1. I am in love with Alison Luterman's poetry
2. Don't get to go dancing this weekend like I planned
3. I was attracting all kinds of critters and insects yesterday. I hummingbird did a fly-by near my ear, a bee too a long rest on my stomach, a butterfly chilled on my hand, etc. Weird
4. Hung out with a friend I hadn't seen in a few years. So much fun.
5. Took some photos out at Talache..and got a bunch of bug bites, but it was fun.
Messenger
The butterfly's wings were more complex
than an embroidered lampshade for the Empress.
It opened and closed them like applause.
It was obsessed
with a dessicated lump of dogshit, it
fluttered and hovered and would not let go, the way--
oh, stop this metaphor. It was feeding, that's all.
I was sad because my lover had left.
Ruth was saying all the perfect, useless things.
My mother was still alive in snowbound Massachusetts.
A part of me thought she'd hang on forever,
making slurred phone calls from her wheelchair,
and struggling to get the towels lined up straight.
It's not like my father and sister didn't
try to warn me. It's just that we can't believe
what we don't see in front of us.
Unfolding green chenille of the far hills.
I could have gazed forever at this butterfly, the gorgeousness
of its rapt attention to dirt,
how it struggled
for one day's worth of nourishment.
There were dizzying spaces
where the hills dropped away that made me want to leap
out into the void.
Sun stretched its fringey springtime parasol.
Turkey vultures dipped and circled,
and I had to admit I was happy
in spite of it all. We didn't know
my mother would die the next week,
or where the too-early butterfly had come from.
The depth of our ignorance was splendid,
and the message was not in code.
Because everything
everything! comes flying or fluttering or crashing
toward us with its own illogical beauty,
its already-torn wings.
The Largest Possible Life
for Ruth and Gladys
Building a fire, love;
bent low
over a flame
I am afraid of.
Coaxing passion
from dry twigs
and dead leaves,
the failures of the past, dirty fingers,
and a moment of sunset
huge orange
hangs in one eye--
in my breast a sun
which, if I could see it, if I could
know it, would
light the world
with love. Then,
an unexpected memory
of my mother in the car, snow piled
along the gray streets
of Massachusetts. It was my sixteenth year
and we were fighting a life
and death struggle over my desire to give
myself away completely to love before
I had a self to give.
There she was, my block, my barricade,
my iron grate, my broken door--our one shared
passion, to hurt each other into truth, and
it was the millionth skirmish
of our everyday war when she said
"I don't know if I've ever loved anyone,"
and began to weep. Monks sit
in the middle of fires
they set themselves. They let
their bodies bloom
into suffering,
in the hope that, like this, they will open
someone's heart.
What do we have to
see, how close do we need to live by the
beautiful terrible flame of this world,
flame of ourselves, which is
the same thing?
How much anguish do we need to pour
from cup to cup, drink of melted rubies,
underwater food of the fevers that live
in our blood, in the light of our eyes
where infinite tears are waiting and still
you say, "Light a white candle," and I do, asking
whoever it is, Teach me to surrender
this mind that grasps at shadows
when the whole house is ablaze, when the only thing left
is to leap, carrying the impossible
weight in my arms, into
the heart of our fire, to melt and to bloom.
~Alison Leuterman

2. Don't get to go dancing this weekend like I planned

3. I was attracting all kinds of critters and insects yesterday. I hummingbird did a fly-by near my ear, a bee too a long rest on my stomach, a butterfly chilled on my hand, etc. Weird
4. Hung out with a friend I hadn't seen in a few years. So much fun.
5. Took some photos out at Talache..and got a bunch of bug bites, but it was fun.
Messenger
The butterfly's wings were more complex
than an embroidered lampshade for the Empress.
It opened and closed them like applause.
It was obsessed
with a dessicated lump of dogshit, it
fluttered and hovered and would not let go, the way--
oh, stop this metaphor. It was feeding, that's all.
I was sad because my lover had left.
Ruth was saying all the perfect, useless things.
My mother was still alive in snowbound Massachusetts.
A part of me thought she'd hang on forever,
making slurred phone calls from her wheelchair,
and struggling to get the towels lined up straight.
It's not like my father and sister didn't
try to warn me. It's just that we can't believe
what we don't see in front of us.
Unfolding green chenille of the far hills.
I could have gazed forever at this butterfly, the gorgeousness
of its rapt attention to dirt,
how it struggled
for one day's worth of nourishment.
There were dizzying spaces
where the hills dropped away that made me want to leap
out into the void.
Sun stretched its fringey springtime parasol.
Turkey vultures dipped and circled,
and I had to admit I was happy
in spite of it all. We didn't know
my mother would die the next week,
or where the too-early butterfly had come from.
The depth of our ignorance was splendid,
and the message was not in code.
Because everything
everything! comes flying or fluttering or crashing
toward us with its own illogical beauty,
its already-torn wings.
The Largest Possible Life
for Ruth and Gladys
Building a fire, love;
bent low
over a flame
I am afraid of.
Coaxing passion
from dry twigs
and dead leaves,
the failures of the past, dirty fingers,
and a moment of sunset
huge orange
hangs in one eye--
in my breast a sun
which, if I could see it, if I could
know it, would
light the world
with love. Then,
an unexpected memory
of my mother in the car, snow piled
along the gray streets
of Massachusetts. It was my sixteenth year
and we were fighting a life
and death struggle over my desire to give
myself away completely to love before
I had a self to give.
There she was, my block, my barricade,
my iron grate, my broken door--our one shared
passion, to hurt each other into truth, and
it was the millionth skirmish
of our everyday war when she said
"I don't know if I've ever loved anyone,"
and began to weep. Monks sit
in the middle of fires
they set themselves. They let
their bodies bloom
into suffering,
in the hope that, like this, they will open
someone's heart.
What do we have to
see, how close do we need to live by the
beautiful terrible flame of this world,
flame of ourselves, which is
the same thing?
How much anguish do we need to pour
from cup to cup, drink of melted rubies,
underwater food of the fevers that live
in our blood, in the light of our eyes
where infinite tears are waiting and still
you say, "Light a white candle," and I do, asking
whoever it is, Teach me to surrender
this mind that grasps at shadows
when the whole house is ablaze, when the only thing left
is to leap, carrying the impossible
weight in my arms, into
the heart of our fire, to melt and to bloom.
~Alison Leuterman
VIEW 7 of 7 COMMENTS
applejax:
Yeah, you'll be getting a summer items/little crafty packet, so I hope that is ok. That way, you'll have some objects to make your own if you like

diamante:
BTW...that poem is AWESOME!