cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1987)
was the past in color?
1987 was in color
ablazedboldbrightbrilliant
bigger than life
but then again
it could have been
only black and white —
I can’t see in this light
late at night
— J.S.
Was the past in color?
Tag: Thoughts
That time of year
Image by Vicki Nunn via Pixabay
That time of year
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold…
autumn
leaves
me
again
every year
— J.S.
now
Wild Strawberries (1957)
But now he was an over-the-hill actor playing his younger self, and the setting was all wrong…
— Jonathan Rose, “The Literary Churchill”
Who goes with Fergus?
8½ (1963)
Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood’s woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love’s bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.
— Yeats
time and tide
Charlotte Brooks, “Teenage driver Bill Kolb…driving his date in an MG convertible” (1958)
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie…
— Sonnet LXXIII
It Never Gets Old
I am sharing another inspirational post from one of my favorite blogs, “ARE YOU THERE, ERMA? IT’S ME, SYLVIA.”
Sylvia loved the simplicity and easiness of holding Cam’s hand. More telling for her though than the actual act of holding his hand was the idea that he wanted her. Her hand in his. He desired her touch and invited her into the moment and into a new chapter in her own life.
Like Sylvia, I love holding hands. I giggle at the thought of it. There’s a playful energy and a sense of youthfulness about holding hands. Hold my hand when we cross the street. I’ll hold yours during the scary parts. Take my hand in yours, and let’s make a run for it! Keep me safe. Lovers. Friends. Spouses. Playmates. Parents and children. Anyone and everyone. Anywhere and everywhere.
If I had to choose a universal way of communicating care, empathy, love, friendship, and all that makes my soul burgeon with emotion, it would be by holding hands…
View original post 369 more words
Lifelines and Memories
A wonderful post from one of my favorite blogs — “ARE YOU THERE, ERMA? IT’S ME, SYLVIA.”
Sylvia and Erma are swapping stories over coffee this morning and sharing some of their favorite memories. The longtime friends and stalwart supporters of each other’s dreams agree that they are not living in the past or pining for the future at all. They use the memories and aspirations they have to garner strength and save themselves and each other on the tough days.
************************
“You may grow to love this person but remember they are not yours to keep. Their purpose isn’t to save you but to show you how to save yourself. And once this is fulfilled; the halo lifts and the angel leaves their body as the person exits your life.”
~Lang Leav
My wheel is in the dark
Image by Myriam Zilles via Pixabay
MY Wheel is in the dark,—
I cannot see a spoke,
Yet know its dripping feet
Go round and round.My foot is on the tide—
An unfrequented road,
Yet have all roads
A “clearing” at the end.Some have resigned the Loom,
Some in the busy tomb
Find quaint employ,
Some with new, stately feet
Pass royal through the gate,
Flinging the problem back at you and I.
— Emily Dickinson
“recuerdo”
Photograph by Juliane Mergener via Unsplash
recuerdo
upon a violin
Sentio, ergo sum
my musical Descartes
each song
deeper
deeper
deeper
into my heart
mercy I cried
but in her lantern slide
did see my life
as though magnified
— J.S.
Killing Me Softly With Her Song
The largest fire ever known
cf. Videos by mohamed Hassan (storm) and Moshe Harosh (woman) both via Pixabay (edited collage by me)
THE LARGEST fire ever known
Occurs each afternoon,
Discovered is without surprise,
Proceeds without concern:
Consumes, and no report to men,
An Occidental town,
Rebuilt another morning
To be again burned down.
— Emily Dickinson
“The Conjurer”
cf. Photographs by Les Anderson via Unsplash (edit)
The Conjurer
late
on rainy nights
Orpheus
and Gatsby
have
nothing
on me
— J.S.
A Serenade at the Villa
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1966) (edit)
I
That was I, you heard last night,
When there rose no moon at all,
Nor, to pierce the strained and tight
Tent of heaven, a planet small:
Life was dead and so was light.II
Not a twinkle from the fly,
Not a glimmer from the worm;
When the crickets stopped their cry,
When the owls forbore a term,
You heard music; that was I…IV
What they could my words expressed,
O my love, my all, my one!
