L’ete

The veil between my beloved summer and autumn has once again descended. Like last year, it has tumbled earlier than in the past. I’ve learned to find delights in each season but summer is where my heart sings. The quotes below, for me, reflect that sentiment. 

 

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned  that within me there lay an invincible summer.”  –  Albert Camus

“In summer, the song sings itself.”   –  William Carlos Williams

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”   –  F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

 

L’ete

Slowing down my mind

Halt the eternal quest

For tomorrow, next week

Or a favorite holiday

Even before summer’s

Waning begins, the

Yearning for it starts

Anew

*

Learning to delight in

Nuances of each season

Colors of gold, red, yellow

Then brown splashes

Across the vineyards to

Les arbres

Soups simmer once again

A late squash-corn chowder,

Black bean or hearty vegetable

Avec pois chiche

*

Le Printemps donne l’espoir

Les fleurs,

Vibrant green leaves

Sur le vigne

Life cycle

Reaffirms herself

Mother Nature bestows her gifts

*

Most difficult

Pour moi

Making peace

Avec l’hiver

Taking my breath away

Lodging its chill

Deep in my bones

Even when sunlight bounces

Across a rare snow

Longing takes over

Summer feels so far away

*

Bisous,

Léa

Silver Poetry

honest lines draw across her skin but he can’t see with blood in his mouth transmission continues I read your code pegged loosely whipping in the breeze making sin out of nothing he stared at her from the cross remain pure she turned around and tapped her red heels three times I don’t belong I […]

via untainted star — Silver Poetry

Be a cat

 

“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”  – Ernest Hemingway 

 

BE A CAT

 

We do not have nine

Only one – allocated

Much shorter than you think

Racing – a comet in the night

Be a cat

 

Think of the graceful feline

Encountering something new

The nose begins to twitch

Whiskers poised and ready

Be a cat

 

Curiosity in all things

Absorb all you can

Touch it, feel it,

Make love to it

Be a cat

 

Take pleasure in your body

It’s keeping you together

Treat it kindly

Any shortcomings are cerebral

Be a cat

 

Drink this life in

Champagne – tickles, savor it

Take a lesson from felines

Relish it all, retrace pleasure

Head first, into the new

Be a cat

 

Rejoice in the night

Solitude, darkness, peace

Wondrous world to explore

All, different – alive

Be a cat

 

Don’t waste it

No feline ever would

Satisfy your urges

Le chat never postpones

Sharing pleasure –

Makes the world go around

Be a cat

 

Only the feline

Curls up

Relives her pleasures

Then rises to do them

Again, again and again

Be a cat

 

 

Bisous,

 

Léa

Un jour parfait

 

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”   –  Anna Quindlen

 

“To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.”  

–  Walt Whitman

 

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end.”  

– Gilda Radner

 

 * 

 

Un jour parfait

 

J’adore

Chocolat noir

And red wine

Woodsmoke on

A frosty morning

The abundance of

Sourires et baisers

Dans mon environnement

Chestnuts roasting

Warm wooly hats and scarves

Un tasse de café

Warming icy hands

That simmering cauldron of soup

Which beckons me

As a day at the easel

Takes its toll

J’adore

Mozart and moonlight

Filtering throught

Ma fenêtre

Glistening reflections

On canvas

Un jour – bien utilisé

*

Bisous,

Léa

Villesèque-des-Corbières

“I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome.”  –   Julius Caesar

“Life is a song – sing it. Life is a game – play it. Life is a challenge – meet it. Life is a dream – realize it. Life is a sacrifice – offer it. Life is love – enjoy it. “  –   Sai Baba

*

Villesèque-des-Corbières

Thicker than a proper

Part de pâté

Southern French accents

A piquant chorus

Fill late October’s grey sky

Place des Marchés

Bistro – terroir

Les mots

Ricochet across the café

Rapid fire of an automatic

Profusely punctuated with

Handshakes, kisses and laughter

Les Corbières

A jewel in France’s crown

La clé à mon coeur

The brightest star

Dans le ciel

Villeseque tres petit

Un cascade

Of stardust

*

Bisous,

Léa

Material Witness

“Art is not a part of life, it is not an addition to life, it is the essence of those pieces of us that make us fulfilled. That give us hope. That give us dreams and provide the world a view very different than what it would have been without us.”

