Category Archives: Nature

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Writer’s Fourth Wednesday: Second Person Poetry

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Victoria Slotto’s prompt post invites me to share a poem written in the second person.  She says, “It is less rare to encounter poetry in the second person. As poets, we love to address our “audience,” celebrity figures, other poets or teachers who have an influence on us, people we love (or hate), God, mythological figures, people from our past.”  I went through the book of poems that I self-published back in 1997 and found one that I like.  Back in that decade, I was extremely rooted in a Christian identity and was rather prolific in my writing to God.  These days, I do not identify myself as Christian or even theistic per se, but I still have a great sense of appreciation.  The world is an amazing place; the beauty of it often makes me weep.  My brain is accustomed to seeking a source for manifestations, but I now realize that is more about me than it is necessarily about the way Life is.  I often find myself wondering, “Who do I thank for this?” It’s more likely that there are myriad contributing factors to the conditions that arise, the harmonious conjunction attributable to all of them simultaneously without hierarchy.  So I simply say, “Thanks be,” and leave it at that.

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The Sky

 

Did I ever thank you for the sky
      spread far around like an open field
           piled high with moods and structures,
                a playground for my soul?

This space above bids my thoughts expand
      to climb the heights of an anvil-cloud
           and teeter on the edge of a dazzling glare
                or slide down the shafts of the sun,

To swim to the center of its lonely blue
      where I find no mist to hide me,
           and lie exposed to the western wind
                like a mountain braced for sunrise.

Or clad in the shroud of brooding gray,
      it coaxes me to musing
           far removed from the minutiae
                that chains me to my life.

I search for light and openness
      to shadow the bonds of earth,
            exploring the vault of heaven
                for its meaning and its truth.

Thanks for this cathedral speaking glory through its art.
Thank you for these eyes admitting You into my heart.

© 2014, words and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

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This week, in a post created specifically for this challenge, show us an image that says REFLECTION. 

It could be a person who helps you see things clearly, a place you go to collect your thoughts, or an object that reminds you of your achievements. You could also go for something more literal, like a reflection in water. Or something that demonstrates both interpretations of the word.

“A person who helps you see things clearly…” 

What would you say about someone who meets you in your greatest grief, who doesn’t turn away but faces the tough questions with you, offering presence, not answers?  Someone who challenges you to pursue those questions and discover the emotions they evoke, the hopes, the fears, the identity that emerges from within…and who then asks you to decide who you want to be?  Someone who promises simply to be aware and who asks simply for your awareness? 

Steve met me 8 months after my husband of 24 years died.  I was in a state of profound transition, the fabric and framework of my homespun in complete collapse.  On our first date, we hiked around glacial terrain, enjoying the fall colors and talking.  Beside Nippersink Creek, I stopped.  I became silent.  I no longer wanted to fill the space between us with words and thoughts.  I was finally unafraid to be aware that I was with him, in a new place, with a new person, as a new life was beginning.  He sat beside me, quiet and reflective as well.  What I saw clearly was that Life is beautiful and that death does not diminish that one bit. 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside

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UW Madison Arboretum - inside

UW Madison Arboretum – inside

We’ve been traveling from Milwaukee to Madison for the last three weeks to take in some of the Winter Enrichment courses offered at the UW Madison Arboretum.  Unfortunately, it has been blasted cold each week, so we haven’t been out hiking the trails.  Someone set up this little display of prairie grasses in the south window of the visitor’s center, and the sun shining in teased me with memories of warm autumn days smelling dried grass. In the deep freeze of winter, it’s nice to have some plant life taking up residence INSIDE.

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Planet Love

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The Bardo Group, which mercifully counts me as a contributing writer and core team member, has invited its visitors to share Valentine’s Day posts in celebration of our love for this awe-inspiring planet.  Planet Love has been on my mind for a week now; I’ve scribbled phrases and ideas on scraps of paper at work and engaged in ardent discussions with Steve about it, but until now I haven’t had time to sit down and write.  “You don’t have time for the planet!” Steve jokes.

Au contraire.  I AM the planet.

I have been thinking about the nature of my Planet Love. It starts with the obvious. Duh!  I depend on the planet. I need it desperately – the water, the air, the energy from edible sunshine.  Without it, I would die!  My survival depends on this environment that birthed me and sustains me every breathing minute.  I am an infant, perhaps a parasite, a needy lover hopelessly driven by biology into the thrall of her.  She is my EVERYTHING! 

