When Great Trees Fall - Maya Angelou

 

WHEN GREAT TREES FALL
Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable
ignorance of
dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

RIP, Ruth Bader Ginsberg

 

You are phenomenal; your service to this Country is phenomenal.  You will be desperately missed.

I can't even begin to express the sorrow, the depression, the outrage that I am feeling.

What If...

 "What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.”

~ Ganga White

Shorter Days

 

The days are getting shorter, and I've struggled with that this weekend.  I have always loved the change from Summer to Fall, the nights drawing closer a little earlier each day, that feeling of being nestled inside at the close of the day.  

These morning glories have greeted me the last couple of mornings with their sweet faces.

September 11, 2001 Never Forgotten

 Never Forgotten--Twin Towers, Pentagon, Shanksville, PA

(Photo by Jake Rajs)

Corn Moon

 

The Strange Summer of 2020

These times are surreal.  Two tropical storms in the Gulf at the same time.  Tropical Storm Marco made landfall along the Louisiana coast about 6 p.m. this evening, but has, so far, pushed all of the rainfall to the east.  Tropical Storm Laura looks like it will likely grow into a Cat 2 hurricane, and the outer bands are being felt in Key West, Fl.  The weather forecasters have all been talking about the fact that they haven't seen two in the Gulf at the same time before.  

I'm 'under the weather' myself with what I suspect is a sinus infection.  Isolating, not that I've been out and about anyway, and drinking ACV/honey/lemon juice toddies.  In light of that, I just placed my first online grocery order at Food City for pickup in the morning.  I don't have to go for groceries very often, and I have gone to the same store every time when there are less shoppers when I have had to go.  That's the only store that I've been in since February---other than an early morning, fast-in and fast-out trip into Dollar General the day before Easter for milk, and once into Home Depot in June---fully masked.  It was so easy to place the online order that I have a feeling that I will be making that a habit.

The skies have been gorgeous!  I am fascinated by the clouds, and every evening I find the camera or phone in my hands taking pictures of them.  I have all of my bird pictures on my Canon camera and haven't transferred them yet to the computer.  The days are getting shorter every day, and I know that my focus will soon be drawn more inward.

Love

 

Hazy Days of Summer

 

The heat has been exhausting this last month.  The days have seemed long and languid, and blurred.  They run seamlessly one into the next.  Nothing since my sister's back surgery in June to mark any of them by.  I am still reluctant to venture out beyond the grocery store, when necessary, as cases of Covid in our county/state have been on the rise.  I've been sitting too much, to the point that my back hurts.  I look at the bike on the trainer and promise that I am going to 'ride' today---and some days, I do---but most days I don't.  I go to bed each night with the promise that I will move more tomorrow, but I feel like I'm mired in the midst of this strange Summer, unable to do much of anything beyond the basics.

This little scamp, Feisty, came along, a tiny stray that was starving for food and love, and stole my heart.  And then my heart was broken just a short 3 days later when I took her for her first evaluation by my Vet.  She was positive for Feline Leukemia.  She was such a special, sassy little bundle of love, a bright star that burned for such a very short time.  I'm still dealing with the sadness from having to let her go.  Her tiny pawprints will be engraved on my heart forever.

"Put A Woman In Charge" by Keb' Mo' with Rosanne Cash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FciQeRGYFlw

4th of July and Kindness

Immature Bald Eagle in the Rain

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naoimi Shihab Nye

"tender gravity of kindness"

So.Damned.Tired!

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”