Singing helped the verses best,
And when singing’s best was done,
To my lute I left the rest…
— Robert Browning, A Serenade at the Villa (excerpt)
Insomnia
Image by Arek Socha via Pixabay
Thin are the night-skirts left behind
By daybreak hours that onward creep,
And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
That wavers with the spirit’s wind:
But in half-dreams that shift and roll
And still remember and forget,
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.Our lives, most dear, are never near,
Our thoughts are never far apart,
Though all that draws us heart to heart
Seems fainter now and now more clear.
To-night Love claims his full control,
And with desire and with regret
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.Is there a home where heavy earth
Melts to bright air that breathes no pain,
Where water leaves no thirst again
And springing fire is Love’s new birth?
If faith long bound to one true goal
May there at length its hope beget,
My soul that hour shall draw your soul
For ever nearer yet.
— Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Insomnia
The Darkling Thrush
Photograph by Mateo Avila Chinchilla via Unsplash
So little cause for carollings
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 blessèd Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
— Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush (excerpt)
To Fanny
cf. TV Commercial
I know it—and to know it is despair
To one who loves you as I love, sweet Fanny,
Whose heart goes fluttering for you every where,
Nor when away you roam,
Dare keep its wretched home:
Love, love alone, has pains severe and many;
Then, loveliest! keep me free
From torturing jealousy.
— Keats, “To Fanny”
I never saw that you did painting need
Toni Frissell, “Woman wearing headscarf seated at table with drink” (detail) (ca. 1940)
I NEVER saw that you did painting need…
— Sonnet LXXXIII
The Waiting Game
WHEN you are very old, at evening
You’ll sit and spin beside the fire, and say,
Humming my songs, “Ah well, ah well-a-day!
When I was young, of me did Ronsard sing.”
None of your maidens that doth hear the thing,
Albeit with her weary task foredone,
But wakens at my name, and calls you one
Blest, to be held in long remembering.I shall be low beneath the earth, and laid
On sleep, a phantom in the myrtle shade,
While you beside the fire, a grandame grey,
My love, your pride, remember and regret;
Ah, love me, love! we may be happy yet,
And gather roses, while ’tis called to-day.
— Pierre de Ronsard, “Of His Lady’s Old Age” (Tr. Lang)
A Late Walk
Rainy day, Paris, August, 1984
WHEN I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words.A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.
— Robert Frost, “A Late Walk”
ephemera
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1970)
Tide be runnin’ the great world over:
T’was only last June month I mind that we
Was thinkin’ the toss and the call in the breast of the lover
So everlastin’ as the sea.Heer’s the same little fishes that sputter and swim,
Wi’ the moon’s old glim on the grey, wet sand;
An’ him no more to me nor me to him
Than the wind goin’ over my hand.
— Charlotte Mew, “Sea Love”
“Poetry Was Like This”
David Stroble, “Students at Band Practice at Cathedral High School…” (ca. 1975)
Poetry was the memory of adolescence…
Poetry was Ayesha Akhter of my village school
with her long loose flowing hair.
— Al Mahmud, “Poetry Was Like This” (Tr. Chowdhury)
Emily’s Epistemology
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1970)
ADVENTURE most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be;
Attended by a Single Hound—
Its own Identity.
— Emily Dickinson, The Single Hound
End Song
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1970)
When you break your heart
It changes
All exits are open…
— Ruth Krauss, End Song
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
cf. photograph by Nathan Anderson via Unsplash
One day I asked the mirror facing me,
Friend, what’s true?…How about my heart, mirror?…
Silence.
O mirror, I see.
I need a human friend
True enough
To reflect my heart.
— Tialuga Sunia Seloti
She moves me
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1970)
HAVE you got a brook in your little heart…
Then look out for the little brook in March,
When the rivers overflow,
And the snows come hurrying from the hills,
And the bridges often go…
— Emily Dickinson
Something in the Way She Moves
“House of Spring”
cf. Photographs via Unsplash and Pexels
Hundreds of open flowers
all come from
the one branch
Look
all their colors
appear in my garden
I open the clattering gate
and in the wind
I see
the spring sunlight
already it has reached
worlds without number
— Musō Soseki (Tr. Merwin & Shigematsu)
Neck On Up
Thomas J. O’Halloran, “Medlars – new computer to keep medical information” (1964)
Now I’ve found my heaven
From the neck on up
You’re a perfect eleven
From the neck on up…
When I was stone blue I knew what to do.
cf. National Geographic Magazine (1948)
EXERT thy voice, sweet harbinger of Spring!
