Category Archives: Poetry

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Autumn

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Door County, WI

“Well, the sun’s not so hot in the sky today
and you know I can see summertime slipping on away.
A few more geese are gone, a few more leaves turning red,
but the grass is as soft as a feather in a featherbed.
So I’ll be king and you’ll be queen, our kingdom’s gonna be this little patch of green. Won’t you lie down here right now in this September grass?” – James Taylor, September Grass

“Well, I’m-a going back down, maybe one more time
Deep down home, October road
And I might like to see that little friend of mine
That I left behind once upon a time
Oh, promised land and me still standing
It’s a test of time, it’s a real good sign
Let the sun run down right behind the hill
I know how to stand there still
‘Til the moon rise up behind the pine, oh, Lord
October road, an October road
October road” – James Taylor, October Road

“And when October goes
The snow begins to fly
Above the smokey roofs
I watch the planes go by
The children running home
Beneath a twilight sky
Oh, for the fun of them
When I was one of them”
– Barry Manilow, When October Goes

I feel the shift in seasons deeply in my soul. The loss of summer hits like grief falling in raindrops, the darkness descending earlier and earlier each day. But then, those sunny fall days when the colors pop and beckon remind me that I can live in this place of heightened appreciation and nostalgia. I amble more slowly through the leaves, aware of the passing of time and the gift of life. I love this season in a different way than I love summer. And when it gets even colder, I will mourn the fading light and the maple leaves. But I will love the rain that fills the marshes and the ribbons of migrating birds.

Life is a gift, in any season. Thanks, Johnbo, for inviting remembrance of beautiful Autumns. I have two past posts on this theme, with large galleries of photos from my life in the Midwest. You can see them HERE and HERE.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Reflections

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Reflective poetry gives voice to musings about life. As I walk around Cronemiller Lake in Peavy Arboretum, my thoughts tumble about, touching on the past, the present, the future, the things that worry me, the things that confuse me, the things I long for, the things I ought to do.

It feels jumbled, directionless, unsettled. I need to sit. I need to breathe, slowly. I practice leaning into gratitude, allowing the layered impressions of life and radiance to swim together in the water that surrounds everything – fish beneath, duckweed floating on the surface, dragonflies and branches above. We are all water, we are all together in the flow, we are all reflecting the light of Life.

“Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself!
How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!
How the clouds pass silently overhead!
How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on!
How the water sports and sings! (Surely it is alive!)
How the trees rise and stand up—with strong trunks—with branches and leaves!
(Surely there is something more in each of the trees—some living Soul.)
O amazement of things! even the least particle!
O spirituality of things!” ~ Walt Whitman, Song at Sunset

Thanks to Anne for this inspiring Challenge.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Warm Colors

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Tending the Fire – by Priscilla Galasso (scillagrace)

There comes a time to let it be, to let it freely burn;
A time to let it warm you, and provide you with its light –
The sparks that rocket heavenward, the blush in gathered faces;
A time to gaze into the source where flame and ash combine,
Its mesmerizing mystery companion in the watch.
There comes a time to tend the fire, and let its fuel be peace.

This week’s challenge is hosted by Edigio. (click HERE to see his beautiful post!) He writes: “For this week’s challenge, I invite you to look at your photos or capture new images showing how warm colors appear in your world and their emotional significance to you. Hopefully, the images I share here will spark your imagination. Tell us how your images made you feel when you captured them. You can concentrate on a single color or show a variety of colors, but please make warm colors the main focus of your post.”

It’s February. How do I feel about warm colors? Completely welcoming!! Bring on the forsythia and daffodils! Imbolc arrived on February first, so we are halfway to the Vernal Equinox from the darkest day of the year.

We had two ice storms here a couple of weeks ago. We lost power for 74 hours (not consecutively) in the eight days that I was stranded on the mountain, unable to drive into town. I am very grateful for housemates with a wood stove, for my down quilt, for my flannel sheets, and for the fact that in Oregon, the warmth and rain returns quickly after these cold snaps. Pretty soon now, the sun will shine on us longer each day and temperatures will climb. Meanwhile, I bask in the warmth of community and love. I look forward to seeing warmth from other Lens-Artists!

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Illustrating a Poem

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Ann-Christine’s challenge to us is to illustrate a favorite quote or poem with 1-4 photos. Donna increases the challenge by suggesting we use a poem that we wrote. I did a post back in June of 2012 featuring this poem, with a photo I took with a borrowed camera. I’m giving it a make-over now, but you can see the original post HERE.

The Sky by Priscilla Galasso

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 musings
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 Sky into my heart.

Click HERE to see Ann-Christine’s Challenge post.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Time

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Time in a Bottle
– Jim Croce

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day ’til eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I’d save every day like a treasure, and then
Again, I would spend them with you

If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory of how they were answered by you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do once you find them

I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go through time with

Donna’s post reminded me of the long weekend my late husband and I spent at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. The movie Somewhere in Time was filmed there, an extremely sentimental and romantic love story involving time travel and starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. All of those associations with time reminded me of Jim Croce’s song, which was the love song my sister and her boyfriend cherished before she was killed in a car accident at the age of 20. In my mind, the best use of time we’ll ever learn “is just to love and be loved in return”, as Nat King Cole sang.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: New Experiences

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“…We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time…

…Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;

…At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall…

…And the children in the apple-tree…

…Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea…” ― from “Little Gidding” by T.S. Eliot

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” ― Roald Dahl

“…Just think—no one has ever seen
inside this peanut before!

It is hard being a person.

