[dar-list] The Blessings (Dar)

[OzWoman321 at aol.com]

Hello, All - 

I'm a long-time member of the Dar community who has, for various reasons, 
felt the need to cocoon this last year - however, it now seems a transition is 
underway, as visions of Falcon Ridge are dancing in my head!

Major apologies and much love to sharon, Joe, Dave, Megan, Peggy and both 
Amys - I owe you much, the least of which is a response to your last note(s)... 
and I'm hoping to get caught up with correspondence this week...

For all who read my Dar birthday post on the PledgeBank site, I now confess, 
with huge embarrassment, that aging (even well) eventually takes its toll - I 
belatedly realized the Olympic women's marathon incident I wrote about 
actually occurred on my *30th* birthday (ack!).  For my 40th (which is why we're 
celebrating Dar), I got a tattoo - zippity...  :-)

I'll close with a most lovely poem I rediscovered over the weekend - enjoy... 
and hope to see you on the hill...  <3


The Art of Blessing the Day ~ Marge Piercy
 
This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your splashing.
In the morning the world is peeled to shining.

This is the blessing for sun after long rain:
Now everything shakes itself free and rises.
The trees are bright as pushcart ices.
Every last lily opens its satin thighs.
The bees dance and roll in pollen
and the cardinal at the top of the pine
sings at full throttle, fountaining.

This is the blessing for a ripe peach:
This is luck made round. Frost can nip
the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,
a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,
the burrowing worm that coils in rot can
blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.
Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.

This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.

This is the blessing for a political victory:
Although I shall not forget that things
work in increments and epicycles and sometime
leaps that half the time fall back down,
let's not relinquish dancing while the music
fits into our hips and bounces our heels.
We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.

The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,
the blessing for love returned, for friends'
return, for money received unexpected,
the blessing for the rising of the bread,
the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.

But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree
of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma and its use.

Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can't bless it, get ready to make it new.


Susan
www.labyrinthcafe.com 

"Carry with you maps and string, 
Flashlights, friends who make you sing
And stars to help you find your place, 
Music, hope and amazing grace..."  
~ Mary Chapin Carpenter





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