Boys and Men

This links to something written by Pastor Joost Nixon of Spokane, WA. Good words.

"One of the deficiencies of Western culture is that there is no objective marker for young men to know when they have passed from "boy" to "man." . . . But what this ambiguity about adulthood does, practically, is leave our mature males to be "boys-in-men's-bodies"; irresponsible, piddling around with follies, instead of moving the football of cultural dominion down the field and into the end zone."

Read it. http://biblicalchildrearing.blogspot.com/2012/10/piddling-with-follies.html?spref=fb

Season of Leaves

I am actually still working on this poem, but it belongs in this season, not in the next, so here it is along with some pictures I have taken recently.

I

Before the sun

was all the way up
the front of the house pelted
by an onslaught of mad leaves
driven on a wild wind.

II

Two black birds, crows,

locked in flight of love or war,
plummet like mad whirling blades
falling from the sky, fanning outward
the pale leaves on the asphalt below.

III

This hard wood floor,

dark and lightly
dented, scattered with thin leaves:
teardrops and crescents and stemmed hearts
and the red serrated shape we associate with Canada.

 

Wife of Sysiphus

As a nerd, a lover of poetry and of the classics, a sucker for the blues, and a believer in death-and-resurrection, I appreciated this poem.

http://poems.com/poem.php?date=15630

Beautiful bits and happy corners

Have I mentioned how much I love my house?

 

Together

This is the morning-after of our biggest dinner to-date at the Jefferson House. Four tables were used, twenty-four people served, and eaten was zucchini soup, bread and butter, fresh pineapple, diced sweet potatoes with onions, mulled wine, and oatmeal raisin cookies. I love how generous my house of roommates is, and I love it when everyone comes together (including guests) to make table space and seating work. Two tables, many chairs, and a couple stacks of bowls, along with a handful of spoons, were added to ours to supply our every need. And a good time was had by all.

Beginnings

It's hard to pinpoint when I started writing, or even started loving to write. There's the time my mom's great-aunt sent me boxes of her books on college english and narrative and writer's markets. There's the year my dad had us copy poems or psalms for handwriting practice, to be read in front of the family in the evening. Then there's the fact that Mom loves to write, and that I have schoolteacher ancestors, and that my sisters and brothers and I would tell one another stories as we washed the dishes every day. Writing came kind of natural.

But this is the first poem of mine that my mom saved. I was 11, and I think this was inspired by a recurring nightmare of mine about being chased up the driveway and into the house by a black bear. Don't laugh. We all have to begin somewhere.

There Is a Tree

 

There is a tree

that’s just for me.

Along came a bear

and gave me a scare!

I was up in my tree

when it saw me.

 

It gave a growl and prowled around

so I jumped down to the ground.

I ran to my house as fast as I could.

I was safe: I’d run faster than any bear would!