Final shot, as promised. It is very late and the dead have returned to their rest for another year.
I don’t know if I built it up too much, but I like it. I like the idea of this small altar with the skulls and flowers all around and the candles that will burn into the night.
Picture this altar, meticulously and carefully arranged upon a stone slab in a crowded graveyard in a burnt-orange town or sand-blown village. Children are laughing and playing amongst the dusty tombstones. Families are sharing food and drinks while gentle breezes skip, soft and dry, touching lightly and lifting easy over warm and blushing skin, the way it does when you are far out in the desert. As darkness falls, the dusky air gets cooler and the little ones gather and tuck in closer as night takes hold. Final words are said and prayers are whispered too low to hear, eyes and hands search and fold, clutching at the skyline, but the time has come to say goodbye. The dead are left to lay, quiet and peaceful, resting again, with their own. They remain as bodies below our feet, yet spirits within our hearts and minds. While the flames of our steadfast watch silently burn, deepest night arrives. Black and still, it covers and comforts even the most restless soul and it seems intrusive to stay. When dawn lifts her weary head to herald in a bright new day, the magic will be gone, hidden amongst the wilted flowers and broken candy shells. In the glare of unforgiving sunlight, the altar is just a colorful reminder of what we remember and why. We feel lucky and joyful to be alive. We pay our respects but save a bit for ourselves. We must now carry the honor of living for those who cannot. Time belongs to us again and we have a job to keep.
(Dia de los muertos by Pristine Cartera-Turkus)
God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled. ~Author Unknown
FYI on the book stack…
That’s not even ALL the books you COULD buy. There’s more! These are the ones, for this semester, I felt I needed. The other recommended ones I am going to do without. We’ll see…
And since I’m on the subject of being all philosophical and thoughtful and embarking on the new path and all, here’s a poem that was in the front of my first nursing book I ever bought, way back in June (ha), and sadly, it tears me up. (tears=crying or tears=ripped up ??–it’s almost the same thing–but I meant crying—don’t judge!)
Being a Nurse Means…
You will never be bored,
You will always be frustrated,
You will be surrounded by challenges,
So much to do and so little time.
You will carry immense responsibility
And very little authority.
You will step into people’s lives,
And you will make a difference.
Some will bless you.
Some will curse you.
You will see people at their worst,
And at their best.
You will never cease to be amazed at people’s capacity
For love, courage, and endurance.
You will see life begin
and end.
You will experience resounding triumphs
And devastating failures.
You will cry a lot.
You will laugh a lot.
You will know what it is to be human
And to be humane.
—Melodie Chenevert, RN
It seems cheesy to say, but I keep it close, so I’ll know, and remember why.
(and i can’t wait to get started!)
Poetry For People / My Stuff
I have a diary!
In fact, I have several. As I was going through my drawers, (still cleaning out–getting those pictures organized), I found all these notebooks that I had been writing in. Actually, one, looks like an official diary. It has a rich, brown, leather cover with a strap and snap button on top, with thick, vanilla, lined paper inside. It’s nice and I don’t remember getting it, but my daughter wants to have it badly.
At any rate, I must have used it for something because there were some things written, and one thing that I thought was pretty good.
So here it is, posted just as I wrosted (That was a deliberate misspell) No title, as usual:
—————————————————————————————————————————–
And now I must go to bed
and dream of wild men.
And in the morning I am going to
put curls in my hair.
I didn’t know how the story ended.
Middle of the bed
Middle of the balcony
In a huge apartment
On the floor;
I will bet that you can’t remember
even half of it.
If you would dance with me
If you would lay with me
There was rain and we had rain
There was a jungle that you ran through
You were always chasing me
in the dark.
I could never get away.
Poetry For People / The Famous Stuff
This is the second poem in my “Icarus” trilogy. Finally. Click HERE to see the first one. Then take a look at the one below.
Icarus by Edward Field
Only the feathers floating around the hat
Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred
Than the usual drowning. The police preferred to ignore
The confusing aspects of the case,
And the witnesses ran off to a gang war.
So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply
“Drowned,” but it was wrong: Icarus
Had swum away, coming at last to the city
Where he rented a house and tended the garden.
