Wednesday, December 31, 2008

WAYFARER

























Photo Mandala by S. Auberle

Wayfarer, the only way
is your footsteps, there is no other.
Wayfarer, there is no way,
you make the way as you go.
As you go, you make the way
and stopping to look behind,
you see the path that your feet
will travel again.
Wayfarer, there is no way--
only foam trails in the sea.
- Antonio Machado
May your way this year be blessed with small joys, good health and friends. And may a new and silent peace circle 'round the world.
Happy New Year from all at the Cafe to all on Village Earth...
- Mimi

Monday, December 29, 2008

WHAT DO WE KNOW





















Photo by S. Auberle

in the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight
the creak of boots
rabbit tracks, deer tracks,
what do we know
- Gary Snyder

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

WRITTEN ON CHRISTMAS EVE, 1513


Photo/Collage by S. Auberle
I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see. And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!
Life is so generous a giver. but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there. The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.
Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it, that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country home.
And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away.
~~ Fra Giovanni ~~
Christmas Eve, 1513

Sunday, December 21, 2008

SATURDAY NIGHTS AT THE CRYSTAL BALL

























Very pleased to announce the publication of my book, Saturday Nights at the Crystal Ball. If you're interested, it's available from Cross + Roads Press, P.O. Box 33, Ellison Bay, Wisconsin, USA 54210. $12, plus shipping and handling. Or you can e-mail me at sea_poet@msn.com for ordering information.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

WALKING DOWN A SNOWY ROAD




















Photo by S. Auberle

WALKING DOWN A SNOWY ROAD
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves."
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Walking the beach road today
I am questioning...
what drove me this year,
what force held me in its grip,
shook it's shaggy head as it toyed with me?
A pileated woodpecker raucously questions
who are you
I breathe in cold, say I still don't know,
stretch out legs long, trying to step
in the footprints of one who came before me.
Dark shape draws my eyes,
a wing lying in the snow.
Torn from the body--large,
the texture of dark velvet--I pick it up
carry it in my mittened hand.
It seems important to question this
to think about what happened
to remember that nature does not concern herself
with who lost this wing, or how...
if it was a fox came upon the bird
or coyote. The bird lived and then died
and it may be the kits of a pregnant fox
will survive because of it.
I see myself--sixty something,
carrying a wing down a road near dark...
this is a poem, I think.
So is the one-winged carcass
buried somewhere in the snow.
So too the shaggy beast,
licking its bloodied paws.
- mimi

Friday, December 12, 2008

WINTER WONDERLAND


Photo by S. Auberle
driving up the peninsula
watching a luscious moon
rising up out of the lake
sun is setting over the bay
four o'clock on a December day
snow has blanketed the land
old barns and cabins looking snug
in the car
I'm listening to carols
most fondly thinking of you and
today gas cost only $1.69
simplify, simplify said Thoreau
and really, can life get any better
than this?
- mimi

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

TO LIVE





















Image by S. Auberle

"To live is so startling
it leaves little time
for anything else."
- Emily Dickinson

Sunday, December 07, 2008

RED

























Photo by S. Auberle

three degrees today
sunset fire fading at four
one last blaze of warmth
- mimi

Friday, December 05, 2008

'TIS THE SEASON

























Photo by S. Auberle

"Nothing is worth more than this day."
- Goethe

Monday, December 01, 2008

SNOWY OWL




Photos by S. Auberle
old
man
winter
on
the
wing...
- mimi