One to ponder...

"Every life is march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice."

--Lyman Abbott

Thursday Thought: Innocence

Our classical radio station, WCLV, played America this morning--a song I loved as a young boy. As I listened, I recalled how we enjoyed singing this song as children in grade school. A question popped into my head as I reminisced: "What happened to my innocence?" What has happened to my innocence, my sense of trust in the world, my child-like appreciation for simple things?

--Don Iannone

One to ponder...

"I bid him look into the lives of men as though into a mirror, and from others to take an example for himself."

--Terence

Wensday Thought: Don't Try, Do

Do or do not. There is no try.

--Yoda, 'The Empire Strikes Back'

Blight
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Hard seeds of hate I planted
That should by now be grown,—
Rough stalks, and from thick stamens
A poisonous pollen blown,
And odors rank, unbreathable,
From dark corollas thrown!

At dawn from my damp garden
I shook the chilly dew;
The thin boughs locked behind me
That sprang to let me through;
The blossoms slept,—I sought a place
Where nothing lovely grew.

And there, when day was breaking,
I knelt and looked around:
The light was near, the silence
Was palpitant with sound;
I drew my hate from out my breast

And thrust it in the ground.

Oh, ye so fiercely tended,
Ye little seeds of hate!
I bent above your growing
Early and noon and late,
Yet are ye drooped and pitiful,—
I cannot rear ye straight!

The sun seeks out my garden,
No nook is left in shade,
No mist nor mold nor mildew
Endures on any blade,
Sweet rain slants under every bough:
Ye falter, and ye fade.

One to ponder...

"Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it's addressed to someone else."

~Ivern Ball

Tuesday Thought: Responsibility

"I must do something" always solves more problems than "Something must be done."

~Source Unknown

Stilling the Waters
Poems About Finding Peace and Meaning in Everyday Life
By Don Iannone

Have you purchased your copy? I have some left, although they are selling pretty quickly. Drop me an email if you'd ike one. Don Iannone: diannone@ix.netcom.com

Awake at Night
By Matsuo Basho

Awake at night--
the sound of the water jar
cracking in the cold.

A Caterpillar
By Matsuo Basho

A caterpillar,
this deep in fall--
still not a butterfly.

Monday Thought: Imagine No Boundaries

"The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers."

--Matsuo Basho

The Echoing Green
By William Blake

The Sun does arise,
And make happy the skies;
The merry bells ring
To welcome the Spring;
The skylark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing lounder around
To the bells' chearful sound,
While our sports shall be seen
On the Echoing Green.

Old John, with white hair,
Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk.
They laugh at our play,
And soon they all say:
"Such, such were the joys
When we all, girls & boys,
In our youth time were seen
On the Echoing Green."

Till the little ones, weary,
No more can be merry;
The sun does descend,
And our sports have on end.
Round the laps of their mothers
Many sisters and brothers,
Like birds in their nest,
Are ready for rest,
And sports no more seen
On the darkening Green.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow
By Derek Walcott

I remember the cities I have never seen
exactly. Silver-veined Venice, Leningrad
with its toffee-twisted minarets. Paris. Soon
the Impressionists will be making sunshine out of shade.
Oh! and the uncoiling cobra alleys of Hyderabad.
To have loved one horizon is insularity;
it blindfolds vision, it narrows experience.
The spirit is willing, but the mind is dirty.
The flesh wastes itself under crumb-sprinkled linens,
widening the Weltanschauung with magazines.
A world's outside the door, but how upsetting
to stand by your bags on a cold step as dawn
roses the brickwork and before you start regretting,
your taxi's coming with one beep of its horn,
sidling to the curb like a hearse -- so you get in.

Poppies
Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't

sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?

Work your plan...

"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work."

--Peter F. Drucker

Sunday Thought: The Work We Do

"There is a vast world of work out there in this country, where at least 111 million people are employed in this country alone - many of whom are bored out of their minds. All day long."