This moment is thy time to sing,
This moment I attend to praise,
And set my numbers to thy lays.
Free as thine shall be my song;
As thy music, short or long.Poets wild as thee were born,
Pleasing best when unconfined,
When to please is least designed,
Soothing but their cares to rest:
Cares do still their thoughts molest,
And still th’ unhappy poet’s breast,Like thine, when best he sings, is placed against a thorn.
She begins, let all be still!
Muse, thy promise now fulfil!
Sweet, oh sweet! still sweeter yet!
— Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, “To the Nightingale” (excerpt)
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
Jaroslav A. Polák, “…Old Couple”
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
— Sonnet LXXIII
coping: perspective
Photograph by Ioannis Ioannidis via Pixabay
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves…
— from Dubliners, James Joyce
And the operator said, “May I help you please?”
National Geographic Magazine (1948)
I waited all night, I remember that
smoked a cigarette
watched TV
went out and saw some friends
drove by your house
went to a bar and had a beer
got back home and tried to sleep…
— J.S.
I knocked the phone off the nightstand
And the operator said, “May I help you please?”
and I said “No thanks, baby tonight there ain’t no help for me —
see I just had a bad dream, that’s all that’s wrong with me
see I just had a bad dream.”
“avowal”
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1962)
avowal
all along the avenue
every evening
indulging in reminiscence
ofttimes
umbrella unavailing
and sometimes why?
— J.S.
Hold on to what you’ve got
Image by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay
In youth when I did love, did love,
Methought it was very sweet…
But age with his stealing steps
Hath clawed me in his clutch…
— Hamlet
‘Cause when I get close to you, not much to say.
Warren K. Leffler, “Teen age [i.e., teenage] economy” (detail) (1964)
Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity
In least speak most, to my capacity.
— A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Bipolar Disorder
Photograph by Nathan Dumlao via Unsplash
This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.Pay it I will to the end —
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release —
Gives me the clasp of peace.Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best —
God! but the interest!
— Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Debt
souvenirs
I’m With You
footfall
cf. Photograph by Shane Rounce (detail) via Unsplash and CGI by pixel shox
footfall
i stepped back into time
waded into the same river twice
you know, nick had some really good advice for gatsby
it’s easy to get lost
romance glancer
true love chancer
happiness chaser
gone again spacer
— J.S.
storm on saturn
evocation
Carol M. Highsmith, “Dramatic View of John Hancock Building, Boston, Massachusetts” (ca. 1980)
evocation
i called you on the telephone
i was on mass ave
with a guitar and flowers
on the wind
summer twilight
and your voice
— J.S.
“parking lot denouement”
Maclean’s Magazine, 1970
parking lot denouement
the passionate shepherd stood next to his honda civic
juliet stood nearby
all the stars in the sky
time slowed down
our lives were suspended
just for a moment
at a point turning
and then you were gone
the parking lot was empty,
all the pleasures waiting to be proved
— J.S.
Ceci n’est pas une intersection.
Photograph by Daniel Monteiro via Unsplash
Ceci n’est pas une intersection.
In the warm twilight
I am translated
refracted
at the red light
the song on the radio
preternatural
holding, as ‘twere,
the mirror up to nature
and unravels my heart
— J.S.
That man who sits in front of you
Harry E. Goodwin, “The Barker” (ca. 1935)
He seems very similar to the gods
That man who sits in front of you
And listens to you speaking
And smiles softly;
And suddenly my heart throbs.
When I glance at you,
I can no longer speak…
— Sappho, Fragment 31 (Tr. Labate)
Non Scholae Sed Vitae Discimus
Sports Illustrated, 1965
Non Scholae Sed Vitae Discimus
we shared a vanilla ice cream cone
under a vaulted arch
and a carillon chorale
through the leaded diamond pane window
I could hear
something about British history
— J.S.
Hesperide Summer
Herbert L. Spencer, “Mere Man” (ca. 1934)
EXCEPT the smaller size, no Lives are round,
These hurry to a sphere, and show, and end.
The larger, slower grow, and later hang—
The Summers of Hesperides are long.
