Today

Twittering swallows,
roaring flying battleships,
Memorial Day.

Wow

From cool, gray, gloom to
hits you right in the eye, pow,
bright, hot afternoons.

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better. —Sleeping In The Forest by Mary Oliver.

Hooray

Sunny, warm, breezy,
gone is dismal, gray, cool, gloom,
May ending to June.

For a new great nephew

Celebrating the
new arrivals soon to come
tenderly, sweetly.

Friday

With this awareness
may I find the breath of grace
may I release all.

Slow spring

A few bare branches
rise above lush green bower
mid-May afternoon.

Thought for Wednesday

Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?
- D.T. Suzuki

Thought for Tuesday

This practice of paying attention, of noticing ego, trains us to make an important movement out of conditioned mind and into awareness. Just as the eyes cannot see themselves, conditioned mind cannot “see” itself. To “see” conditioned mind, the attention has to be on awareness.
- Cheri Huber

Thought for a Monday

The human definition of the natural world is always going to be too small, because the world’s more diverse and complex than we can ever know. We’re not going to comprehend it: it comprehends us.
- Wendell Berry

Visual adventuring

Exploring the divine feminine with Tracy Verdugo, as part of the Spectrum offering, also inspired by Cybele on Brac

Playful fun

52 weeks of nature art: cactus - inspired by

Koosje Koene

Tenderness

Inspired by Andrea Schroeder's heart meditation, Spectrum 2016

Altered Gainsborough portrait

Inspired by Lifebook lesson with Pauline Agnew

of course I was drawn to a woman reading

Tiny old-fashioned wonderfully scented flowers from the garden

Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
  -- David Whyte
      from Everything is Waiting for You
     ©2003 Many Rivers Press

Mother's Day

Half a world away
your kind words arrive as balm
to brighten the day

Meditation

Breathe in and breathe out.
Let all no longer serves go -
return as blessings.

Beautiful Milna harbor

"Red, White and Blue" show Hanover Area Arts Guild this month

http://www.hanoverareaarts.com/show/

Starting Spectrum 2016

Big black crow below
Pair of catbirds on the branch
a busy bird day

Second of May

Spring from here, looks like -
pair of robins on the branch -
hills shrouded in mist.