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Text of the page (random words):
perature drops a good ten degrees my sisters and i sat on a cabin porch in rocking chairs and observed woodpeckers tree climbers black eyed susans and blossoming rhododendrons for much of the time i was in a meditative state of rest rocking and breathing in the sweet air we didn t have enough time for much art making i didn t even write in my journal there s a two mile path around the lake that my lovely teenage niece my sisters and i walked a few times my youngest sister a journalist and nature lover was keen to find mushrooms and she did she spied a handful of bright saffron colored chanterelles although she gave me a little fright the way she scrambled down a hillside to photograph them she pointed out a kingfisher a pileated woodpecker and a score of other plants rhododendron purple beautyberry mount yonah little leaf sensitive briar my middle sister is a mystic an adept meditation practitioner in the tradition of parmahansa yogananda an artist and a raw food enthusiast she prepared a delicious vegan lunch and dinner for me every day we were there a true gift for me as i recover from depression my mom and her husband traveled from their home about thirty minutes away and they hiked with us to ana ruby falls my mother is about to turn 83 and she set the pace for us up the mountain she s in better hiking shape than i am the cool air from the falls under a canopy of poplars hickory oaks and rhododendron was a healing balm my sisters and i realized after being there that three days was not enough time july 3 2022 anxiety art depression healing walking writing bee balm delights as i heal bees and honey flies dancing through the bee balm the bee balm i planted this past april is in full bloom and the bees are take greedy delight in it the flowers are right next to a stone retaining wall and when it s shady i love to sit there and watch the multitudes gyrating among the blossoms it s meditative and restorative as outside time suspends and i enter the bees eternal present there have been cataclysmic disruptions in the u s that have shaken many of us if not most of us to our core it s been hard to grapple with the demise of women s reproductive and bodily rights as i also am healing from depression one of my sisters a journalist went to observe a protest in atlanta but i do not have energy to participate in these demonstrations i ve got to focus on restoring my nervous system and gardening is one way i ve been able to do that my backyard is completely wooded with no grass just oak and hickory saplings trying to reach through the canopy of eighty year old tulip poplars we lost a giant post oak in our front yard in a lightning storm about twelve years ago which opened up a small patch of sunlight and there i ve cultivated a variety of plants all perennials there are three blueberry bushes that yield a fair amount of fruit which i leave for the birds the cardinals jays and wrens feast among the branches in june i planted a brown turkey fig a few years ago that still doesn t produce much fruit but i do love looking at the sunlight filtering through its broad fat leaves sketchbook entry from may before the heatwave kicked in yesterday it was a bit cooler in the morning than it has been so i spent a few hours pulling up my nemesis an invasive species called chamber bitter if you see a patch of this weed yank it up immediately it s also called gripe weed a another good name for my garden nemesis chamber bitter is almost impossible to control without herbicide and i have used a tiny bit of a homemade concoction of salt soap and vinegar on a few spots mostly though i pull the weeds up by the roots venting my rage and grief as i go i m including this poem below to show how gardening and time outdoors works its way into my poems my life is fairly boring if watched from the outside it s the small observations that accumulate and fuse with a certain feeling that end up becoming poems eve clears her garden spring forced no life from the apple tree so we took it down dragging crown and trunk to the yard for the boys to chop into logs then the soil taproots thick as wrists severed with pickax and machete rocks and clay loosened with tines of hoe and pitchfork leaves sheaves of them bleaching under this year s brown ones peeled away worms slid through sleek mud as blade tips carved nearby from a tide of mulch pale as a sprig of thyme a snake flashed its stripes like a dart and i dropped the spade there is flawless blue where the tree once reached verbena and asters now pink the hill instead of old geometries those leafless branches a sphinx moth some kind of flying serpent takes wary sips from milkweed then phlox then flies in my direction as if to reach the pith of me and my temptation the urge is to coax seedlings into vines to answer the call of minstrel goldfinch to open my heart s hive and free the bees that seem to buzz between each breath each rib republished here from my poetry