Hello again, friends.
I’ve been away for a week.
National Poetry Month came to a close.
My family came to visit.
And this week has been all madness all the time.
The end of the semester (for me and for my students and for my daughters) is so full of celebration and responsibility, my knees buckle a bit. And when you add in the fact that it is school visit season (I’m on my way to one this morning), blogging and breakfast dishes take a back seat.
It’s no wonder that what I wanted this morning was a quiet poem.
A lovely, leaf- and rain-filled quiet poem.
I found one:
The Copper Beech
Immense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard like a dress,
with limbs low enough for me to enter it
and climb the crooked ladder to where
I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.
(Read the rest here…)
I worship Marie Howe.
Here’s a little more about her, and here, too.
Oh, heck. Here, too.
Happy Friday, folks.
Namaste.
Tanita Says 🙂
I saw my first copper beech here, and I just swooned. Those things are truly gorgeous. And I love the idea/practice of being alone. Sometimes we don’t realize that things like aloneness and meditation/prayer are disciplines.
Re: Tanita Says 🙂
So much harder than they ought to be, too. I think we’ve just trained ourselves in noise and business and it’s hard to go back…
from Laura @Author Amok
Love this poem. Love Marie Howe. She takes the small moments of childhood and wow.
Re: from Laura @Author Amok
I know, I think so, too…
Oh, what a quietly lovely poem. And yes, the perfect way to retreat for a bit from the busy-ness of the season.
Oh. This poem took me back to all those lovely alone moments of my childhood. I was in the woods a lot. And in and up and around trees. We had a tree that the kids climbed in when we lived in Alabama, and one day when we were at the pool, it stormed, and we had to clear the pool and when we got home, that gorgeous tree was across our driveway. I think we all cried, because it was like a friend.
Hope you find as many small, quiet moments as you need over the next weeks.
Oh, Sara! That is a heartbreak…
I love the quiet moments too, and trees. There is a huge old copper beech by my parent’s house and it really does wear the yard like a dress. Love that phrase!
I can remember one afternoon on Michigan’s upper peninsula, me and my brother were out on the point on the edge of lake Huron, having a picnic lunch. We saw the rain coming across the lake in a white line. We crawled up under an old pine and hugged our knees next to the trunk until the rain passed us by. “watching it happen without it happening to me.” mmm hmmm.
I think there’s a picture book in that story, Andi!!
What a lovely poem. I’d really like to read more Marie Howe. Thanks for this moment of quiet and reflection.
This reminds me of how much I love quietness: in a book, in a picture, in music. Grandeur and full blown passion have their places, but in stillness and quietness I find…something that is tender and calm and good.
Sometimes we all need a virtual copper beech under which to curl up and let the storms pass us by.
I met my first copper beech last summer on the grounds of Blenheim Palace. Lovely. Huge. Ancient. Umbrella-worthy.
marie howe IS wonderful.