STOPPING BY WOODS

Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

~Robert Frost~

********************

PRAISE SONG

Praise the light of late November,

the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.

Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;

though they are clothed in night, they do not

despair. Praise what little there's left:

the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,

shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow

of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,

the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky

that hasn't cracked. Praise the sun slipping down

behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves

that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,

Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy

fallen world; it's all we have, and it's never enough.

~Barbara Crooker~

********************

CHANGING SEASON

October's poplars are flaming torches lighting the way to winter.

~ Nova Bair ~

********************

WARMING MY SOUL

What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of applewood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and bluebirds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.

~Thomas Bailey Aldrich~

********************

AUTUMN

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.
Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

~Rainer Maria Rilke~

********************

BAKING

Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.

~Jane Austen~

********************

AUGUST'S CROWN

Whilst August yet wears her golden crown,
Ripening fields lush - bright with promise;
Summer waxes long, then wanes, quietly passing
Her fading green glory on to riotous Autumn.

~ Michelle L. Thieme ~

*************************

BOOKS

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them, peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye. Set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you, at least, know where they are. Let them be your friends...

~Winston Churchill~

********************

DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY

I have spent most of my life worrying about things that have never happened.

~Mark Twain~

********************

BUTTERFLIES

Frail travellers, deftly flickering over the flowers;

O living flowers against the heedless blue

Of summer days, what sends them dancing through

This fiery-blossom'd revel of the hours?

~Siegfried Sassoon~

*************************

MOUNTAINS

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

~Aldous Huxley~
********************

THE MONTH OF JUNE

It is the month of June,
The month of leaves and roses
When pleasant sights salute the eyes,
And pleasant scents the noses.

~Nathaniel Parker Willis~

*************************

AWAKENING

Never yet was a springtime,

when the buds forgot to blow.

~ Margaret Elizabeth Sangster ~

******************************

TAKE KNOWLEDGE

Men should take their knowledge from the Sun, the Moon and the Stars.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

*************************

APRIL

The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.
Yet the backyards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree -
I could not be so sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.

~Sara Teasdale~

********************

FINISH EVERY DAY

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.

Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson~

*************************

MAY MY DAYS ...

May my days be a pilgrimage

Along the path of truth and beauty.

Finding hunger, may I be nourished by love

Finding thirst, may I drink at the well of hope

Finding the river wide, may I learn to swim

Finding the way barred, may my spirit grow wings

Finding home, may I be grateful.

May my days be a pilgrimage

Along the path of truth and beauty,

And may my joy be found not in the destination,

but in every step of the way.

~Dianne Sylvan~

MARCH

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

~Charles Dickens~

********************

BEST FRIENDS

We made them
in the image of our fears
to cry at doors
at partings - even brief
to beg for food at table
and to look at us with those big
aching eyes
and to stay with us
when our children flee.
And sleep upon our beds
on darkest nights
and cringe at thunder
as in our own childhood frights.
We made them sad-eyed
loving, loyal, scared
of life without us.
We nurtured their dependency and grief.
We keep them as reminders of our fear.
We love them as the unacknowledged hosts
of our own terror
of the grave - abandoment.
Hold my paw
for I am dying.
Sleep upon my coffin.
Wait for me,
sad-eyed,
in the middle of the drive
that curves beyond the cemetry wall.
I hear your bark
I hear your mournful bark
Oh, may all the dogs
that I have ever loved,
carry my coffin
howl at the moonless sky
and lie down with me sleeping
when I die.

~ Erica de Jong ~

***************

FIRESIDE

Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside, candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly out.

- Thomas De Quincey -

********************

THE MONTHS

January cold and desolate;
February dripping wet;
March wind ranges;
April changes;
Birds sing in tune
To flowers of May,
And sunny June
Brings longest day;
In scorched July
The storm-clouds fly,
Lightning-torn;
August bears corn,
September fruit;
In rough October
Earth must disrobe her;
Stars fall and shoot
In keen November;
And night is long
And cold is strong
In bleak December.

~Christina Giorgina Rossetti~

******************************

TIME

Time has no divisions to mark its passage,

there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce
the beginning of a new month or year.

Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who
ring bells and fire off pistols.

~ Thomas Mann~

********************

THE SHORTEST DAY

So the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive,

And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, reveling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us - Listen!!

All the long echoes sing the same delight,

This shortest day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, fest, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!!

~ Susan Cooper~

********************

MIRROR

There are two ways of spreading light -- to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

Edith Wharton

********************

LIGHT

The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of. The mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July.

~Henry David Thoreau~

***************

MY NOVEMBER GUEST

My sorrow, when she's here with me,

thinks these dark days of autumn rain

are beautiful as days can be;

she loves the bare, the withered tree;

she walks the sodden pasture lane.

~Robert Frost~

***************

THEME IN YELLOW

I spot the hills

with yellow balls in autumn.

I light the prairie cornfields
orange and tawny gold clusters
and I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children

know I am fooling.

~Carl Sandburg~

********************

OCTOBER'S BRIGHT BLUE WEATHER

O suns and skies and clouds of June

And flowers of June together

Ye cannot rival for one hour

October's bright blue weather.

~Helen Hunt Jackson~

***************

INDIAN SUMMER

Indian Summer

Along the line of smoky hills
The crimson forest stands,
And all the day the blue-jay calls
Throughout the autumn lands.
Now by the brook the maple leans,
With all his glory spread;
And all the sumachs on the hills
Have turned their green to red.
Now, by great marshes wrapt in mist,
Or past some river's mouth,
Throughout the long still autumn day
Wild birds are flying south.

~William Wilfred Campbell~

AUTUMN FIRES

In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The gray smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!

~ Robert Louis Stevenson~

AUGUST

Summer is already walking the path to yesterday.

~Gladys Taber~

********************

ISLAND

How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those that are wise and of good will.

~Albert Einstein~

********************

BLUEBERRIES

You ought to have seen what I saw on my way
To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day!
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!
And all ripe together, not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!

~Robert Frost~

********************

IT'S WHAT YOU SEE

It's not what you look at that matters,
it's what you see.

~Henry David Thoreau~

******************************

A TREE

He who plants a tree plants a hope.

~ Lucy Larcom ~

*************************

I NOW DO PLAINLY SEE ...

Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave

May I a small house and large garden have ;

And a few friends, and many books, both true,

Both wise, and both delightful too !

~Abraham Cowley~

*************************

HOPE

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over,

it became a butterfly.

~Anonymous~

***************

DAILINESS

It was the small things that helped, taken one by one and savoured.
Make yourself savour them.

~Rumer Godden~

******************************

ONE STEP AT A TIME

Success is steady progress toward one's personal goals

~Jim Rohn~

********************

RAIN

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me

Last night

the rain

spoke to me

slowly, saying,

what joy

to come falling

out of the brisk cloud

to be happy again

in a new way

on the earth!

that's what it said

as it dropped,

smelling of iron,

and vanished

like a dream of the ocean

into the branches

and the grass below.

Then it was over.

The sky cleared.

I was standing

under a tree.

The tree was a tree

with happy leaves,

and I was myself,

and there were stars in the sky

that were also themselves

at the moment

at which moment

my right hand

was holding my left hand

which was holding the tree

which was filled with stars

and the soft rain

-imagine! imagine!

the long and wondrous journeys

still to be ours.

~Mary Oliver~

HOPE IS ...

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul.
And sings the tune
Without the words,
and never stops at all.

~Emily Dickinson~

PERFECT SILENCE

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

~Walt Whitman~

COMMON DAYS

As I watch the stars of evening, and in the morning open my window to the east, I shall observe the Ceremonial of quietness of heart and poise of spirit ...

~Abbie Graham~

MORE

Only a beige slat of sun above the horizon, like a shade pulled not quite down. Otherwise, clouds. Sea rippled here and there. Birds reluctant to fly.

The mind wants a shaft of sun to stir the grey porridge of clouds, an osprey to stitch sea to sky with its barred wings, some dramatic music: a symphony, perhaps a Chinese gong.

But the mind always wants more than it has --one more bright day of sun, one more clear night in bed with the moon; one more hour to get the words right; one more chance for the heart in hiding to emerge from its thicket in dried grasses -- as if this quiet day with its tentative light weren't enough, as if joy weren't strewn all around.

~Holly Hughes~

EFFORT

Start where you are,
Use what you have,
Do what you can,
And it will be enough.

~Arthur Ashe~

DUST OF SNOW

DUST OF SNOW

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

~ Robert Frost ~

WINTER SOLSTICE

Toward the Winter Solstice

Although the roof is just a story high,
It dizzies me a little to look down.
I lariat-twirl the cord of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown;
A dowel into which I’ve screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree’s elegant design.

Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call up commendations or critiques.
I make adjustments. Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.

Some say that L.A. doesn’t suit the Yule,
But UPS vans now like magi make
Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves
Are gaily resurrected in their wake;
The desert lifts a full moon from the east
And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,
And valets at chic restaurants will soon
Be tending flocks of cars and SUVs.

And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk
The fan palms scattered all across town stand
More calmly prominent, and this place seems
A vast oasis in the Holy Land.
This house might be a caravansary,
The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead
Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces
And ceintures of green, yellow, blue, and red.

Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem
Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;
It’s comforting to look up from this roof
And feel that, while all changes, nothing’s lost,
To recollect that in antiquity
The winter solstice fell in Capricorn
And that, in the Orion Nebula,
From swirling gas, new stars are being born.

~Timithy Steele~

BEAUTY

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

~ Rumi ~

DEEP IN THOUGHT

The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party but they say nothing and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

THANKSGIVING

The year has turned its circle,
The seasons come and go.
The harvest is all gathered in
And chilly north winds blow.
Orchards have shared their treasures,
The fields, their yellow grain,
So open wide the doorway-
Thanksgiving comes again!

~Author Unknown~

***************

CATECHISM FOR A WITCH'S CHILD

When they ask to see your gods
your book of prayers
show them lines
drawn delicately with veins
on the underside of a bird's wing
tell them you believe
in giant sycamores mottled
and stark against a winter sky
and in nights so frozen
stars crack open spilling
streams of molten ice to earth
and tell them how you drank
the holy wine of honeysuckle
on a warm spring day
and of the softness
of your mother
who never taught you
death was life's reward
but who believed in the earth
and the sun
and a million, million light years
of being.

© 1986 J.L.Stanley

OCTOBER

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

Tomorrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow.

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know.

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away;

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost-

For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

~ Robert Frost ~

BEGINNING AUTUMN

On the porch in September a brown spider

in its web. There are deaths that come so quietly.

Over the mountains, the half moon rising.

Behind the fence a neighbor's dog howls in the dark.

No matter what the poet says a yellow leaf

asks nothing. The green wail of spring is what I want.

When you follow the shoreline out of sight,

I listen to ocean in an empty shell.

I never intended my life to turn out this way.

How solitary the drifting boat on the water.

~ Jeanne Lohmann ~

SEPTEMBER

The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-

Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Drying grass,
New books and blackboard
Chalk in class.

The bee, his hive
Well-honeyed, hums
While Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.

Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze.

~John Updike~


********************

PRAISE WHAT COMES

Praise what comes
surprising as unplanned kisses,
all you haven't deserved
of days and solitude,
your body's immoderate good health
that lets you work in many kinds of weather.

Praise talk with just about anyone,
and quiet intervals,
books that are your food and your hunger;
nightfall and walks before sleep.

Praising these for practice,
perhaps you will come at last to praise grief
and the wrongs you never intended.
At the end there may be no answers
and only a few very simple questions:
did I love,
finish my task in the world?
learn at least one of the many names of God?
At the intersections,
the boundaries where one life began and another ended,
the jumping-off places between fear and possibility,
at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?

~ Jeanne Lohmann

ALTERED

I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas. They've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.

~Emily Bronte~

NIGHT MOVES

The moon and three stars

Have as their witness:

A witch in her ritual finery

Hello Kitty pajamas

Toe socks

A cup of chai cooling on the rail.

She's standing like a cottonwood tree

Arms wide and quivering.

The moon and three stars

Haloed in cloud

A few crickets

Beyond that the interstate

Cars going by

At three in the morning

While a witch

And the moon

And three stars

Have communion

Disguised cleverly

As insomnia.

~Dianne Sylvan~

BRIDGES

I'd be content
If I could learn
Which bridge to cross
And which to burn.

~ Gail Cooke ~

JUNE

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—

One clover, and a bee,
And revery.

The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

~Emily Dickinson~

MY SYMPHONY

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common -- this is my symphony.

~William Henry Channing~

A PRAYER

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life

--wherever and in whatever form

it may dwell-- on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

~Diane Ackerman~

LIVING IN SEASON

At Christmastime I no more desire a rose
than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;
But like each thing that in season grows.

~William Shakespeare~

PRIORITIES

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

~Joseph Addison~

LIFE IS GOOD

EXCERPTS FROM A DOG'S DIARY:

8:00 am- Dog food! My favorite thing!
9:30 am- A car ride! My favorite thing!
9:40 am- A walk in the park! My favorite thing!
10:30 am- Got rubbed and petted! My favorite thing!
11:15 am- A nap! My favorite thing!
12:00 pm- Lunch! My favorite thing!
1:00 pm- Played in the yard! My favorite thing!

3:00 pm- Milk bones! My favorite thing!
5:00 pm- Wagged my tail! My favorite thing!

7:00 pm - Dog food! My favorite thing!
8:00 pm- Got to play ball! My favorite thing!
11:00 pm- Sleeping on the bed! My favorite thing!

ALL IN GOOD TIME

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.

~Rainer Maria Rilke~

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on,
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~Mary Oliver~

********************

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

... everyone is a house with four rooms: a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time, but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.

~Rumer Godden~

SERENITY

Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.

~Max Ehrmann~

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world,
and am free

~Wendell Berry~

THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

The path is a spiral. We go up, but we go in circles. Each time around, the view gets a little wider.

~Sarah Ban Breathnach~