A summer vacation...

I remember now that I have a blog. That I like to write. That I fill these spaces with random thoughts and millings. My only excuse is summer vacation, where all my best intentions were vacationing as well. Real life starts again tomorrow, friends, and so will the blog.

P.S. I'm buying a new camera and a learning to manipulate the blog. Hopefully, this year will be about nothing but improvements.

A random fact...

I love breakfast food. I love it for breakfast and for other times of the day. Breakfast for dinner is delicious. Breakfast for lunch a treat. For this reason, I like to frequent places where you can breakfast all day. I'm not talking about the greasehound chains either. I'm talking about local places, unique and lovely.

One of my favorite breakfast places anywhere is in New York on 27th and Lexington called Penelope's. If wall color says anything about a place, then the robin's egg blue there calls out, come in and rest...I've been waiting. The counter is white tile on dark wood. There are jars empty and others full of treats to eat and treats to take. They make the most delicious granola, hearty and ready for home. The menu is delightfully simple and I am always tempted to try a little of everything, while ordering the same thing everytime: french toast diagonally cut from french bread and battered with a hint of vanilla and a scuff of cinnamon, fresh seasonal fruit, homemade yogurt. The food, the feeling, the egg blue walls are something I look forward to on every visit.

One of my favorite places to eat in this city is the Park Cafe across from Liberty. They have lovely yellow edged windows and an eclectic smattering of art. Currently, the have a variety of music tour posters on display. Not the mainstream ones either. I feel like you have to be sort of schooled to know who the bands are. When I visit I usually, always, order the field goal with french toast: scrambled eggs with ham, park potatoes, thick sliced battered bread dusted with powdered sugar and sweet enough to eat without syrup, the park through yellow frames. Heaven. Simply heaven.

P.S. All breakfast foods being equal, I will always choose french toast.

Ordering Chagall...

I have this love of strange paintings. Strange colors, random combinations, a yellow square in the middle of a dark canvas that is supposed to be a window. Three colors on a slate. No rhyme or reason. Just color, bravery, madness.

There are few artists that fill all these needs. Rothko. Klee. But nobody beats Chagall. His paintings are like dreams, haunting and fluid, swirling with color, screaming and silent. Strange, and also, beautiful.

There are two huge Chagall murals hanging in the front windows of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. They hang behind the glass as tempting as the opera itself. They are covered during the day, but the late afternoon light is perfect for viewing.

I have wanted a Chagall print for a long time, but haven't bought one. There isn't a good reason, laziness, fear, apprehension in letting a part of my real self out, but today I ordered a Chagall. I can't wait for its strange colored love on my wall.

One more for day four...

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

...Mary Oliver...

And for 3rd...

O sweet spontaneous

earth how often have

the

doting

fingers of

purient philosophers pinched

and

poked

, thee

has the naughty thumb

of science prodded

thy

beauty , how

oftn have religions taken

thee upon their scraggy knees

squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive

gods

(but

true

to the incomparable

couch of death thy

rhythmic

lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

e.e. cummings

A poem for the second day...

Yellow Bowl

If light pours like water

into the kitchen where I sway

with my tired children,

if the rug beneath us

is woven with tough flowers,

and the yellow bowl on the table

rests with the sweet heft

of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,

if my body curves over the babies,

and if i am singing,

then loneliness has lost its shape,

and this quiet is only quiet.

...Rachel Contreni Flynn...

I feel like I should say...

It is National Poetry month and I feel like I should say something, or write something, or be something because I am a poet and this is a time for poets. I have been out of the habit of writing poetry. There are perhaps a million excuses for why. Regardless of the reasons, it is, by all measurable means, a tragedy. Not to the world or to the readers, but only myself. Poetry has always been, for me, an anchor; it has been too long since I felt its calm. So, I am redeeming by putting a little poetry up everyday for the rest of the month. Somedays I'll even put two, so by the end there will be thirty poems here. Thirty anchors. Thirty points of calm, even if the words aren't all mine.

One thing I can remember...

Driving to your house in the winter

your house iced blue

and the snow to your door

two feet thick.

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