Wed nes day

(It still is in the Northern Hemisphere. . .) 

Like so many of you, I have felt stunned into silence - wordlessness - lately. I've not been able to find words - 'right' words, 'relevant' words, 'resonant' words. Thankfully, one of the gifts of living in community is that sooner or later, some amongst find a way to articulate in writing what the rest of us are feeling but cannot yet speak. Antares Cryptos & Angella - thank you. And last night, Penelope - whose blog The Intertidal Zone will be known to many of you - found her voice (and, by proxy, ours?) and penned Dawn breaks - - - 

"Venus hangs fat and gold. The old ring-barked sycamore gleams white under a pale blue sky. Leaves fidget in the first breeze. I sit on a cushion and light a candle in the window where a fine-limbed spider makes delicate purchase, trying to climb the glass. The garden, the spider and the star are reassuring, each in its own way, steadfastly doing what its species does: living and dying, web-making, burning bright.


Reassuring because I feel increasingly uncertain what’s required of me on a planet that’s quivering with its own potency and undermining centuries-old assumptions about our place upon it. . ." 


To continue reading Penelope's thoughtful reflection, click here.

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Last night, two sets of names & artworks were drawn in our MANY AS ONE Christchurch appeal - All Directions Lead Home by Kate Alterio will soon be on its way to a writer/ reader in South Portland, Main and my small ink drawing Many Islands has been matched to a reader in La Jolla, San Diego.  Warmest thanks, all. 

    

Vigil

Notification of this vigil just landed in my e-mailbox. Please pass the word on. . . 

INVITATION TO ATTEND A DUNEDIN COMMUNITY VIGIL IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE PEOPLE OF CHRISTCHURCH

Friday 25th February 2011

5.00 - 6.00PM 

Upper Octagon, Central Dunedin.

ALL WELCOME

Further information: Michael Laufiso   

Ph. 027 2461039

michael.laufiso@dcc.govt.nz

A Dunedin Community Initiative supported by the Dunedin City Council & OUSA.

Note: At 4.45pm there will be a pre- vigil gathering on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral for those who would like to offer thoughts or prayers during the vigil.

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PLEASE  DONATE  ITEMS  FOR  CHRISTCHURCH PEOPLE IN NEED

"Nations Church at 334 King Edward Street, South Dunedin is opening the facility as a collection point for relief items that will be taken by the Salvation Army to Christchurch. The church gym will be open between the hours of 9am and 1pm, Tuesday to Saturday, from 24 February to 5 March. Someone will be there to organize the collection. Unfortunately the church is unable pick up items.

Regards,

Allen O'Loughlin"

The following items are most urgently needed. Please provide sealed packages, not home made goods. All items should be new or near new.

 ~ Baby food

 ~ Torches

 ~ Batteries

 ~ Tin food (preferably food that doesn't need heating)

 ~ Manual can openers

 ~ Gloves - leather or gardening style (preferably rubber)

 ~ Disposable gloves

 ~ Nappies - all sizes

 ~ Wipes

 ~ Sanitizer lotion

 ~ Brooms

 ~ Buckets - new only please

 ~ Pillow cases

 ~ Sheets

 ~ Blankets

 ~ Toilet paper

 ~ Deodorant

 ~ Soap

 ~ Treats: chocolates, biscuits, sweets

Thank you.

Tuesday Poem - Big Wind

BIG WIND


Where were the greenhouses going,
Lunging into the lashing
Wind driving water
So far down the river
All the faucets stopped?—
So we drained the manure-machine
For the steam plant,
Pumping the stale mixture
Into the rusty boilers,
Watching the pressure gauge
Waver over to red,
As the seams hissed
And the live steam
Drove to the far
End of the rose-house,
Where the worst wind was,
Creaking the cypress window-frames,
Cracking so much thin glass
We stayed all night,
Stuffing the holes with burlap;
But she rode it out,
That old rose-house,
She hove into the teeth of it,
The core and pith of that ugly storm,
Ploughing with her stiff prow,
Bucking into the wind-waves
That broke over the whole of her,
Flailing her sides with spray,
Flinging long strings of wet across the roof-top,
Finally veering, wearing themselves out, merely
Whistling thinly under the wind-vents;
She sailed until the calm morning,
Carrying her full cargo of roses.

Theodore Roethke

For more Tuesday Poems, please visit the TP hub 

where this week's editor is Jeffrey Paporoa Holman.  

I chose Theodore Roethke's Big Wind for today primarily for the resilience and hope expressed in these six lines. . .

But she rode it out, 

That old rose-house,
She hove into the teeth of it, 

The core and pith of that ugly storm. . .

. . . she sailed until the calm morning,

Carrying her full cargo of roses.'

Our Christchurch community continues to be at the forefront of our thoughts.  Hambani kahle. (Go safely. Go well. Zulu)

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Later. . . I'd like to acknowledge Mary McCallum (curator of the Tuesday Poem initiative) today and to thank her for the tenderness, zeal and humanity she brings to our blogging community. Her poem EARTH leaves us with a sense that what's been broken will again become whole... US poets, VesperSparrow and T. Clear endorse this message. I haven't got round all the TPs yet, but know there'll be many additional resonances... 


Together, we find the words we need to make sense of our world? 


Today, it seems to me we're building a composite; a communal poem composed of many parts. Everyone's turned in the same direction and with the best intention; thank you all.  

Tuesday Poem - Eggs

EGGS

   for Penelope and Raymond

Our neighbours carry eggs across the hedge

on birthdays; one egg wrapped in lemon tissue 

paper with crimson spirals and a raffia twist; 
two in a navy-blue nest with floral wallpaper,

the date inscribed on blunt horizons in gold; 
once there were six, mismatched, 
in a plain beige egg box. 

I know the chooks by name; they wake me

in the morning, help keep our weeds down

and on adventurous days stray beyond 
the grass to the driveway where they find 
the tyres on our car fascinating. I admire

their dismissive attitude towards our cats. 

They strut and cluck and at end of each day

lay eggs the colours of my children's skin - 

a grand and fragile achievement. 

CB

Given the uncertain world our friends in Christchurch - considered by many to be the heart centre of our country - are waking to these mornings, I didn't know what to choose for TP today. In the end I settled on this simple poem that speaks in plainest terms of the gift of community; of neighbourly exchange, love expressed in small gestures of kindness, the miracle of ordinary, everyday things. 

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For more Tuesday Poems, please visit the hub where poet Zireaux has posted a marvelous 'journey' titled The Poet as Absent-minded Neuroscientist: The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin & Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov.