Time

 Robert Louis Stevenson —

'Time which none can bind, While flowing fast away, leaves love behind.'

more music

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

by Alfred Lord Tennyson 

I have a soft spot for Tennyson. He's the master of drama and his words are like music to my ears.

I can remember quoting this poem and having my grandson say the last line. I loved to hear him chant, "And like a thunderbolt he falls!!" That was like music to my ears too.

Pictures of eagles always make me hear this fragment of Hebrew poetry from Isaiah.  "But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles"

More music to my ears.

a light exists

"A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels"
-Emily Dickinson

eternity

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

  by Emily Dickinson

rain on sunshine

Frances Hodgson Burnett- The Secret Garden

"Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"...
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...”

Emily on spring

Emily Dickinson-(1830-86)

DEAR March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat—
You must have walked—
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!

I got your letter, and the bird’s;
The maples never knew
That you were coming,—I declare,
How red their faces grew!
But, March, forgive me—
And all those hills
You left for me to hue;
There was no purple suitable,
You took it all with you.

Who knocks? That April!
Lock the door!
I will not be pursued!
He stayed away a year, to call
When I am occupied.
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as praise
And praise as mere as blame.

window to heaven

The clouds are shifting this morning,
a giant gray and silver kaleidoscope.
The brilliance of the sun is caught and held,
great billows of light against the woolen sky.
Here and there, patches of violet,
windows to heaven.

sinatra by the sea

He was happy.
So happy that he sang as he worked.
He was a crooning Ice-cream man.
Dean Martin with a cone in one hand.
Sinatra by the sea.

always there

"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." W.B.Yeats

The magic is always there.
Whether I notice it or not.
 A few moments outside are all it takes.
Just a few steps outside into the sunshine or the swirling snow.
Past gardens trim or tangled.
Birds overhead.
The wind my companion.

the love

Don't you find that knowing who a poet wrote something for makes the words even more powerful?
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote,
'But time which none can bind
While flowing fast away
leaves love behind.'
He wrote it for his cousins.
He remembered all the games they had played as children.
The make believe.
The adventures.
And now as adults, they sat together before the fire and he remembered and was thankful.
I tried to read those lines aloud to my mother but didn't do very well.
I got through the part about time, and felt my voice tightening as I read about it flowing fast away, but it was the love that made me cry.

all my life

I love poetry.
When I read it, I always think (rather passionately) so THIS is what is missing from my life!
It sometimes seems to me that my feelings are just out of my sight and all it takes is the right words to fling wide the door. 
I remember when my daughter told me what song I would be walking down the aisle to at her wedding. Mothers always float in to some special song.
Mine was to be In My Life by the Beatles.
"Oh," I said my eyes brightening, "I know that song."
And I began to sing, :"There are places I remember, all my life, though some have changed, some forever...." and then I surprised myself by bursting into tears.
Oh oh.

It was because of my brother.
I realized that in a moment.
The marriage of a child is such a huge moment in time, that I had turned on the path, to my companions on the journey, and found my brother gone......

I listened and listened and listened to that song, and when the August sun rose above the chestnut tree I was ready.
I could hear the first strains of that tune and glide across the grass as serenely as befit the mother of the bride.
It is a dear song to me now.
There ARE places I remember all my life. Places and people and love.

like a smile

Darkness has settled like a cloak.
Down the avenue, street lights dimly glow; a row of moons ever smaller.
I can't tell where the sky ends or the street begins.
What a difference the clock has made.
This morning the sky brightened like a smile.
A jet trailed sunlight behind it and became the tail of a comet across the morning sky.

a day will come

“Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien

and dined

I left for work so early this morning that birds were eating their breakfast.
I know this for a fact because a large hawk,
a gray silhouette against the pale sky,
gripped his breakfast under foot high in a tree, and dined.

black and white day

The large, dark branches of the evergreens are riding the wind.
The ground is covered in snow as far as eye can see.
A crow is sidling closer to its companions on a street light roost.
It looks like a black and white day.

winter sky a la mode

A slice of winter sky

 a la mode

and treasured

Days aren't bits and pieces
tossed over our shoulders
and forgotten.
They are gems
threaded onto a string
and treasured.

plums and tangerines

The sun rises.
There is such beauty in its light.
The morning sky is ripe and richly coloured.
Plums and tangerines.
A great molten sea, before it fades to gray.

like a sea

Who needs the ocean when you can just look up at the sky;
The ever changing sky like a great, pearl gray sea.
Golden light is breaking on the horizon and lapping at the edges of the hills.

golden bird

A flash of wings overhead draws my eyes upward. A seagull catching the orange evening light on its feathers, banks to the right and disappears over the rooftop. A golden bird against an azure sky..