I do and don’t love you—isn’t that happiness?”
― from “One Boy Told Me” by Naomi Shihab Nye

New experiences occur with every breath, every heartbeat. Each present moment is new and not repeatable. The gift of being alive can be wrapped up in so many different ways. I love the idea of “Beginner’s Mind” – it makes a new experience of everything, allowing a fresh perspective. It is a worthy challenge to cultivate this break with habit and sameness and taking-for-granted. I really enjoy hanging out with young people and watching them discover and exclaim over so many things that I have been seeing with dull eyes. I look forward to volunteering as a Teaching Naturalist for some school field trips coming up this Spring.

Anne’s challenge this week has inspired a lot of exciting posts about travel and adventure, but it has inspired me to look at the exhilarating experience of finding joy in my local environs. With warming temperatures and emerging life, it’s a whole new world out there!

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Lens-Artist Photo Challenge: Spring

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Spring (excerpt) – Gerard Manly Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         

   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy? …  

“Come with me into the woods where spring is
advancing, as it does, no matter what,
not being singular or particular, but one
of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.”
― Mary Oliver

When have I ever NOT needed Spring when it was ready to arrive? Winter in Wisconsin, and winter in Oregon, does its job of cold and dark and cloudy to the point that my soul is so ready for the ‘YES!’ of new life that I can barely contain myself. I head outdoors to feel the sunshine on my face and see what transformations are going on with its return. I listen for the return of friends: frogs, blackbirds, cranes. I measure the emergence of daffodils in hours, not days, too exuberant for patience. I can’t imagine whether I deserve Spring or not, but I am certainly grateful that I cannot stop it. Thank you, Sofia, for inviting us to share what Spring means to us with this week’s Challenge.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Winter

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White-Eyes

In winter
    all the singing is in
         the tops of the trees
             where the wind-bird
with its white eyes
    shoves and pushes
         among the branches.
             Like any of us
he wants to go to sleep,
    but he’s restless—
         he has an idea,
             and slowly it unfolds
from under his beating wings
    as long as he stays awake.
         But his big, round music, after all,
             is too breathy to last…

The cycle of seasons in the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge has come around to Winter. I have spent all my winters living in the northern hemisphere, the last nine of them being in Wisconsin. I have heard residents remark on how the winters have gotten milder in general, with less snow.  

I have, however, heard a new term since moving to Wisconsin that I don’t remember from my childhood: the polar vortex. There were two occasions in two different years that this term came up. What it meant to us was that temperatures hit -20 degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime, not factoring in wind chill. During that first polar vortex, my housemate was working as a Postal Service carrier. He was walking around delivering mail in those temperatures. He found it absolutely thrilling to be able to do it and revel in the superlative extremes of Nature.   

I marvel at the robust character of animals who over-winter in this climate – deer, cardinals, field mice, and all the rest who tough it out. I learned another term while volunteering at a local Nature Center. In the ‘sub-nivean zone’ beneath the snow, small rodents make trails to their burrows, accessing stores of food. Imagine all that activity going on under inches of frozen precipitation! Then imagine all the humans that complain about a dusting that makes their morning commute more inconvenient.

I appreciate the way Winter teaches me to accept what is and live in the moment. If it’s cold, it’s cold. You have to deal with it. Complaining and wishing do not make the Earth move closer to the Sun. Only Time can relieve you of Winter, so you might as well slow down and enjoy it.  

Our host for today’s challenge is Ann-Christine, who lives in Sweden. Her photo story shows that there are numerous ways to enjoy the beauty of Winter. 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Nostalgia

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Back in 1997, I self-published a book of poetry called The King’s Gift: Poems and Parables. It contained this one that I titled “Change”:

In autumn, the trees start to sing once again
of the bittersweet mystery of change.
Is it beauty or pain
now attached to my soul?
Is it grief…
          …or relief…
                …or nostalgia?
In the scarlet and gold,
the blood-red of life’s hold on my heart
and the warmth of its love
mingles memories and years
into afternoon tears
falling softly
          …as leaves…
                    …to the ground. 

I feel this way every fall. The change in light makes everything seem altered and thrown back into the past — until my eyes adjust and my brain catches up. Then the brilliance of the season kicks in. I really love Fall for its ability to draw out a range of emotion and hold it, fully aware and unashamed, in its transient environment. 

 

Text and photographs © 2016, Priscilla Galasso. Poetry © 1997, Priscilla Galasso. All rights reserved.

Nostalgia

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International Poetry Month

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This post was written for The Be Zine which is dedicating its April issue to International Poetry Month. As a Contributing Editor, I am honored to be able to join with truly accomplished poets in celebrating Poetry, but I am well aware that my skills do not match those of my colleagues! Treat yourself to some truly substantial fare by visiting the magazine here. 

My favorite poetry is philosophy dressed in dreaming, not logic. It imagines a larger reality, a more expansive love. Rilke is the gold standard, I think.  Oh, but that is the pièce de résistance, and there’s so much more besides that. I am a poem consumer, not a gourmet chef. I know very little of form or craft, but I love to taste and participate. So I’ve written a love poem to my late husband because, well, you might as well start with breakfast. 

Exclusive

Thick, boyish lashes fringe
Other eyes, perhaps as blue,
Open, tender toward Beloved

Still smiling youths may offer
Eager grins, warm confidence
Gleaming ‘neath soft whiskered lips

Clear voices might ring
Thrilling, gentle as yours when
You sang at daybreak just for me

Surely now first loves make vows,
Grow mature together, devotion’s
Friendly joy becoming solid strength

Fathers must bend heart and arm
Wrap manhood’s grace boldly around
Each golden, blessed child – like you

No doubt live sorrowing pairs
With looming loss, still holding,
Fingers trembling, to brave last words

I cannot boast an only, greatest grief;
I know this storied world is vast.
But still I weep in fond belief
That you and I loved first and last.