 © Graphic by Amber Fleek Poetry Friday with at Ramona at Pleasures From the Page. She has had quite the summer with moving! Today, I share a photo and haiku that I posted this week because it seems to capture the end of August and beginning of September. The photo was taken last Sunday when I was at the Portland Japanese Garden.  The Sealey Challenge
I read Linda’s post for Spiritual Journey Thursday. I was filled with gratitude that she used the song "Tis A Gift To Be Simple" by Joseph Brackett. It’s one of my favorites. Mary Lee at A(nother) Year of Reading is hosting Poetry Friday and sharing a beautiful textile piece along with a poem. She has been reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and I am reminded that book needs to come with me on a roadtrip. I’ve just returned from four days at the coast with daughter, grandgirl, husband, and husband’s former wife. A tradition that is almost twenty years old. Some of the questions that the 18 YO was asking made me think of ‘turning’; the turning of the seasons, the turning of our lives. Oldest grand has graduated and I am watching her enter adulthood with curiosity. She wanted to know about the “family member “cut off date” (translated how long everyone had lived) and whether she’d have access to the house we have rented all her life when we are no longer able to rent it. These questions show me the importance to her of traditions. It delights me that as the pages are turning in her life story (as are they in ours), that she holds some things close to her soul. I am into writing Golden Shovels for the summer poetry swap this year and thus I took a line from "Tis A Gift To Be Simple".  To turn, turn, turn will be our delight. Tis A Gift To Be Simple by Joseph Brackett Criss-cross logs ready to light the match to turn the stack into fiery flames. The sun turns a page by slipping below the horizon. We turn marshmallows on a stick, they’re gooey, golden s'mores. Will we ever be too old, roasting marshmallows on the beach. Our answer is in the moon, full of delight. ©Jone Rush MacCulloch The Sealey Challenge
August 1: field notes poems of the lost and found by Melissa Madenski August 2: Twenty Love Poems and One Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda August 3: Recover by Allison Joseph  ©Graphic by Amber Fleek
Jan at BookSeedStudio has the hosting duties this week and she's curated a variety of sources of where to submit poetry as well as introducing to a wonderful collection.
I'm about to leave for four days at the coast, a yearly event. And yesterday morning I awoke to a post on FB by Naomi Shihab Nye thanking someone for the quote on their car: "There’s a way not to be brokenthat takes brokenness to find it." ~Naomi Shihab Nye I looked it up and found this poem: "Cinco de Mayo" Cinco de Mayo By Naomi Shihab Nye If this is your birthday and you are dead, do we stay silent as the sheet you died under? No. You always talked. Here’s a thick white candle whispering. Pour birdseed into feeders. Speak up, speak up. Tell me where they go, my friend said, in the same pain. I touched her shoulder. Here, right here. You’re closer than you ever were — takes a while to know that. Every scrap of DNA, he’s listening. There’s a way not to be broken that takes brokenness to find it. Those two last lines. And here's the kicker, today would have been the 75th birthday of my former husband who died five years ago, As some of you know, I left over thirty years ago, and have written about him. The universe guides us and yesterday, the poem was gifted to me. I was fortunate to take a weeklong class with Naomi in 1989. I will be visiting her books for the Sealey Challenge. Here is Naomi, reading her poem fro her book, Transfer(2011) : 
The Sealey Challenge is a month-long challenge to read poetry and be in community with others. I am going to do my best to immerse myself in the challenge.
Are you participating? I know that Marcie Flinchum Atkins is promoting and getting ready for it. |
AuthorAll photos and poems in these blog posts are copyrighted to Jone Rush MacCulloch 2006- Present. Please do not copy, reprint or reproduce without written permission from me. 
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