— Emily Dickinson
“the docent”
Patio from the Castle of Vélez Blanco (1506–15) on view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 534
the docent
just before
closing time
i found myself
in european sculpture and decorative arts
lost in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
with so much to learn
and you resplendently reverberant
in a white blouse
like an impressionist painting
— J.S.
a fever, longing still
Hot Rod Girl (1956)
In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav’nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns;
What means this tumult…?
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?
— Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard
Rip Van Winkle
Northeastern University, Course Catalog (1973-74)
Tired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait… She kissed me. Never again. My youth. Only once it comes. Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the same. Like kids your second visit to a house. The new I want. Nothing new under the sun. Care of P. O. Dolphin’s Barn. Are you not happy in your? Naughty darling. At Dolphin’s barn charades in Luke Doyle’s house. Mat Dillon and his bevy of daughters: Tiny, Atty, Floey, Maimy, Louy, Hetty. Molly too. Eightyseven that was. Year before we. And the old major, partial to his drop of spirits. Curious she an only child, I an only child. So it returns. Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. And just when he and she. Circus horse walking in a ring. Rip van Winkle we played. Rip: tear in Henny Doyle’s overcoat. Van: breadvan delivering. Winkle: cockles and periwinkles. Then I did Rip van Winkle coming back. She leaned on the sideboard watching. Moorish eyes. Twenty years asleep in Sleepy Hollow. All changed. Forgotten. The young are old…
— Joyce, Ulysses
for all dishevelled wandering stars
cf. photograph by Alex Iby via Unsplash and
error46146, Subway Timelapse Experiment – YouTube (edited collage)
And brood on hopes and fear no more…
— W. B. Yeats, Who goes with Fergus?
lost
Photograph by John Loengard from “The Magic Of A Summer House” (LIFE Magazine, 1969)
lost
I really miss you
because I need to ask
where do I go
now?
— J.S.
What adults never tell you (about growing old)
3:00 p.m.
cf. photograph by photosforyou via Pixabay
This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.
— Joyce, Ulysses
telemetry
my lost self
cf. photograph by Cherry Laithang via Unsplash (edited collage)
like Antaeus
drifting in the darkest night
searching for my long lost self —
my strength
my spirit
myself
and then I touch ground
again
— J.S.
Van Halen – 6/12/81 – Oakland Coliseum
“I was in love once — would you believe that?”
Northeastern University Course Catalog, 1978-79
“I, uh, I was in love once — would you believe that? But I possessed neither the courage nor the optimism — perhaps the depth of feeling — that you two have.”
— A Christmas Carol (1984)
theseus adrift
cf. photograph by Sesbilder via Pixabay
theseus adrift
no thread —
only a minotaur
and a maze
— J.S.
Amo te Solo
Viscountess Jocelyn, “Interior of Room” (ca. 1862)
“What has all my Existence been since then but an Amo te Solo…”
— Coleridge, Notebooks, III
that incurable depression of spirits
cf. John C. Higgins, “Man in Bottle” (detail) (ca. 1888) and
video by Vimeo-Free-Videos via Pixabay (edited collage)
Every man must take the measure of his own strength. I may, I do, regret my want of fortitude; but so it is, that incurable depression of Spirits, Brooding, Indolence, Despondence, thence Pains and nightly Horrors…
— Letter from Coleridge to Daniel Stuart quoted in Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections
This is the line that for him I pen
cf. photograph by Les Anderson via Unsplash (edited)
I remember
when I was young
rowing into a storm
you were on the shore
running alongside me
shouting something
but I wasn’t listening
now, many years later
I’m still rowing
and I still see you
and I remember
everything you said
— J.S.
hospital window reflection
cf. photograph and video via Pixabay (edited collage)
through the too many miles
and the too little smiles
I still remember you
“the first return since undergraduate days twelve years previously…”
collage including video by Anatwell-Group via Pixabay (edited)
Another expedition took him to Cambridge, the first return since undergraduate days twelve years previously, where the young men all looked just the same in the university pubs and “the only alteration” was in himself…
— Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Darker Reflections
Linda Bruner, “Rainy Night In Georgia”
“mnemonic (6/86)”
mnemonic (6/86)
when time held me
between two worlds
a chronology
I can still recite
— J.S.
“could i if”
cf. Ladies’ Home Journal, 1985 and video by Vimeo-Free-Videos via Pixabay
could i if
time in back go could i if
and night that to back go would i
forever there stay
— J.S.