——————————
“That nice Mr. Hicks” the neighbors called him,
Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit
Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings
Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once
Compelled the sun. And had he told them
They would have answered with a shocked, uncomprehending stare
No, he could not disturb their neat front yards;
Yet all his books insisted that this was a horrible mistake:
What was he doing aging in a suburb?
Can the genius of the hero fall
To the middling stature of the merely talented?
——————————
And nightly Icarus probes his wound
And daily in his workshop, curtains carefully drawn,
Constructs small wings and tries to fly
To the lighting fixture on the ceiling:
Fails every time and hates himself for trying.
——————————
He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically,
And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero;
But now rides commuter trains,
Serves on various committees,
And wishes he had drowned.
Poetry For People / The Famous Stuff
This is probably my favorite poem of all time. When someone says “poem”, it’s the one I always think of first. And judging by the rest of the world in websites and blogs, I’m not the only one. So, I know that it has been placed around here countless times, but I’m going to add it in just once more.
I have two other poems on the Icarus theme that I will be posting this week. Those might not be AS popular so it will give a fresh take on an old subject. I even did a critical literary analysis comparing the three for a college paper. Exciting stuff. Maybe if someone asks nice or begs originally, I’ll just post it on up. And if nobody says anything, I might just post it anyway.
Here it is. The one, the only:
Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Poetry For People / Mine and Stevie’s
Have a few things; working on; like everyone. No titles. I just never got into the habit. Maybe it will come to me after it’s out. Remember, be kind.
Cotton gray in a humid yellow room.
Denim blue crumpled in a brown corner.
Green eyes flashing, staring into the smoke of my own.
Tan against peach; skin slick with exertion; fine hairs bristling.
Pink scar that traces down the side of your body.
Loved you.
The colors we made stay much clearer than anything else;
All I recall, thinking of you now:
Silver and red, serene and raging.
Your black fury and my wishy-washy white.
Gold, gold, gold.
Bright and shining, gleaming chrome.
Individual hues that never bled into each other.
Started missing you.
Hazy and flat;
Metal days and copper veins, spilled onto the floor.
I hate to remember now since no box is big enough to hold all that we created.
Except there is no creation.
No crayon is colored deep enough
to survive in the heat of the sun.
After reading some of the things I wrote, my daughter gave it a go. I think it’s pretty good. She’s 10. No title. Here it is:
As well as you know me
Like the sky is blue
The air is fresh
And death is right around the corner
You and I will always be connected.
—Stevie F.
My Stuff
First post is always the hardest. Let’s do one serious and one silly. Free style and rhyming. Don’t judge too harshly….here goes…no titles…
And my castle fell to the ground today;
my knights have fallen to dust.
So where does that leave me?
In a smoky, concrete field,
surrounded by the ancient waters of my people.
Before me lay the blade that cut my heart,
and the hand that took my life.
And you can tell it was he,
for the blood is still there on his soul,
and his spirit cannot leave the ground
with the weight of my love in his heart.
He is my last knight and my last love.
Since I cannot cry, he will have to,
and his armor will rust blood-black.
Finally, he will ride again,
stained, but living.
In his lifetime, there will be a grave he visits.
Never hard to find;
Warm, where it should be cold,
and marked with the crimson stain of love.
Dramatic a bit…kind of along the warrior theme there…but we can be silly too. And that’s what’s fun about poetry!
Oh my little animals!
I love each and every one.
They sit so quiet, peaceful
as they lie there in the sun.
Every night I say good-bye
and wish them restfully,
turn off the light and close the door,
I miss them already!
A smile and sigh, they curl up tight
and sleep and wait for me.
The Famous Stuff
I think alot of people get introduced to Robert Frost early on. I know I did. It’s at school. Or in life somewhere. It’s in one of the more famous movies: “The Outsiders”. But it was a BOOK first. The author, S.E. Hinton, includes this Frost poem in her book. It’s a main theme. Keep in mind, Ms. Hinton, was 17 when she wrote the book. I have always been in awe of that skill. So this is my first of the famous:
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
just shy of pretty 