My friend, the grandpa, nodded. He said, "I dont believe that sort of stuff - but the halo was there, as clear as day."


It was God, letting the parents know their baby had  her wings, and was in Heaven.

A Monk's Tale

Creative Commons

Ack! The Sunday challenge at Real Toads is A Monk's Tale, to be written as a Huitain, 10 syllable lines, eight lines long, with a rhyme scheme of ababbcbc. Yoiks. The result does not trip lightly on the tongue, but it did give me some good practice counting to ten.


A monk in tatt'red robes did sit and sigh,
fond of prayer, but grasp of Heaven slow.
The other monks his sadness did decry:
"Pray constantly! To Heaven you will go."
Falling to his knees, bright eyes aglow,
he spun his beads, fingers nimble, clever.
His fellow monks nodding and smiling so,
he promised them, "Now I will pray forever!"


(I know, there is an extra syllable in the last line, 
but I couldnt find a way to get the rhythm right otherwise.)

Among the Tea Leaves

image from google

I read Nene's Reading Tea Leaves over at Life Whispers just now, and it took me back to having tea with my Grandma when I was a kid. Thanks, Nene, for the trip down Memory Lane!  

Grandma was proud of being Irish,

her mother coming to the Prairies

straight from County Cork. 

In the afternoons,

we'd have tea,

and then turn our cups 

upside down

in the pretty Baleek saucers.

"Turn your cup around three times,"

Grandma would intone portentously,

her eyes twinkling,

giving me that Grandma smile,

and we'd turn:

one, two, three.

Then we'd peer into the bottoms of our cups.

I was always looking

for Home,

for good luck,

and for Love.

What I got were

donkeys, women pushing wheelbarrows

and the occasional bird.

A bird was very lucky.

When I was a teen,

Grandma had the fortune-telling game

called Gong Hee Fot Choy.

You thought about your wish

as you shuffled the deck

and, the weird thing was,

it really worked.

The cards foretold it coming true,

and I suppose,

in the end,

it really did,

though never in the ways

I once had dreamed.

More like a combined nightmare/

comedy of errors,

but in the end I can say

home, good luck and love

each, in their time,

found me

and left me

all the richer

for passing through.

Thirteen

image from google 

Mary's Mixed Bag, at Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads,  has set us the task of writing to the number Thirteen. Mary gave us lots of choices: to write about fears and beliefs around Friday the 13th,  writing a rondeau, (a poem with thirteen lines), or the age thirteen, either ourselves or our daughters at that age. Thirteen. I remember.


I turned thirteen
the summer my father died.
Twelve was awkward.
It was all arms and legs 
and skinned knees,
from always falling down.
A pony-tail skinned back, 
freckles, pedal pushers,
gawkiness that
annoyed my mother -
a desire to be seen,
with no clue how to 
make it worth looking.

Over that summer,
somehow,
a transformation 
happened.
My father had died.
I was no longer
a child.


I learned how to
Do Hair,
sleeping at night on prickly rollers
with pincurled bangs:
(this was akin to the self-scourging
of the mystics, but with
only a sore scalp
in return.)

"You have to suffer to be beautiful,"
my mom always said,
smiling.
I learned how to 
accent the positive
with a bit of makeup,
huge round blue eyes
in the time when I still had eyelashes
(ah, youth!)


When cousin Charlie came 
for my father's funeral,
I was sitting in Grandma's living room, 
reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,
a book that was a revelation to me,
discovering Francie and I
had similar fathers. 
Charlie stopped short
on the threshold:
"Is that Sherry?" he asked,
dumbfounded.


Thirteen
was standing on the steps
of the church
at the end of the funeral,
looking out at the traffic 
on Bernard and Richter,
everyone going about
their ordinary summer afternoon.
It was my mom looking at me
and saying,
"We have a long row to hoe,"
me feeling like
her protector.


We did.
We had a long row to hoe.
But looking back 
down all those shambling years,
I can still remember
- exactly -
what it felt like
to be
thirteen.

Be In Love, and Have No Fear

Kids, some of you may find this a little woo-woo, but I guess by now you know I'm pretty Out There. This is a beautifully loving and hopeful message from The Little Grandmother, Keisha Crowther, speaking about the transformation of consciousness that is happening right now on the planet. 


Keisha sees visions and receives teachings from the Ancestors, and has been directed to reassure us that all will be well. She explains the poles are shifting, massive amounts of energy are being transferred on the planet, and what may seem like destruction is actually the old horrible structure falling, and the new, higher consciousness moving in to replace it. This is why we are feeling the acceleration as energy speeds up. She says "Be in Love, and have no fear."


Well, whatever is happening on the planet, I am ready and willing to take any hope and comfort and reassurance that I can. My mind is wide enough to consider any possibilities. I will do my bit to spread the hopeful and the positive, as we are being called to do, and hope you take away some comfort from her message.


Namaste.