But my ego shrinks from this debasing posture. I would much rather be the poetic admirer, the worshipful devotee who praises her and charms her, caressing her with ardent words of love. I would describe her in vivid, pleasurable detail. My senses delight in her. I rub against her textures: sand beneath my feet, bark under my fingertips, meadow grass against my back. I inhale her fragrance: sea air and pine and sulfurous volcano. I taste her bounty and drink in her landscapes, satisfied and still wanting more. I strain toward the whisper of her winds and dance to the rhythm of her tides. Her specific excitements are too numerous and various to be composed. She is more vast than my words. The vaulted roof of the cosmos lifts away, and I am exposed. 

Suddenly, I realize that the cosmos is not only endless, it is edgeless.  There is no ‘It’ and no ‘Not It’.  It is integrated.  And here I am.  Not ‘I’, not ‘It’. WE.  We are. The planet, the cosmos, and me – together.  We are. What kind of love is this, without borders? Without egos? Is this perfect love?  Perfect love casts out fear.  I am not afraid, not of death, not of survival. But I know suffering.  We suffer.  We suffer desecration.  Everywhere the planet is fouled, I am wounded.  I am sad.  I feel a lover’s pain. I stand with her in this pain and take my vows.  We are one.  We must be at one.  At-one. Atone. Heal. Integrate. Become whole.  Forgive my ignorance.  Forgive my ego. Forgive my parasitic need.  I will love without borders.  My life, my time, my energy is cosmos – and I will remember that. 

Sky over Lapham Peak

© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

     

 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Object

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I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, – and the stars through his soul. – Victor Hugo

Never criticize a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins.  – Native American proverb

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. –Carl Jung

What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed? – Michelangelo Buonaroti

Back in the days when I was keeping up a profile on OK Cupid, I was prompted to write about my favorite pair of shoes.  I imagine the flirtatious fetishists out there were just salivating at the possibilities.  I didn’t have to contemplate long before I realized that the footwear that best housed my feet and characterized my soul was my 30 year-old, steel-toed, suede waffle stompers.  They had outlasted even my husband by that time.  I got them in High School and wore them in on a trip with the Sierra Club.  I still have them.  They still fit, although I don’t wear them any more.  I purchased new hiking boots a couple of years ago, before I went on a 4 week road trip with Steve.  They are lighter and more comfortable even then my venerable pair.  For a person who hates shopping for clothes or shoes or anything else besides food, the thrill of buying them was unexpected.  I’d finally had a Female Consumer Moment! 

(I don’t plan to have any more…please stop sending advertisements.)

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Beginning

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Winter illumination

Winter illumination

 

Weekly Photo Challenge

My New Year’s resolutions have been made and clearly stated.  First, “Stop shaming myself”.  (read my post “A Cup of Kindness” for more) Second, “Stop spending so much time playing Solitaire”.  I realize that organizing cards and Mahjong tiles is not a bad thing necessarily.  I get a certain satisfaction out of putting them all to rights or trying again until I do.  But it’s kind of an OCD thing, too, so I don’t want to get sucked into doing it when I could do something else.  Like bring chaos to order.  I’ve been researching right brain/left brain behavior a bit (I recommend Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED talk “My stroke of insight”), and I’ve decided that I need to exercise my right brain more.  My creativity — expansiveness, inclusion and collage-thinking.  Here’s an exercise I came up with:  take a familiar, well-known and memorized quote and mix it up.  Use the same words in a different order, add new punctuation.  Voila!  Chaos out of order poetry.  Here are a few:

“What twilight’s proudly gleaming light,

Early hailed by the dawn’s last ‘Oh’

We can see, so say at you.”

 

“The forefathers, four score and seven, conceived new, created and brought forth years ago,

dedicated in proposition to all men on this continent that a nation are equal – our Liberty.”

 

“No other shalt have me, before thou gods.”

 

“The beginning: the word, the word, the word.

God was God. And was. And was with.”

My daughter Emily tells me that Facebook provides a random generator to make something new of words you’ve posted, too.  Hers are quite poetic.  So maybe it’s not an entirely original exercise, but it’s a start.  A beginning.  A way to set off on a new adventure, to shed habit and convention and embrace the unpredictable nature of life unfolding.  Stepping off into 2014 — we can create and uncreate a new beginning.  What will chaos bring to you this year?

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Christmas Day 2013

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Thank you, blog followers, for counting the days with me and considering the many gifts that we receive in life. 

May we be filled with gratitude;

may our gratitude transform our spirits;

may all beings be happy. 