–  Hasan Davis

“Art opens the closets, airs out the cellars and attics. It brings healing.”   –  Julia Cameron

“I think artists can go to a level of vision that can often save us from a situation which seems to have no solution whatsoever.”   –  Susan Griffin

*

Material Witness

This is what I get

For attempting to reduce

The clutter in my life

This red plastic toolbox

Filled with long ignored

Pencils, charcoal, pastels

And other tricks of a trade

They were so foreign to

Me

Something I ached for

Yet knew nothing about

Flashbacks to childhood

A half-sisters art supplies

Tossed aside at the demands

Of her fiancée

Now these things

Were in plain site

Demanding attention

To be dealt with

To be used

To skate across paper

Or canvas

All the negative decrees of a

Lifetime want to be heard

Demand their say

Yet something deeper

Wants more

Dare I open the box?

Dare I see what will happen?

Learning to play

With art or anything else

Is more difficult as we age

But if it is given the smallest chance

It will prevail

The evidence is all around

Me

*

Bisous,

Léa

Ces mains

“As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.”   –  Audrey Hepburn

 

“The final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.”  

–  Anne Frank

“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.”   –  Carl Jung

*

Ces mains

These hands

Often struck

With yardstick

Brosse de cheveux

Or any other

Weapon of war

*

Ces mains

Learned that they

Were best kept

Out of the way

Out of danger

*

Ces mains

Learned that

Other hands needed

Holding

Frail hands

Confused hands

*

These hands

Eagerly reaching out

To those in want

Or need

Finding hands to hold

Or guide

*

These hands

Never raised in

Anger

These hands

Gentle

Kind

*

Ces mains

Sont les

Miennes

*

Bisous,

Léa

Fight Censorship and thank a Librarian

“We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.   –  E.M. Forster

 

“Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.”   –  Henry Louis Gates

 

“Submitting to censorship is to enter the seductive world of ‘The Giver’: the world where there are no bad words and no bad deeds. But it is also the world where choice has been taken away and reality distorted. And that is the most dangerous world of all.”   –  Lois Lowry

DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR AND READ:

http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/statementspols/freedomreadstatement

*

Fight Censorship and thank a Librarian

It’s banned books week

And if a book hasn’t

Made it on that list

I’m not sure it is

Worth my time

Reading

*

It’s banned books week

If you care about

Making your own

Choices

If there is a book

You like that

Has made the list

Speak out

*

It’s banned books week

Somewhere there is a

Librarian who has stuck

Her neck out

For your right to

Read what you choose

They are the hero’s of

The hour

*

It’s banned books week

Celebrate

Read a book

From the list

Read the statement

Freedom to Read 1953

Celebrate

Then go to the independent

Book store and buy

Banned books

*

Bisous,

Léa

L’ete

“In summer, the song sings itself.”   –  William Carlos Williams

 

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”   –  F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

 

L’ete

Slowing down my mind

Halt the eternal quest

For tomorrow, next week

Or a favorite holiday

Even before summer’s

Waning begins, the

Yearning for it starts

Anew

*

Learning to delight in

Nuances of each season

Colors of gold, red, yellow

Then brown splashs

Across the vineyards to

Les abres

Soups simmer once again

A late squash-corn chowder,

Black bean or hearty vegetable

Avec pois chiche

*

Le Printemps donne l’espoir

Les fleurs,

Vibrant green leaves

Sur le vigne

Life cycle

Reaffirms herself

Le cadeau de la mere nature

*

Most difficult

Pour moi

Making peace

Avec l’hiver

Taking my breath away

Lodging its chill

Deep in my bones

Even when sunlight bounces

Across a rare snow

Longing takes over

Summer feels so far away

*

Bisous,

Léa

calluses

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet”   –  Plato

 

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”  

–  Charles Dickens

 

“Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.”  

–   Rainer Maria Rilke

 

 

 

 

calluses

*

like fingerprints

 your touch

lands delicately

like a butterfly

on the small

of my back

as each journey

begins

rough against

softness as

firmness increases

pressure mounts

indelibly you engrave

upon flesh

the stories

we write

the roughness

of your fingertips

my

neumonic device

*

bisous,

léa