by Kat | Aug 1, 2022 | General, In This Moment
Welcomes August.
So, August… how should I fill your days?
Of course, painting. I am just having so much fun. I have no expectation for the results… outside of learning new things! This is delightfully freeing! My inner perfection demon has been curiously silent!
Some sewing… not just talking about it. I have almost finished the cutting… so let the sewing begin!
And this weekend I re-organized my spinning and I even did some spinning this weekend! I am looking forward to more spinning this month. I have a SQ of fiber that I really want to make into yarn so I can knit a sweater with it! So I have a a good bit of spinning to do this month! Stay tuned for a little surprise update later this week on the spinning front!
As you can see, I have many ideas of what I’d like August to hold… but then I saw this on IG from Emily P. Freeman and I stopped dead in my tracks when I got to this bit:
I love this so much, I wrote this in my journal this morning. And so my list and… change?
While I wait for what August will bring… poetry. Because, of course, always poetry! I have been working through two poetry books this summer but this poem by Derek Walcott has spurred an urge to fill my August days with him. I leave you with some beautiful Walcott imagery to fill your Monday. See you all back here on Wednesday!
Midsummer, Tobago
by Derek Walcott
Broad sun-stoned beaches.
White heat.
A green river.
A bridge,
scorched yellow palms
from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.
Days I have held,
days I have lost,
days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harbouring arms.
from “Sea Grapes,” 1976, published by Jonathan Cape.
by Kat | Nov 20, 2018 | General, Words
Since reading The Overstory, I have been more fixated on trees and really thinking much about this brilliant story that Richard Powers wrote. Recently, when I was flipping through a compilation of Derek Walcott’s poetry, I was struck by this poem and though I have not spent much time in eastern Pennsylvania, I can distinctly hear what he writes about.
I think this poem fits perfectly for Thanksgiving as well and perhaps this week when you are outside you will listen to the beautiful “mute roar of autumn” with deep gratitude.
Pastoral by Derek Walcott
In the mute roar of autumn, in the shrill
treble of the aspens, the basso of the holm-oaks,
in the silvery wandering aria of the Schuylkill,
the poplars choiring with a quillion strokes,
find love for what is not your land, a blazing country
in eastern Pennsylvania with the DVD going
in the rented burgundy Jeep, in the inexhaustible bounty
of fall with the image of Eakins’ gentleman rowing
in his slim skiff whenever the trees divide
to reveal a river’s serene surprise, flowing
through snow-flecked birches where Indian hunters glide.
The country has caught fire from the single spark
of a prophesying preacher, its embers glowing,
its clouds are smoke in the onrushing dark
a holocaust crackles in this golden oven
in which tribes were consumed, a debt still owing,
while a white country spire insists on heaven.
I hope your Thanksgiving preparations are going smoothly and whether you are traveling or are receiving travelers – may those travels be safe.
I will see you back here tomorrow for Unraveled Wednesday!
by Kat | Apr 24, 2018 | General, In This Moment
As National Poetry Month draws to a close, I thought I would share a poem from a newly discovered poet (Thanks, Kym!).
After reading a poem by Derek Walcott on Kym’s blog earlier this month, I check out an anthology of Derek’s poetry from the library and have been reading a poem or two a day during the month. I have enjoyed his works tremendously. He has given me a different perspective to look at things, which is always a very good thing.
Forty Acres
by Derek Walcott
to Barack Obama
Out of the turmoil emerges one emblem, an engraving –
a young Negro at dawn in straw hat and overalls,
an emblem of impossible prophecy: a crowd
dividing like the furrow which a mule has plowed,
parting for their president; a field of snow-flecked cotton
forty acres wide, of crows with predictable omens
that the young plowman ignores for his unforgotten
cotton-haired ancestors, while lined on one branch are a tense
court of bespectacled owls and, on the field’s receding rim
is a gesticulating scarecrow stamping with rage at him
while the small plow continues on this lined page
beyond the moaning ground, the lynching tree, the tornado’s black vengeance,
and the young plowman feels the change in his veins, heart, muscles, tendons,
till the field lies open like a flag as dawn’s sure
light streaks the field and furrows wait for the sower.