--Richard Nelson Bolles

The Observatory Ode
By John Frederick Nims

I
The Universe:
We'd like to understand,
But any piece, in the palm, gets out of hand,
Any stick, any stone,
- How mica burns! - or worse,
Any star we catch in pans of glass,
Sift to a twinkle the vast nuclear stone,
Lava-red, polar-blue,
Apple-gold (noon our childhood knew),
Colors that through the prism, like dawn through Gothic, pass,
Or in foundries sulk among grots and gnomes, in glare of zinc or brass.
Would Palomar's flashy cannon say? Would you,
Old hourglass, galaxy of sand,
You, the black hole where Newton likes to stand?
II
Once on this day,
Our Victorian renaissance-man,
Percival Lowell - having done Japan,
And soon to be seen
Doing over all heaven his way -
Spoke poems here. (These cheeks, a mite
Primped by the laurel leaves' symbolic green,
Should glow like the flustered beet
To scuff, in his mighty shoes, these feet.)
He walked high ground, each long cold Arizona night,
Grandeurs he'd jot: put folk on Mars, but guessed a planet right,
Scribbling dark sums and ciphers at white heat
For his Pluto, lost. Till - there it swam!
Swank, with his own P L monogram.
III
Just down the way
The Observatory. And girls
Attending, with lint of starlight in their curls,
To lens, 'scope, rule.
Sewing bee, you could say:
They stitch high heaven together here,
Save scraps of the midnight sky. Compile, pole, pool.
One, matching star with star,
Learns that how bright can mean how far.
That widens the galaxies! Each spiraling chandelier
In three-dimensional glamour hangs; old flat nights disappear.
Desk-bound, they explore the immensities. Who are
These woman that, dazed at dusk, arise?
- No Helen with so much heaven in her eyes.
IV
With what good night
Did the strange women leave?
What did the feverish planet-man achieve?
A myth for the sky:
All black. Then a haze of light,
A will-o'-the-wisp, hints time and place.
Whirling, the haze turned fireball, and let fly
Streamers of bright debris,
The makings of our land and sea.
Great rafts of matter crash, their turbulence a base
For furnaces of nuclear fire that blast out slag in space.
Primal pollution, dust and soot, hurl free
Lead, gold - all that. Heaven's gaudy trash.
This world - with our joy in June - is a drift of ash.
V
That fire in the sky
On the Glorious Fourth, come dark,
Acts "Birth of the Universe" out, in Playland Park.
Then a trace of ash
In the moon. Suppose we try
- Now only suppose - to catch in a jar
That palmful of dust, on bunsens burn till it flash,
Could we, from that gas aglow,
Construct the eventful world we know,
Or a toy of it, in the palm? Yet our world came so: we are
Debris of a curdled turbulence, and dust of a dying star
- The children of nuclear fall-out long ago.
No wonder if late world news agree
With Eve there's a creepy varmint in the Tree.
VI
The Universe:
...Such stuff as dreams are made on...
Yet stuff to thump, to call a spade a spade on.
No myth - Bantu,
Kurd, Urdu, Finnish, Erse -
Had for the heaven such hankering
As ours, that made new eyes for seeing true.
For seeing what we are:
Sun-bathers of a nuclear star,
Scuffling through curly quarks - mere fact a merry thing!
Then let's, with the girls and good P.L., sing carols in a ring!
Caution: combustible myth, though. Near and far
The core's aglow. Ho heat like this,
No heat like science and poetry when they kiss.

One more...

"Where there is great love, there are always wishes."

--Willa Cather

Saturday Thought: Love

"Love is the beauty of the soul."

--Saint Augustine

Happy Fifteenth Anniversary, Mary
By Don

It's been fifteen years since we tied the knot,
How wonderful for us what Fate has wrought,
Our paths crossed gently, like two stars in the night,
Ever since then, we've been as high as a kite,
All things for a reason, as we've come to learn,
The story of our lives together a wonderful sojourn,
Our adventure in Oregon has been beyond words,
Away we did fly, like two happy birds,
As we sit before the sunset, and watch the last sign of light,
I recall our first meeting with the utmost delight,
We look to the future, with all it does hold,
Every moment with you has been more precious than gold.

