Three little brooches, waiting to be pinned.
Three little dolls, on their way to afternoon tea.
Three little bags, made from wool sweaters.
Three little pinkeeps, adorned with lace.
PAGE FROM A VINTAGE BOOK FOR CHILDREN
Three little kittens who lost their mittens.
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
A TINY BASKET ...
WITH A TINY WOODEN EGG ...
OPEN THE EGG ...
IT SEEMS THERE IS SOMETHING INSIDE THE EGG ...
IT'S A TINY WOODEN DOLL.
A VERY TINY WOODEN DOLL.
MOTHER AND CHILD :: MARY CASSATT
MESSAGE by Harold Pinter
Jill. Fred phoned. He can't make tonight.
He said he'd call again, as soon as poss.
I said (on your behalf) OK, no sweat.
He said to tell you he was fine,
Only the crap, he said, you know, it sticks,
The crap you have to fight.
You're sometimes nothing but a walking shithouse.
I was well acquainted with the pong myself,
I told him, and I counselled calm.
Don't let the fuckers get you down,
Take the lid off the kettle a couple of minutes,
Go on the town, burn someone to death,
Find another tart, giver her some hammer,
Live while you're young, until it palls,
Kick the first blind man you meet in the balls.
Anyway he'll call again.
I'll be back in time for tea.
Your loving mother.
In celebration of National Poetry Month, I am sharing a poem each day this month -- except for the days I miss. :-)
PHOTO :: ALI JAYE
THE SPAN OF LIFE by Robert Frost
The old dog barks backwards without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.
In celebration of National Poetry Month, I am sharing a poem each day this month -- except for the days I miss. :-)
ART :: ADELINE JESSICA CRITES-MOORE (about age 9)
THE PEAR by Jane Hirshfield
November. One pear
sways on the tree past leaves, past reason.
In the nursing home, my friend has fallen.
Chased, he said, from the freckled woods
by angry Thoreau, Coleridge, and Beaumarchais.
Delusion too, it seems, can be well read.
He is courteous, well-spoken even in dread.
The old fineness in him hangs on
for dear life. “My mind now?
A small ship under the wake of a large.
They force you to walk on your heels here,
the angles matter. Four or five degrees,
and you’re lost.” Life is dear to him yet,
though he believes it his own fault he grieves,
his own fault his old friends have turned against him
like crows against an injured of their kind.
There is no kindness here, no flint of mercy.
Descend, descend,
some voice must urge, inside the pear stem.
The argument goes on, he cannot outrun it.
Dawnlight to dawnlight, I look: it is still there.
(In celebration of National Poetry Month, I am sharing a poem each day this month ... except for the past two days, which I missed.)
MEMOIR by Vijay Seshadri
Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life.
The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.
If I wrote that story now ---
radioactive to the end of time ---
people, I swear, your eyes would fall out, you couldn’t peel
the gloves fast enough
from your hands scorched by the firestorms of that shame.
Your poor hands. Your poor eyes
to see me weeping in my room
or boring the tall blonde to death.
Once I accused the innocent.
Once I bowed and prayed to the guilty.
I still wince at what I once said to the devastated widow.
And one October afternoon, under a locust tree
whose blackened pods were falling and making
illuminating patterns on the pathway,
I was seized by joy,
and someone saw me there,
and that was the worst of all,
lacerating and unforgettable.
I am sharing a poem each day, in celebration of National Poetry Month. Today's poem is from Vijay Seshadri's latest book, 3 Sections, which was just announced as the winner of the 2014 Pulizter Prize for poetry.