P
Nerja
Category Archives: Nature
Gibraltar
St Michael’s Caves were once used as a war hospital and to house World War 2 supplies for the Allies. Today they hold concerts in the large grottos and have coloured lights and music for tourists.
We didn’t see kite surfers in Tarifa but were delighted to find them at Malaga.
Writing Japan
(internet photo: Torii of Shanno Shrine in Nagasaki after atomic bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945. It was the only thing that withstood the explosion in the area)
A friend challenged me to write a poem about Japan; this is what I came up with.
Japan is a tsunami,
a world of samurai and sumo
ikebana and kamikaze.
The land of the rising sun
graces us with cherry blossoms
and temples that flow
from a calligraphy brush.
Earthquakes reverberate
half a world away,
carry strength
to the west,
remnants of people’s live
swept out to sea.
A crewless “ghost ship”
sails to Haida Gwaii.
While we sip exotic tea
and inspect wreckage,
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
disturb us with grace,
slowly dissolving.
Japan is a sculptured garden,
glass and sleek steel
arranged with precision
next to paper walled teahouses,
Mount Fuji an elegant backdrop
to bullet trains that shuttle
honorable tradition
into a unpruned future.
Winter Respite
We have been experiencing arctic cold temperatures and record snowfall. Yesterday the sun graced us with her glorious presence again and sent the thermometer and moods rising. We are expecting the warm weather to continue for the rest of the week – yay!
As I looked out my office window this morning I was met with a beautiful pink sky reflecting off a long, pointy icicle hanging precariously from an eave – thus the inspiration for today’s submission 🙂
morning sun provokes
nature’s dangling dagger
disarms icicle
We Can Find Hope
Anger and tenderness: my selves.
And now I can believe they breathe in me
as angels, not polarities.
Anger and tenderness: the spider’s genius
to spin and weave in the same action
from her own body, anywhere —
even from a broken web.
(Adrienne Rich)
Love Like That
“And still, after all this time,
the Sun has never said to the Earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens with love like that.
It lights up the sky.” –Rumi
Louis Armstrong, Oh Yeah
“The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people goin’ by
I see friends shaking hands saying, “How do you do”
They’re really saying “I love you.”
I hear babies cry, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know;
And I think to myself, What a wonderful world;
Yes, I think to myself, What a wonderful world.
Oh yeah!”
Expect Nothing by Alice Walker
Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.
Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.
Discover the reason why
So tiny human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
Brrr!
It’s a frigid -26 Celsius with ice crystals in the air so I thought I would post a winter poem 🙂
Edward Gates
From: Heart’s Cupboard
the wind beats snow
against my house
threads hang from the coat of a man
filling the cracks in his home
last night a man with black hair
drank beer by the well house
he laughed through a crack in the door
I put more wood on the stove
I am warm leaning back
on the legs of his old chair
The Bird by Patrick Lane
The bird you captured is dead.
I told you it would die
but you would not learn
from my telling. You wanted
to cage a bird in your hands
and learn to fly.
Listen again.
You must not handle birds.
They cannot fly through your fingers.
You are not a nest
and a feather is
not made of blood and bone.
Only words
can fly for you like birds
on the wall of the sun.
A bird is a poem
that talks of the end of cages.
ScribbleDartsfromtheHeart 