A Supermarket in California
By Allen Ginsberg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking
at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon
fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?
What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you,
and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy
tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the
cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and
feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade
to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automo-
biles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America
did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a
smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of
Lethe?

One to ponder...

"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power."

--Alan Cohen

Friday Thought: Look in Awareness

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.

--James Thurber

One final one...

"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe."

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One to ponder...

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

--Jiddu Krishnamurti

Thursday Thought: Change

"Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor."

--Robert Frost

Siwashing It Out Once in Suislaw Forest
By Gary Synder

I slept under rhododendron
All night blossoms fell
Shivering on a sheet of cardboard
Feet stuck in my pack
Hands deep in my pockets
Barely able to sleep.
I remembered when we were in school
Sleeping together in a big warm bed
We were the youngest lovers
When we broke up we were still nineteen
Now our friends are married
You teach school back east
I dont mind living this way
Green hills the long blue beach
But sometimes sleeping in the open
I think back when I had you.

Ponder this...

"Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."

--Who knows

Wednesday Thought: How to Succeed

"No one ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him; it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required that determines the greatness of ultimate distinction."

- Charles Kendall Adams

The Road and the End
By Carl Sandburg

I shall foot it
Down the roadway in the dusk,
Where shapes of hunger wander
And the fugitives of pain go by.
I shall foot it
In the silence of the morning,
See the night slur into dawn,
Hear the slow great winds arise
Where tall trees flank the way
And shoulder toward the sky.

The broken boulders by the road
Shall not commemorate my ruin.
Regret shall be the gravel under foot.
I shall watch for
Slim birds swift of wing
That go where wind and ranks of thunder
Drive the wild processionals of rain.

The dust of the traveled road
Shall touch my hands and face.

On from the road...

"Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away."

~Carl Sandburg

Tuesday Thought: The Poet

"Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition."

~Eli Khamarov

The Pilot
By Shin Yu Pai

you move through space
in three dimensions
only in flight

young,
a fascination starts
with the push off

the third story of a neighbor's roof
and the desire to explore
what tooth and hip remember

more clearly than a father tells it

falling

crack of bone

disruptions to water

in inner
the ear

how the body compensates
for fractures
by honing

situational awareness
based on
career vocation

you have perfect eyesight
at night
low level cargo flights

over the Persian sea
the belt of Orion
in the Northern hemisphere

or
a belt of military ships

orthogonal lines recede into a space
where boats to you are as stars

One to ponder...

"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."

-Burton Hills

Monday Thought: Road to Happiness

"People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost."

-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Oregon in Winter
By Timothy Bovee

To any man who'd bring his sorrow
To Oregon in winter--what kind of fool
Would drop his tears to increase
Grey Atlantic's burden of salt?
Or add a lump to all the coal
In Newcastle's darkened yards? Or sell
Fine igloos freon-cooled to
Inuit on Canada's far icy coast?
Erect a fan on Oklahoma's windswept course,
To guide Tornado's drunken path?
For surely when the rain and fog
Creep down from Cascade's peaks
To Willamette's gentle thighs,
Oregon in winter brings sorrow enough
To measure out a lifetime's worth
Of tears and bonefelt cold, warmed only
By the hearth and kin of home.

One to ponder...

"Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy."

-Robert Anthony

Sunday Thought: Happiness

"Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times."

--Anonymous

Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines
By Dylan Thomas

Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads,
The things of light
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.

A candle in the thighs
Warms youth and seed and burns the seeds of age;
Where no seed stirs,
The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,
Bright as a fig;
Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs.

Dawn breaks behind the eyes;
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spout to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.

Night in the sockets rounds,
Like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes;
Day lights the bone;
Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin
The winter's robes;
The film of spring is hanging from the lids.

The power of belief...

"The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen."

--Frank Lloyd Wright

Saturday Thought: What We Believe

"Man is what he believes."

--Anton Chekhov

Dreams
by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

One to ponder...

"When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere."

--Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Friday Thought: World Owes Me Nothing

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."

--Mark Twain

Happiness
By Raymond Carver

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

One to ponder...

"So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent."

~Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 1879