collection swimming this with futurecycle press 2015 june 26 2022 anxiety art depression gardening grief poetry spirituality memoir as a body of water long ago in the storm rocked cantabrian sea my friends and i heeded some impulse to strip and plunge below the jagged breakers blood pounding in my ears the only sound as waves swirled above like illuminated thunderheads later we sat on pockmarked boulders at dusk an electric charge in the air hushed breath chests rising and falling as though joined by an invisible current the shared knowledge of what we had risked today i enter the pebbled shallows of a man made lake my footsteps tear through the reflection of pine trees warp their curve upwards with hill s rise their sun bright branches greening the water s mirrored darkness today i m thinking about youth and the vitality i once had when i wrote this poem this past spring i was feeling content with the peace and calm i had arrived at but as i m going through another depression of the agitated variety my nerves completely shot i marvel at how i used to thrill at riding wooden roller coasters or swimming in rough water yesterday i took the second covid booster which hasn t seemed to cause me any great distress but the new medication i m taking for anxiety has tired me as my body adjusts i m still hoping the anxiety will ebb but so far after ten days i ve only experienced minor improvements guided meditations and lap swimming have helped ease some of the pain distractions like walking my dog or gardening when the heat is not too unbearable also help remembering that all things change and are changing every moment is a consolation too i copied the owl s face from the cover of this month s atlantic how animals perceive the world by ed yong photo by shayan asgharnia june 19 2022 anxiety depression pandemic poetry sketchbook therapy after the pilgrimage we enter the garden of earthly delights diary entry madrid international pride weekend 2017 tourist lunch at three o clock on the terrace but i m not alone a russian to my right speaks to me in spanish rusia es un infierno allá a no se puede ser gay he tells me of sinister ears that listen for echoes of forbidden love their switchblades ready to shiv a body but all of this is far away today we pilgrims dine on scallops in their shells watercress salad and peach gazpacho as the sky parades across the gran vía an awning of cobalt blue over buildings white as wedding cake cornices creamy as flan love s on all the billboards and gold armored super woman straddles the bus stop so much iridescence i forget my fractured foot we mambo through rainbows laced along the retiro and two step into the garden of earthly delights where swallows burst through pink eggshells and adam plops down as though stupefied on the grass god dressed in red velvet robes stares at us as he holds eve s wrist and takes her pulse we shed our clothes drag queens expose their statuesque torsos and i reveal my pale potbelly my breasts like empty soup bowls here shame has drifted out to sea in a soap bubble naked together we are whippoorwills circling fountains frothing with limonada sangría tinto de verano we are owls with pineapples on our heads symbolizing nothing fizzing with delight christine swint in honor of pride month i m posting this poem that i wrote a few years ago after returning from my second camino in spain the poem is based on real life events in madrid and also the painting by hieronymus bosch a tryptic that encompasses heaven hell and earthly paradise the garden of earthly delights by hieronymus bosch housed in the prado madrid if i can ever get myself to focus and complete this project the plan is to place this poem at the end of my manuscript about the camino it s shaping up to be a nice size for a chapbook about 28 pages of poems written in the epistolary style and consisting of letters messages notes and diary entries i love the poems in this manuscript and i really need to finish the project and bring it to fruition it s more fun to keep making new poems but it s not fair to the work to keep it squirreled away in drawers and on my laptop i hope you like this poem it s central message is to live with delight and for shame to drift out to sea in a soap bubble be proud of your way of loving no one can tell you how or who to love and know that if you re reading this poem and identify as lgbtqia which is probably most of the entire world i am sending you love through this poem madrid orgullo 2017 june 5 2022 art camino de santiago 2017 international pride weekend lgbtqia poetry pride month the numinous pine the numinous pine look here the tree says there is a path a road winding toward a cabin deep in a shadowy forest finding the glowing pine is not enough i need to travel down the winding road to the decrepit cabin full of cobwebs broken boards even deeper i need to go below the foundation down to the level of packed dirt down to the damp dark place where memories sleep in fits pushing like roots in the soil new dream journal i ve