Crow 2015 by Drea
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Crow
By Drea
Crow composure,
a raven caw, caw, caw,
harshly insistent, demand.
Bodily creativity spill,
diffuse energy
like sunlight.
Mutely muffle sound,
steady heartbeat,
our shaky hand.
Gratefully 2014 by Drea
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/gratefully-2014-drea-jensen.html
GOOD MORNING
1.
“Hello, wren” is the first thing I say.
“Where did you come from appearing so
sudden and cheerful in the privet? Which,
by the way, has decided to decorate itself
in so many white blossoms.”
2.
Paulus is coming to visit! Paulus the
dancer, the potter. Who is just beginning
his eightieth decade, who walks without
shoes in the woods because his feet, he
says, ask to be in touch with the earth.
Paulus who when he says my poems sometimes
changes them a little, according to the
occasion or his own feelings. Okay, I say.
3.
Stay young, always, in the theater of your
mind.
4.
Bless the notebook that I always carry in
my pocket.
And the pen.
Bless the words with which I try to say
what I see, think, or feel.
With gratitude for the grace of the earth.
The expected and the exception, both.
For all the hours I have been given to
be in this world.
5.
The multiplicity of forms! The hummingbird,
the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the
otter, the dragonfly, the water lily! And
on and on. It must be a great disappointment
to God if we are not dazzled at least ten
times a day.
6.
Slowly the morning climbs toward the day.
As for the poem, not this poem but any
poem, do you feel its sting? Do you feel
its hope, its entance to a community? Do
you feel its hand in your hand?
7.
But perhaps you’re still sleeping. I
could wake you with a touch or a kiss.
But so could I shake the petals from
the wild rose which blossoms so silently
and perfectly, and I do not.
~ by Mary Oliver
Drea Art
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THE FOURTH SIGN OF THE ZODIAC
1.
Why should I have been surprised?
Hunters walk the forest
without a sound.
The hunter, strapped to his rifle,
the fox on his feet of silk,
the serpent on his empire of muscles~
all move in a stillness,
hungry, careful, intent.
Just as the cancer
entered the forest of my body,
without a sound.
2.
The question is,
what will it be like
after the last day?
Will I float
into the sky
or will I fray
within the earth or a river~
remembering nothing?
How desperate I would be
if I couldn’t remember
the sun rising, if I couldn’t
remember trees, rivers; if I couldn’t
even remember, beloved,
your beloved name.
3.
I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.
So why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
And to write music or poems about.
Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.
You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wanted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.
4.
Late yesterday afternoon, in the heat,
all the fragile blue flowers in bloom
in the shrubs in the yard next door had
tumbled from the shrubs and lay
wrinkled and fading in the grass. But
this morning the shrubs were full of
the blue flowers again. There wasn’t
a single one on the grass. How, I
wondered, did they roll or crawl back
to the shrubs and then back up to
the branches, that fiercely wanting,
as we all do, just a little more of
life?
~ by Mary Oliver
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,200 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.
Testimony 2012 by Drea
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/index.html
FRANZ MARC’S BLUE HORSES
I step into the painting of the four blue horses.
I am not even surprised that I can do this.
One of the horses walks toward me.
His blue nose noses me lightly. I put my arm
over his blue mane, not holding on, just
commingling.
He allows me my pleasure.
Franz Marc died a young man, shrapnel in his brain.
I would rather die than try to explain to the blue horses
what war is.
They would either faint in horror, or simply
find it impossible to believe.
I do not know how to thank you, Franz Marc.
Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.
Maybe the desire to make something beautiful
is the piece of God that is inside each of us.
Now all four horses have come closer,
are bending their faces toward me
as if they have secrets to tell.
I don’t expect them to speak, and they don’t.
If being so beautiful isn’t enough, what
could they possibly say?
by Mary Oliver
1912~13 sketch on a postcard by Franz Marc
Ventral 2012 by Drea
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/ventral-2012-drea-jensen.html
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger ~ something better, pushing right back.”
~ Albert Camus
Letting Paint Dry 2012 by Drea
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/letting-paint-dry-2012-drea-jensen.html
AFTER READING LUCRETIUS, I GO TO THE POND
The slippery green frog
that went to his death
in the heron’s pink throat
was my small brother,
and the heron
with the white plumes
like a crown on his head
who is washing now his great sword-beak
in the shining pond
is my tall thin brother.
My heart dresses in black
and dances.
~ By Mary Oliver
Hello Art Lovers!
Always in connection with the rainbow threads of the natural world especially the red thread that stretches and never breaks.
In loving kindness for you and yours,
Rosemary Claire
http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/rosemary-allen.html
Drea Art
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Origami 2012 by Drea
Something as simple as folding paper can create beauty.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/origami-2012-drea-jensen.html
WHAT WE WANT
By Mary Oliver
In a poem
people want
something fancy,
but even more
they want something
inexplicable
made plain,
easy to swallow~
not unlike a suddenly
harmonic passage
in an otherwise
difficult and sometimes dissonant
symphony~
even if it is only
for the moment
of hearing it.
Abundance 2012 by Drea
With everything that is out there in the world, we must remember to push through, and get what really matters and is important to us.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/abundance-2012-drea-jensen.html
HERONS IN WINTER IN THE FROZEN MARSH
by Mary Oliver
All winter
two blue herons
hunkered in the frozen marsh,
like two columns of blue smoke.
What they ate
I can’t imagine,
unless it was the small laces
of snow that settled
in the ruckus of the cattails,
or the glazed windows of ice
under the tired
pitchforks of their feet—
so the answer is
they ate nothing,
and nothing good could come of that.
They were mired in nature, and starving.
Still, every morning
they shrugged the rime from their shoulders,
and all day they
stood to attention
in the stubbled desolation.
I was filled with admiration,
sympathy,
and, of course, empathy.
It called for a miracle.
Finally the marsh softened,
and their wings cranked open
revealing the old blue light,
so that I thought: how could this possibly be
the blunt, dark finish?
First one, then the other, vanished
into the ditches and upheavals.
All spring, I watched the rising blue-green grass,
above its gleaming and substantial shadows,
toss in the breeze,
like wings.
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