silence

for so long
only emptiness

where have all my words gone?

yearning for spring

purple and pink, four tulips stand up straight in the stone vase.  a fifth stretches its head towards the lacy curtain.

gray blue mist hovers under smoldering sunset.  a single frosted tree in the middle of an empty field.

come look!

morning sun catches the blue glass vase on the shelf, sending a variegated strip of blue light down the corridor.
it's nice to notice these things, it's also nice to be shown them.

waiting for the night bus

moonlit frost on glass
shadow branches on frost
etchings on etchings

not paying attention

a handful of chocolates
gone
I didn't even taste them

breakfast

wooden spoon glides through creamy white porridge

after midnight

Bright pink gloves
green sponge
soapy bubbles


I unwind after a long day

washing up
only washing up
nothing more

chores

dead coriander plant
unwashed dishes
dripping tap.
so many things to do!
what a joy
to be here
and be able to.

My word for 2012

Happy New Year.

5....4....3....2....1! We all counted down the final remaining seconds of 2011 and took our first breath of 2012.  New Year is a funny thing for me.  Part of me finds it a forced celebration.  I always find that there's some sort of social pressure to be "where it's at" and "with the right person" as the clock strikes 12 on the 31st.  And then there's lots of hype around the end of the year, the start of the new one, fresh starts and changes.  When I peel those two things back a bit and look under the surface, it seems to me that we're looking for inspiration or meaning and then direction.  We're looking to put ourselves in a situation and with company (or not with company) which will bring us happiness and will inspire us.  Inspire us to live our lives in a meaningful way.

And that, certainly, is what I'm interested in.  


In my own bit of reflection and search for inspiration, I looked back on my New Year's Post from last year.  Last year I wished for a "fresh mindfulness" and to "try to drag myself out of my own preoccupied head a bit more and, in doing so, be a bit more engaged with the people around me, love a bit better, forgive a bit more."

Well, the preoccupied head bit definitely was a theme during the year.  Reflecting back on the year and just knowing what's in my head now helps me come up with a fairly comprehensive list of where I stumbled and fell, but I can also see how just being aware of this goal helped me call myself on getting too stuck back in my head.  2011 was a lot of things, but mostly it was what it was and I made of it what I could with the inspiration of a goal and the support of loved ones.

So this year, inspired by Fiona's example, I'm choosing a word for 2012 to give me a goal and direction for the year.  I was all set and already writing this post for my word to be "kindness", in continuing with a theme that has been running in my life recently.  Kindness to others, kindness to myself.  But then, the crisp morning sun through the window brought me a different word: play. 

My first response was "but that's not a very responsible word for 2012". 

Precisely.  For that reason and many others that will come to me this year as I reflect upon and try to put this word into action in my life, I think play is exactly the right word for me this year.  You'll hear more about it as the year goes on, but for now I think that it's good to recognise that playing is something that I don't do very well and doesn't come naturally to me.  I think it will have a lot to teach me.  

Laugh.  Enjoy.  Relax.  Balance.

Happy New Year, may it be a playful one.
 

washing up

frost filters the morning sun
cluster of yellow petals
- carnations bought before Christmas -
glow gently in a white window pane frame

patrona

her umbrella protected me from the drops that fell from the sky
but not from her eyes

sometimes the sleeping breath of a loved one
the gentle rise and fall of their chest
is the most sincere prayer I can offer

favourite shirt

it's not cold, but i'm shivering.
i button up my autumn-hued, checked flannel shirt
closing my eyes, i feel the warmth of home embrace me

rice

not too moist

not too dry

a bowl of perfect
white grains.

such a basic food

that I've eaten

prepared

seen prepared

in so many kitchens

in so many countries.

but today

for the first time

I feel I can say:

I'm nearly 30 years old

and I've finally learned
how to prepare
a perfect rice.

more kindness

I posted the poem Kindness on my blog early last year.  At the time, my marriage had just started going through the rough patch that would finally end it sometime later and I felt that the future that I had dreamt was slowly crumbling.  When I heard this poem read aloud during Sunday Service at the Buddhist House, it brought tears to my eyes.

There is a truth in this poem that reveals itself to me just a little bit more each time I read it.  It has helped me understand that true kindness is an instinctive reaction from the heart.  It is not something that can be acted or faked.  Only once our barriers have been brought down and our ego reserves depleted, can our hearts be laid bare enough for the skin to be scraped back just that bit more and allow for the true seeds of kindness to be planted within us.  Once planted, it's up to us to cultivate these seeds, but I think that the planting of them is something that life must do to us.

The journey goes on, and the poem continues to teach me.

 Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

(Words From Under the Words: Selected Poems)

::Link::

I eat my porridge more carefully here
exploring each spoonful to find bits of oat husk with my teeth.
they sit in a little pile
on a scrap of paper
next to my bowl.

what is poetry?

Not too long ago, I said that "I'll never be a poet because I'm too impatient".  I love to capture moments, thoughts, feelings and play with the words until I'm happy with them.  But I seem to lack the discipline to turn my hobby into an Art.  I've deliberately named the category for my writing on this blog (and the folders on my computer) "scribblings" as I don't see them as poems.  Maybe others do, I'm not sure.  When I was younger, I was obsessed with writing poems that were metred and rhymed.  Because that's what poems do, isn't it?  At least, that's what I understood then as poetry.  Now I've swung the other way entirely and amuse myself with writing scribblings that "sound right" regardless of metre and rhyme.  Sometimes I also want it to "look right", and focus more on the layout and the flow of the lines as the words themselves.  I suppose there's a balance to be struck.  Maybe from the discipline that I pursued when I was younger, to the freedom I need now, to something else in the future.

Ever onwards, ever changing.  What matters to me is that it is something that speaks to me.

But what prompted this little reflection was the Guardian's poem of the week from the end of December 2009 (Facebook brings up all sorts of randomness).  It struck a chord with me and I found that its rhyme and rhythm enhanced it all the more.  So I post it here for you to enjoy The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
    The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
    Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
    Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
    The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
    The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
    Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
    Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
    The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
    Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
    In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
    Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
    Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
    Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
    His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
    And I was unaware.

rain-speckled wind clears the cobwebs
i smile to the sun

everything readjusts to fill the emptiness of time

the distractions busy you

and allow you to put that which is not in sight

slowly out of mind 

(as the saying goes)

the spaces grow smaller

the gaps fewer

and the distance greater