Tag Archives: poetry

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!

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.

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!

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Harmony

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“There is no true greatness in art or science without a sense of harmony.”

Albert Einstein

Greatness is a pretty tough challenge. Harmony is a tough challenge as well. Technically, emotionally, socially, it is not easy to make music. I have a B.A. in Music/Vocal Performance, and almost two years ago, I took up the violin. Professionals make it look almost easy. I had no idea how difficult it is until I tried to produce some kind of pleasing sound whilst scraping a horsehair bow over a metal wire. The idea is rather ludicrous…as were my first attempts. Why do would-be musicians even bother? 

This evening, my eldest daughter is performing Mahler’s 8th Symphony with the Madison Symphony Chorus…and a host of other musicians. After all, it’s the “Symphony of a Thousand”. Tomorrow, I am performing Mozart’s Solemn Vespers and Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna in a basilica known as Holy Hill.

It’s impossible to imagine the number of hours that go into producing a concert, from composition to performance. Similarly, from learning to speak to writing poetry, what motivates humans to communicate? Why bother to go further than grunting out urgent pain or danger?

There is something sublime, something divine in experiencing the mystery of being alive in a moment. Music is LIFE in a moment. Photography is LIFE in a moment. It is breath-taking, poignant, exhilarating to be able to show someone that LIFE and feel that they resonate with that experience. That is harmony — experiencing the resonance of LIFE with another being. 

As a Lens-Artist, I hope to show you something that touches a chord. Thank you, Tina, for the invitation to be part of this challenge and share the art I’ve practiced. 

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

Tell Me: What IS Environmental Justice?

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As a Contributing Editors of The Be Zine , we are currently accepting submissions for the September 15 issue (submission deadline Sept. 10) that will focus on Environmental Justice, which is also the theme of our 100 Thousand Poets (and friends) for Change virtual event on September 24. In order to propel the discussion into deeper focus from the outset, we invite and encourage contributing authors to ponder a few things about their perspective and their voice on this topic.

When we talk about Justice, it is sometimes assumed that people will agree on what is ‘the right thing to do’. However, as with anything else, our decision-making about Justice is influenced by our values, by the things that we deem ‘special’, ‘important’, or ‘sacred’. I propose that there are (at least) three categories of valued environments, or ‘Holy Ground’: Nature, Place and Community. Think about these three different arenas and how you see Justice being applied to them.

For example, if Community is your value, you may feel that Environmental Justice has to do with how people are impacted and how human activity creates change. If Place is your value, then questions about Justice probably will involve a particular area with borders of a physical or conceptual nature. It may be that feelings of injustice are felt in terms of ‘This, not That’ or ‘Us, not Them’ or in a desire to see a Place resist change. If Nature is your value, then you may see Justice in more fluid terms as the balance of resources between producers/consumers and prey/predator is in a state of constant flux with perhaps no ultimate goal.

So, as you sit down to write about Environment Justice in your unique voice, identify your values. Perhaps use the lenses of Nature, Place and Community to focus. What is important to you? Why? How does it affect your decision-making? What factors impact this ‘sacred’ ground? How do different cultural models or systems impact your cherished home? What feelings arise in you – what empathy for Living Things or Living Habitats? What fears?

Thank you for spending time with these concepts and these questions. Your presence, your life energy, your embodiment of love is a gift that we are privileged and honored to receive. Please, share your thoughts, your words and pictures with us!

— Priscilla Galasso and Steve Wiencek

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.

Mankind: The Modern Mystery and Myth

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This piece is featured in this month’s issue of the BeZine. For a link to the complete issue, click here.

The hero’s journey is a deeply challenging topic for an amateur writer and philosopher. What a great invitation to read and research, to tie strands together and squint to see a pattern! Typically, I submit essays to this forum, as I am much more comfortable in prose. This time, however, I decided that an essay on this topic would be way too ambitious. What I have is Swiss cheese and spiderwebs, full of holes and only loosely connected, so I thought a poem would be more appropriate.  However, I will preface this one with a bibliography.  I began with the final chapter of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces, where I read this:

“Today all of these mysteries [“the great pantomime of the sacred moon-king, the sacred sun-king, the hieratic, planetary state, and the symbolic festivals of the world-regulating spheres”] have lost their force; their symbols no longer interest our psyche. The notion of a cosmic law, which all existence serves and to which man himself must bend, has long since passed through the preliminary mystical stages represented in the old astrology, and is now simply accepted in mechanical terms as a matter of course. The descent of the Occidental science from the the heavens to the earth (from 17th century astronomy to 19th century biology), and their concentration today, at last, on man himself (in 20th century anthropology and psychology), mark the path of a prodigious transfer of the focal point of human wonder. Not the animal world, not the plant world, not the miracle of the spheres, but man himself is now the crucial mystery. Man is that alien presence with whom the force of egoism must come to terms, through whom the ego is to be reformed. Man, understood however not as “I” but as “Thou”: for the ideals and temporal institutions of no tribe, race, continent, social class, or century, can be the measure of the inexhaustible and multifariously wonderful divine existence that is the life in all of us.” (emphasis mine)

That reading led me to recall lectures I heard from Dave Foreman at the Wilderness 50 conference. His essay on “The Anthropocene and Ozymandius” can be found in several online posts. From there, I considered Nietzsche’s Übermensch from Also Sprach Zarathustra. And always underlying my thoughts is my admiration for Buddhist practice and The Middle Way. So, with all that as the primordial soup, this emerged:

Homo sapiens sapiens
Oh most separate, separating
Anthropocene anthropocentric
The Egoid egotist
Ozymandius, great Wizard of Man
Eyes on screen
Fingertips fiddling

Journey who will
That Über undertaking
Condescend to transcend
Dare to die in darkness,
Awake in wilderness
At one, atoned
In mystic Middle

Cosmic consumption
Preposterous presumption
Unsustainable usurpation
Deplorable devastation

Parading Nero
Begs a humbler hero

hero

© 2015 – poem, essay and photograph, copyright Priscilla Galasso.  All rights reserved.

 

A Palette of Change

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What color is humility?  What color is Pope Francis?  What color is poverty?  What color is racial injustice?  What color is responsibility?  What color is Noam Chomsky? What color is Bernie Sanders? What color is exploitation? What color is extinction? What color is cowardice?  What color is love?  What color is peace?  What color is Thich Nhat Hahn?  What color is health?  What color is despair? What color is the sky?  What color is Earth?  What color am I?

How shall I paint?contemplating colors

100 Thousand Poets for Change event link HERE.