#263: Foraging for comfort

I’m being shaken left and right and up and down these past few weeks. Amidst the surges of discomfort and feelings too powerful to tap into, I pause. I listen for my niece’s giggles. I find myself swinging in playgrounds. I invent games and conceive ideas for a sunny day, when I will have the power to dream and manifest.

The laptop gathers dust in the corner. I do not care for it. Instead, I forage fallen flowers, and press them between old books, never to be read again. A sudden urge to jot down a line or phrase, and almost instantly, it is gone.

Ultimately, I return to words, in the hope that they save me. As the poet W.S. Merwin rightly said, “I think there’s a kind of desperate hope built into poetry that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there’s still time.”

---

Poetry Corner

Comforting poems + 3 Félix Vallotton paintings that soothed me:

Femme couchée jouant avec un chat by Félix Vallotton

Cat Poem By Linda Barnes

They will not go quietly,
the cats who’ve shared our lives.
In subtle ways they let us know
their spirit still survives.

And although time may bring new friends
and a new food dish to fill,
That one place in our hearts belongs to them
. . . and always will.

When Time Dissolves by Cristina M.R. Norcross

When life gave us lemons,
I used my creative energy
for something good.
I knit 20 scarves,
giving them away for birthdays,
or in celebration of chilly Tuesdays.
I filled our kitchen with the scent of
garlic, boiling pasta,
fresh basil from the pot by the window,
and roasted Roma tomatoes.

In the summer, I gently plucked
the stems of the greenest mint leaves,
adding them to ice water
with sliced cucumbers and lime wedges,
for a cooling, softly scented drink.

Only our finest cup and saucer
would do for an afternoon brew
of ginger-turmeric tea.
It eased the stomach,
a soothing tonic for tension
and troubles.

I have discovered that there is a recipe
for life
that includes multitudes:
a pinch of patience,
my deepest gratitude for existing here,
a mountain of forgiveness,
for healing old wounds,
a love for others and myself
that is bigger than any measuring cup
can hold,
and the ability to let go,
allowing arms to drift to my sides
in surrender,
an attempt to dissolve
all that has passed
into something holy.

La nuit, effet de lune by Félix Vallotton

21 Love Poems: 10 by Adrienne Rich

Your dog, tranquil and innocent, dozes through
our cries, our murmured dawn conspiracies
our telephone calls. She knows—what can she know?
If in my human arrogance I claim to read
her eyes, I find there only my own animal thoughts:
that creatures must find each other for bodily comfort,
that voices of the psyche drive through the flesh
further than the dense brain could have foretold,
that the planetary nights are growing cold for those
on the same journey, who want to touch
one creature-traveler clear to the end;
that without tenderness, we are in hell.

Poem by Stephen Collis

How pleasant
                   to say
             small rain
rather than drizzle

The Lifeline by Pádraig Ó Tuama

for Dave Laverty

Here is what I know: when
that bell tolls again, I
need to go and make something,
anything: a poem, a pie, a terrible
scarf with my terrible knitting, I
need to write a letter, remind myself
of any little lifeline around me.

When death sounds, I forget most
of what I learnt before. I go below.
I compare my echoes with other people’s
happiness. I carve that hole in my own
chest again, pull out all my organs once
again, wonder if they’ll ever work again
stuff them back again. Begin. Again.

A Teacher’s Lament by Kalli Dakos

Don’t tell me the cat ate your math sheet,
And your spelling words went down the drain,
And you couldn’t decipher your homework,
Because it was soaked in the rain.

Don’t tell me you slaved for hours
On the project that’s due today,
And you would have had it finished
If your snake hadn’t run away.

Don’t tell me you lost your eraser,
And your worksheets and pencils, too,
And your papers are stuck together
With a great big glob of glue.

I’m tired of all your excuses;
They are really a terrible bore.
Besides, I forgot my own work,
At home in my study drawer.

Coucher de soleil à Grasse by Félix Vallotton

Good grief by Andrea Gibson

Let your
heart break

so your spirit
doesn’t.

Dogfish by Mary Oliver (Excerpt)

I wanted
the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,
whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.

---

“You’re going to realize it one day that happiness was never about your job or your degree or being in a relationship. Happiness was never about following the footsteps of all of those who came before you; it was never about being like the others. One day, you’re going to see it that happiness was always about the discovery, the hope, the listening to your heart and following it wherever it chose to go. Happiness was always about being kinder to yourself; it was always about embracing the person you were becoming. One day, you will understand that happiness was always about learning how to live with yourself, that your happiness was never in the hands of others. It was always about you. It was always about you.”
―Bianca Sparacino, The Strength In Our Scars

---

Stay authentic and brave as you face the perils of life, okay?

Sending strength,
Ro