kept a log of my dreams for years and years ever since i was a teenager but lately my nightly visions have slipped away from my conscious mind as is my custom i keep a notebook next to my bed where each night i write i want to remember my dreams tonight or something to that effect if no dream is in my mind when i wake i write no dream tonight i have a long list of many nights in a row with not even a fragment to hold i m wondering if my inner dream maker is feeling neglected because i have had several vivid images come to me in dream form during the last year but i haven t really paid them any mind so now i m breathing life into the dreams at least i hope by drawing and writing about them this particular dream came to me in the winter before my mother in law died i have a recurring image that includes this cabin in the above drawing and often this place is katherine s cottage in the dream in life every summer we used to go to her house in the countryside of west stockbridge mass it was tucked into a sort of tree lined grotto at the end of a circular gravel drive a short distance away from a brook but this dream cabin always appears as a secret place my husband and i had forgotten about it sometimes shows up as katherine s first cottage where she has been living far away in the deep forest like a fairytale witch i don t like to over analyze my dreams but it does give me a sense of wholeness when i invite the dream images into my art i ll leave it to the reader to decide what the cabin would mean if it were your dream or the tree as well may 28 2022 art drawing dreams healing poetry equinox lovesong during late stage pandemic after the windstorms we wake to snowslides of petals on the grass first loss of the season these lung soft ghosts fire striped tulips affront our sorrow waving their wild colors as we pass after the storms we awaken to what we should have known that the first kiss could also be the last memories linger like soft little ghosts a flotilla of pollen cloaks the lakeshore concealing the water glass surface opaque in the storm s wake we used to fear a certain swimming hole so dark where the children might slip from our grasp time has turned our fears into mean little ghosts that drag us down like an undertow our breath heavy in the laden air after each rainstorm we re awake to a springtide of loss these sallow ghosts this poem is a variation on a villanelle i started a few years ago during april and that i recently revised a bit dark pools of water show up frequently in my dreams and they show up in my poems as well sometimes i see animals coming up out of the water such as alligators in general when i see dark murky waters in my dreams i think i m dealing with the unconscious mind memories i might be afraid to look at but if i do manage to sit with the fears during the dream the water sometimes will become clear and the creatures inhabiting the dreamscape become colorful and whimsical not at all scary and creepy my poem doesn t get past the fears as the speaker contemplates loss of petals the memories in the dark pools of water and in the background the loss of so many lives to covid sketchbook diary may 22 2022 archetypes covid dreams pandemic poetry sketchbook the yoga teacher guides the women in camatkarasana in the season of fetal heartbeat bills i wrote this poem in 2019 after the georgia state assembly passed a law that would criminalize all abortions after a so called fetal heartbeat was detected in an ultrasound camatkarasana roughly translated as wild thing is a sort of one armed backbend that one of my yoga teacher enjoys guiding us toward she has a unique way of describing what is going on inside the body and how to harness that energy toward achieving greater strength in the pose it s a difficult pose to achieve and requires strength flexibility and confidence but once you do achieve the pose the body becomes flooded with energy my heart is very heavy with sadness for women now that the leaked draft opinion to overturn roe v wade has been published we are wild things strong and capable of determining what happens to our own bodies i m filled with fury that forces in our society want to take this right away from us drawing of a forced amaryllis bulb that i combined with other found objects and words from a deck of archetype oracle cards in his book about the buddhist concept of impermanence the late thich nhat hanh tells a story about how his mother was pregnant before him but lost that pregnancy he asks am i that same baby or am i someone different in keeping with the buddhist concept of impermanence he reasons that he is the same but also different just like a bulb that blossoms and then withers and then blossoms again the following year thich nhaht hanh s teachings are not so different from the story of a chicago abortion rights organizer and ngo administrator who told her twin seven year old boys that she had had an abortion before being pregnant with them they interpret...
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