I Have Found Beauty Above (and Below)

A sideblog for poetry, devotional or secular (or sometimes both)

[pmamtraveller]

Luca Ponsato - Does Anyone See My Suffering

[derangedrhythms]

Theodore Roethke, Words for the Wind; from ‘The Swan’

TEXT ID: The moon draws back its waters from the shore. By the lake’s edge, I see a silver swan, And she is what I would. In this light air, Lost opposites bend down- Sing of that nothing of which all is made, Or listen into silence, like a god.

[ghostspouse]

[coolcarteam]

A woman in West Virginia snapped a one-in-a-million shot of a tree being struck by lightning.

[2001hz]

Hitomi Murakami: 'land of root' (2018)

[graveyarddirt]

@luc3 @lailoken

[thamesbeachcomber]

Wood grain. This is an old piece of timber attached to the river wall by the Thames foreshore.

[stlamb]

gown of the sea weaver by mulchmedia

[maureen2musings]

chaitdeshphotography

[ymutate]

Statue of Jesus getting slowly absorbed by tree at old cemetery in Bieszczady mountains, Poland

[3y3]

Vasilisa, Sam Guay

[poetryandarete]

Hymn to the Firetower Gods

(this was written in summer of 2020, when I was able to go “back” to my first university placement after COVID-19 shut down, well...everything. I had a lot of trouble getting used to the land in my new 3-month placement. I remember mostly being tired, anxious and paranoid during that time, but I found this hymn recently and thought I would share)

The Canadian Shield counts on me forgetting about it

I stumble the first few months I’m back – the rock comes up under my feet like the discovery of a worn down carpet in the corners of a room

I’ve spent half a year away from here, with the familiar comfort of aspen roots snug beneath my feet my heels strike wrong and I wobble over escarpments A stranger again

I’m fleshier than the last time my feet touched this rock – Heartbreak and pandemics will do that to you – and it’s a struggle to scale the rocks the way I used to it feels like I’m being judged (Maybe by people but that’s nothing new)  but this land has never liked me much to begin with and my own personal procrastination hasn’t helped me build any relations

I imagine the land spirits don’t like what they see: A puffing purple faced pretend spiritualist who left with so many doors closed and hasn’t bothered to crack one open in her time away

The sandwich I packed has gone slimy with condensation and the clouds have moved in I lose my appetite and shiver I’ve brought my knitting up here with me to infuse it with the Shield and the creeping ground growth and the white pine and the husks of cracked open acorns to sit in nature and forget my pager and my homework and just be

But the sweater I’m knitting is a love song for the cold pine of the Rockies, firm brush-lined needles blocking out the purple mountain light and these stringy sun dappling pine disdain of my stitches I get a call from school and descend back to the parking lot the pines drop a caterpillar on my lunch remains as a disdainful goodbye

I will dream of the firetower tonight, I’m sure – Of climbing that ladder without Ascending above the white pine (I never do, in the dreams

I never want to)

[antiqueanimals]

Beauty and the Beast. Cuthbert Edmund Swan (1870-1931)

via

[mosertone]

Meanwhile, in an alleyway in Naples

[illustratus]

The Vision of Saint Hubert by Franz von Stuck

[poetryandarete]

Hymn to Demeter of the September Sunflowers [and, to grief]

My mother disparaged you in August When your heads stayed puckered green, refusing to relent their shaggy pollen, gold-spun beauty Long after the neighbours’ had bloomed and wilted She only learned later the joyful colour you’d bring the dying backyard in September Interspersed with the red ripe hues of crabapple and mountain ash

I sing to you, the bobbing heads that bend under rain and wind and spring back every morning The heralds of a last harvest before the frost sets in (and even after - I know those old rosehip tricks) I play chicken with the frost, passing raspberry bushes and seeing how late I can harvest leaves You always provide - if not harvest, then humble lessons about timing

I sing, also, to the chill of a mother’s grief that creeps into the air To the sun that slowly rises later and later until I am wide awake in a dark blue morning stillness I sing to cold mornings and to colder mournings, to the rot of the leaf layer I sing to the slowing of blood, the rituals of goodbye I sing to my own grief, that at times has brought out the worst in me, a snarling animal that doesn’t accept its own fate (I sing, in fact, everywhere I can - under cathedrals of tree branches, hollow corners of hospital rooms The eerie stillness of my car as I answer a 3am page) I carry your grief, Lady, entwined with my own It will be a solemn winter here, my first of many Hail to you

[holyisthenameofmyruthlessaxe]

Glass, Irony & God, ‘The Truth About God’ by Anne Carson

[ID: Moonlight in the kitchen is a sign of God.]

[plmq]

Sorrow over Dead Christ (detail of Mary Magdalene), Niccolò dell’Arca, c. 1485