orange, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

I’m in the mood for orange today. How about you?

climber, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

When John and I were carrying on our epistolary courtship across the Pacific (me in SoCal, he in Japan), back before the days of email (yes we are that old), we had often signed our notes with the phrase “Keep Climbin’.” Perhaps that’s odd, but it was our way of motivating each other to keep striving and working hard, to keep reaching our goals, etc. This was often interchanged with the Japanese phrase “Ganbatte!”

We don’t say either of those phrases to each other much anymore, but when I snapped this picture of my climbing rose yesterday, it reminded me of those days when I used to tell John to “keep climbin’.” This rose is a crazy climber–bursting up and out towards the sun. It’s a homely rose, but it thrives and blossoms more brilliantly than any of the others in my garden plot. I dug this plant up from a flowerbed elsewhere on campus where some gardeners kept whacking it down to the dirt and it just continued to keep sending up new green branches.

There’s a metaphor there somewhere, I suppose. 🙂

So here’s to roses that seem to thrive wherever they are planted…and who keep climbin’ towards that bright sun.

CatGirl’s finished pysanky egg, plus two from previous retreats., originally uploaded by mind on fire.

Each Easter Catgirl creates beautifully detailed Pysanky egg art. I do think this year’s is especially lovely–but of course I think that every year.

At Concord farm, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

A good memory. So perfect & blue!

035:365 Braided Bones., originally uploaded by mind on fire.

A gift to my lover, upon celebrating 20 years of togetherness (he wrote the poem for me 8 years ago).

I just wish that I’d thought to black out one of these legs from mid-femur on down. 🙂

in love, in spring, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

From Audre Lorde’s “Thaw”
(for those of my friends in colder climes who are ready for spring)

The language of past seasons
collapses pumpkins in spring
false labor slides like mud
off the face of ease
and whatever I turn my hand to
pales in the sun.

We will always be there to your call
the old witches said
always said always saying
something else at the same time
you are trapped asleep
you are speechless
perhaps you will also be
broken

Step lightly all around us
words are cracking
off we drift
separate and syllabic
if we survive at all.

sweet peas, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

A friend recently posted this poem to her Facebook page, and I just love it…(and as for the picture, I am dreaming of sweet peas a lot these days–because mine are not yet flowering…)

Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

woodland walk, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

An excerpt from Mary Oliver’s poem “This World,”

I would like to write a poem about the world that has
nothing fancy.
Bu it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open
and becomes a star.