Monday, February 6, 2012

our second beating hearts (the fifth week)

The only way to make a writing dream come true is to write your way towards it. The only way to live with good words is to search for them, find them, and love them. So over here on Mondays, I share with you some of the good words I've found throughout the week, and some of my own scribbles. And together, we write the contours of our second beating hearts. 


Good words I've found:


Lisa-Jo at the Gypsy Mama: Because sometimes empty is better than full {an invitation}
Julie at Ra(y)conteur: An Approach to Church
Fr. Stephen at Glory to God for All things: The Song of God
Renee Ronika Klug, over at #ATLT: that we may be one
Suzanne at faceless mignon: Life: Unmasked, Enjoy


A poem to hear sounding through your week:


Misgivings (William Matthews), found through the Writer's Almanac from February 4, 2012.


"Perhaps you'll tire of me," muses
my love, although she's like a great city
to me, or a park that finds new
ways to wear each flounce of light
and investiture of weather.
Soil doesn't tire of rain, I think,

but I know what she fears: plans warp,
planes explode, topsoil gets peeled away
by floods. And worse than what we can't
control is what we could; those drab,
scuttled marriages we shed so
gratefully may augur we're on our owns

for good reasons. "Hi, honey," chirps Dread
when I come through the door, "you're home."
Experience is a great teacher
of the value of experience,
its claustrophobic prudence,
its gloomy name-the-disasters-

in-advance charisma. Listen,
my wary one, it's far too late
to unlove each other. Instead let's cook
something elaborate and not
invite anyone to share it but eat it
all up very very slowly.



And a poem from me: 



In the South of France, Musing about Why You are a Farmer
(To my friend Lisa, who teaches me to love the land)

You might not have been a farmer,
Except for the weeds you gently divorced
From their cabbage neighbors.
You might not have been a farmer,
Except that your gut
Feels the emptiness before harvest
And you fill your hands
With the miracle of dirt.
You might not have been a farmer
Before you picked the first ripe lemon,
Before you put your ear to the ground to hear the worms
Dig their patient tunnels,
Before you watched rows unfurl
And the horizon explode with ripeness.
Cézanne drew this mountain
Over and over and we thought his drawing
Made it new every time.
But you know
the land changes each moment,
And Cézanne drew the newness he saw.
The lavender and poppies that swell
drench the land in light, and color:
untamed, unyielding.
You might not have been a farmer.
But you yearn for what is wild,
Recognize what blooms,
and farmers are nothing less. 

Love,
Hilary

1 comment:

  1. I love both these poems. The first sounds sideways similar to words spoken to me sweetly each time I'm with him. The second - ah! - I love the trust you have in Cezanne - yes, they are all different because the land was always different and he had the eyes to see it.

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