poem: An Improvisation for Angular Momentum, by A.R. Ammons

i love the analogy and awareness of awareness here, that segues into pondering about the passage from life into death. i especially love the idea of the death mother shepherding us through.


Walking is like
imagination, a
single step
dissolves the circle
into motion; the eye here
and there rests
on a leaf,
gap, or ledge,
everything flowing
except where
sight touches seen:
stop, though, and
reality snaps back
in, locked hard,
forms sharply
themselves, bushbank,
dentree, phoneline,
definite, fixed,
the self, too, then
caught real, clouds
and wind melting
into their directions,
breaking around and
over, down and out,
motions profound,
alive, musical!

Perhaps the death mother like the birth mother
does not desert us but comes to tend
and produce us, to make room for us
and bear us tenderly, considerately,
through the gates, to see us through,
to ease our pains, quell our cries,
to hover over and nestle us, to deliver
us into the greatest, most enduring
peace, all the way past the bother of
recollection,
beyond the finework of frailty,
the mishmash house of the coming & going,
creation's fringes,
the eddies and curlicues

~ A.R. Ammons ~(Poetry, 1994)

the end is in sight

the legislative session ends on june 1, and i (one of many) am looking forward to it very much, to having more time and focus to communicate on this, my blog, to catch up on yard work and gardening, and most of all, the downtime i am craving.

what's so special about downtime?

for me, it's a chance to let my mind wander freely, unfocused on any specific task--unless my mind happens to come up with a task that is pleasing to me!

it's a chance to let my body rest and find its own rhythms between activity and receptivity, doing and being.

it's a chance to reconnect with nature--sunshine, fresh air, rain, clouds, sunrises, sunsets, birds, animals, insects (especially their awesome noises!), to tune into the changes through each day and the progression of seasons.

i'm looking forward to swimming in barton springs, to getting up early to beat the heat and enjoy the aura of early morning.

what about you? what do you like about having downtime?

poem: invisible work, by alison luterman

this is a great mother's day poem. real, not sentimental. enjoy!

Invisible Work

Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world's heart.
There is no other art.

~ Alison Luterman ~


(The Largest Possible Life)