How to Age Gracefully
~ ~ ~
keep smelling, stay
interested in all the
messages that come alive
like signs,
there are sighs and songs
in every blade of grass and
shift of wind
keep moving, even
if only your eyes
look everywhere,
there is beauty and
movement to watch
like leaves that lift
and fly like birds
~ ~ ~
Maureen Shaughnessy
I will share this post with e.e.cummings, whose love poetry always seems fresh and relevant: here is an excerpt from his poem, "somewhere I have traveled gladly beyond"
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
I fell in love with this dog. She was a classic beauty -- so graceful, elegant, coy yet fully engaged with me and not afraid to look directly at me. I am putting together a collaborative photo essay with my friend, Chris Lombardi, who works at NewWest Network in Missoula. Our photo essay is about the mushers and dogs who run the annual sled race in Montana, Race to the Sky.
Please check back for updates on the essay (it will be published next week) and for more photos and stories about the dogs and the race here on my blog. Thanks for looking.
Waiting
Curled in a warm cocoon,
protected
from the splintering cold
and brittle light outside
I hear a high pitched pulse,
hurled snow crystals, glass
shattered
against glass, enlivened by the play
of light and dancing dark
measured
against the rhythm of lilac branches
in their patient sleep straining
toward light or shadowed tracery.
I hear the winter-weakened sun
roll across a shortened sky,
silence fractured
by icicles clinking like chimes
cast on the frozen ground.
Copyright 2007 by Maureen Shaughnessy
There are two kinds of cats. Those who won't let you rub their bellies ... and those who love their bellys rubbed. Baggins is the second kind of cat: "Ohhhh, that just feels sooooo good. don't stop. don't stop now ..."
