Sunday, November 13, 2022

Hawthorne's Thanksgiving Day


. . .


    This is Thanksgiving Day--a good old festival; and my wife and I have kept it with our hearts, and besides have made good cheer upon our turkey, and pudding, and pies, and custards, although none sat at our board but our two selves. There was a new and livelier sense, I think, that we have at least found a home, and that a new family has been gathered since the last Thanksgiving Day.

  There have been many bright, cold days, latterly--so cold that it has required a pretty rapid pace to keep the warm in walking. Day before yesterday, I saw a party of boys skating on a pond of water that has overflowed a neighboring meadow. Running water has not yet frozen. Vegetation has quite come to a stand, except in a few sheltered spots. In a deep ditch, my wife and I found a tall plant of the freshest and healthiest green, which looked as is if it must have grown within the last few weeks. We wander among the wood-paths, which are very pleasant in the sunshine of the afternoons--the trees looking rich and warm, such of them, I mean, as have retained their russet leaves, and where the leaves are strewn along the paths, or heaped plentifully into some hollow of the hills, the effect is not without a charm. To-day, the morning rose with rain, which has since changed to snow and sleet; and now the landscape is a dreary as can well be imagined--white, with the brownness of the soil and withered grass everywhere peeping out. The swollen river, of a leaden hue, drags itself sullenly along; and this may be termed the first winter's day.

     

 
From Great Writings by Nathaniel Hawthorne
L. James Morgan Jr (Compiler)
The World Around Us
Published 1971 by Hallmark Editions




Saturday, November 12, 2022

Rumi


The real work belongs to someone who desires God

and has severed himself from any other work.


The rest are like children who play together until it gets dark

for these few short days.


Or like someone who awakes and springs up, still drowsy,

and then is lulled back to sleep

by the suggestion of an evil nurse:

"Go to sleep, my darling, I won't let anyone disturb you."



Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Poets of the Fall: "Choir of Cicadas"


It's the season of dust trailing old pick up trucks

Seashells washed ashore down by the docks

So baby pull on your blue jeans turn the radio loud

Don't wait for the hour to give birth to doubt.


In the peak harvest of snakebites and wasted hindsight

When trivial truths sit next to the taillights

When fenders of chrome they rattle and hum

All carved in the shape of freedom


...


So I'll be your lover now, brazen & bright

Like the flare of a match you struck in the night

Though what does a stray know 'bout holy & true

But I'll always come to your rescue.


Oh Lord won't you hear your children cry

Singing their praise & their hallelujahs

I have no more words to describe

An empty sky of hollow blue, yeah

So where is my lover, my firelight

The line on the edge of truth & rumour

We took our vows in the heart of the night

We were brazen & bright, when we were brazen & bright



Poets of the Fall