Monthly Archives: January 2020

Jan 29 – – W H Auden — “to keep a date with love”

Wednesday, January 29 These mid-winter days, where I live in Michigan, do a lot of teasing.  Glorious sun with hints of warm weather to come, promising a rash of flowers; and then some gray days line up one after another. … Continue reading

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Jan 27 – “a little girl tugs at a table cloth” Maria Wislawa Anna Szymborska

Monday, January 27 “She’s been in this world for over a year, and in this world not everything’s been examined and taken in hand.” Over the weekend, I savored the aftertaste of Friday’s post,  “For John Barryman,” so unflinching, flint-hard … Continue reading

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Jan 23 — a soul friend sent me a new poem – blows my mind

Thursday, January 23 “I wish, though, I had known sooner, to have helped you go on living” Rebecca is surely not the only soul friend who has received, and carried, the violent news that her/his soul friend has taken a … Continue reading

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Jan 21 – Martin Luther King Jr

Tuesday, January 21  “Deeds, not words.” I have heard this thought expressed many times recently. It’s spoken with a conviction that words have done little to change things in desperate need of change. Words are empty or, worse, they are smokescreens … Continue reading

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Jan 15 Rumi – “The Guest House”

Wednesday, January 14— “The Guest House” – Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (جلال‌الدین محمد رومی‎) “The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.” One of my soul friends of many years emailed … Continue reading

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Jan 13 – Jane Kenyon “Happiness . . . the way it turns up like a prodigal. . . “

Monday, January 13 – Jane Kenyon – “There’s just no accounting for happiness” I’d not met Jane Kenyon until David Grubin caught my attention with her “Happiness” in an email back on a February 2017  morning.   Kenyon gets it about understated, even … Continue reading

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Jan 6 – – Poet Laureate Joy Harjo “Talking with the Sun”

Joy Harjo blessing her 4th grand child near Manhattan’s tall buildings Monday January 6, 2020 “I hear from my Inuit and Yupik relatives up north that everything has changed.  It’s so hot; there is not enough winter. Animals are confused. … Continue reading

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January 3 – two poems from Mary Tobacco

Friday, January 3  —  two poems written by Mary Tobacco, my soul friend for years; one about coaching a promising young man;  one a birthday poem Mary wrote to me Post # 1  “a note to a high school boy’s … Continue reading

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