Creative Power

The creative adult
is the child who has survived.

― Ursula K. Le Guin

For Zoey

Zoey, sweet beloved
Whose thoughtfulness
Overflows,
Graceful in manner,
Elegant in spirit.

Grow up and
Spread your light,
Be a conqueror yet benevolent,
Strong in mind,
And always kind.

Much, much love,
Tita N.

Desert Places

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars—on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places. 

― Robert Frost

Haiku: Such utter silence!

Such utter silence!
     even the crickets'
singing...
Muffled by hot rocks


English version by Peter Beilenson
Original Language Japanese, by Matsuo Basho

October

The leaves fall from my fingers
Cornflowers scattered across the field like stars,
                                                                         like smoke stars,
By the train tracks, the leaves in a drift

Under the slow clouds
                                 and the nine steps to heaven,
The light falling in great sheets through the trees,
Sheets almost tangible.

The transfiguration will start like this, I think,
                                                                     breathless,
Quick blade through the trees,
Something with red colors falling away from my hands,

The air beginning to go cold …
                                                  And when it does
I’ll rise from this tired body, a blood-knot of light,
Ready to take the darkness in.

—Or for the wind to come
And carry me, bone by bone, through the sky,
Its wafer a burn on my tongue,
                                              its wine deep forgetfulness.

—Charles Wright, from The Southern Cross (Random House, 1981)