From icy Milwaukee, I wish you peace!

christmas eve

And to close, I simply must share my favorite Flash Mob scene of all time, from the 1970 movie musical “Scrooge”.  I cry happy tears every time I see it and find myself dancing and singing along.  Please click on this link and Enjoy!  I was 8 years old when my father took me to see it in a theater.  When we emerged, a beautiful light snow was falling on the Chicago streets.  Years later, my youngest daughter was cast in a production of this delightful (and musically superb!) show, and Jim and I helped prepare the chorus in rehearsal.  I also got to conduct the band from the orchestra pit for every show, and it was one of the most thrilling experiences I’ve had.  Imagine me waving my arms enthusiastically, caught up in the joy of “Thank You Very Much”.  Thank you all for supporting my blogging efforts over the years.  Your company is a great privilege!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Community

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Community – is that a portmanteau of ‘common’ and ‘unity’?  What is the unifying thing that all life has in common?  Is it the everything particle?  Is it a Divine Source? Would you just call it Life?  Our community home is a beautiful, spinning sphere wrapped in a blanket of atmosphere.  Sounds cozy!  We dance atop this sphere with all kinds of creatures.  A community dance, an every day Festival, a holiday (holy day)…on ice!  Here’s where my stream of consciousness lands:

winter path

Whether you’ve got skis or boots or hoofs or paws or fins or feathers or roots, we are gliding together on a slippery path.  Let’s hold each other up and work together in common unity!

 

 

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Advent Day #9 – Sight

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Reblogging my Advent appreciation countdown from 2 years ago: we are rich beyond measure in “ordinary” assets!  Today’s gift is Sight.

The Eyes Have It

I started a little tradition this December as a stand in for the Advent calendar.  I am sending a text message every day to my kids, reminding them of a gift that they have.  The first one was sunshine, the next air, then water, soil, snow, movement, memory, imagination, and today…sight.

I am a very visual person.  I have a visual memory.  A teacher once told me that there is an easy way to assess whether a child is a visual learner.  Ask him to tell you the contents of his closet.  If he looks away from your face and off to a neutral space in order to list things, he’s probably visual.  He’s removing his eyes from distraction so that he can “picture” his closet.  I heard this little trick and remembered all the boring afternoons I spent as a freshman at college picturing every detail of my room at home.  (Yes, I was terribly homesick.  Mostly for my sweetheart.  Finally married that hometown honey on Christmas break my senior year.)  I could still do it 30 years later.  I close my eyes and see my room exactly as it was.  (Where did my mother get that faux velvet wall hanging with the peacock on it?  And why did I bring it to college with me?)

Things I love to see include landscapes, sunshine, animals, trees, the sky…anything natural.  And people.  Faces, bodies, those odd architectural places of form and shadow and contrast that only your intimate loved ones allow you to look at to your satiation.  I can never get enough of staring at people I love.  That’s why I’ve always been fascinated by photography.  My sweetheart bought me a Canon AE-1 camera the second Christmas we were together.  My mother asked me, “Are you going to accept that gift?!”  Hell, yes!  Why wouldn’t I?  Oh, the relationship obligation thing.  No problem; we’re going to be together forever, I told her.  Jim died a year before the camera’s shutter gear got stuck.  So, basically, I partnered both of them for the same amount of time: 30 years.  Now, it’s the digital age, and I can’t afford to get the Canon repaired.  I’m saving for a DSLR.

Visual images are so powerful for me.  I don’t like the rapid, frenetic pace of graphics on TV or in movie ads, though, because they give me a headache.  Fortunately, I don’t own a TV, so I don’t get subjected very often.  We saw the Super Bowl at a sports bar last year and decided that we could make a drinking game based on a few visual cues: something exploding, rotating text graphics, and morphing forms.  Everything was moving.  Whatever happened to the timeless grace of a beautiful still shot?  I get my fix on National Geographic’s website under “The Daily Dozen”.  And I have to say that my sister’s photobucket is also a superb repository of stunning visuals.  Thank you for those “prezzies”, DKK!

Appreciating sight.  What are your spontaneous choices for favorite images?

My sweetheart, courtesy the Canon AE-1, 1980

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Grand

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What is Grand? My first thought was of grand opera, but I’ve got to agree with the WordPress folks.  There’s nothing that beats Mother Nature for being truly big and dramatic.  I love this planet!  I’m betting that there are going to be a lot of stunning photos posted.  As my second post of the morning, this one will be brief.  We’re gearing up for some wintry snowfall here in Wisconsin, but I gotta tell ya, it’s not going to be nearly as grand as what they get in California.  Here’s a shot I took in the month of April at Lassen Volcanic National Park.  Gives new meaning to the line from the carol “Snow had fallen, snow on snow….in the bleak midwinter long ago.”

Lassen