First Blossoms

 It has been off-and-on spring here.  Maybe it's the same with you. We've had 70 degrees and 25 degrees. We've had rain and sun, and the wind has been quite phenomenal.  A front came through yesterday and hit the house like a blast, and knocked over a recycling container. I was concerned for the guy who was taking down a tree at the end of our block. He as hanging from a giant crane, cutting branches from some old white pines. Fortunately he was done with that part of the job. 

Anyway, spring IS here and the early blossoms are nodding in the wind. Do the first bright flowers of spring give you a spark of delight? I tried to capture that feeling as I wrote this haiku.  

Holding my breath for

first flash of lightning - striking

yellow daffodils.

---draft Karen Eastlund

I was reading Diane Ackerman's poetry last night, and came across this lovely poem:

School Prayer Poem

In the name of the sun and its mirrors

and the day that embraces it

and the cloud veils drawn over it

and the uttermost night

and the male and the female

and the plants bursting with seed

and the crowning seasons

of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life

—wherever and in whatever form

it may dwell—on Earth my home,

and in the mansions of the stars.

Diane Ackerman   (read entire poem HERE.)

The forsythia are blooming now also. New Jersey has a lovely long spring. Today it feels like winter, temperature now is 28, but spring will be triumphant!

Have a wonderful week, and thanks for visiting. Say Hi! in the comments!

Find the rest of the Poetry Friday group at Rose Cappelli's Imagine the Possibilities. She has some lovely bird poems for us today.  Thanks for hosting, Rose!  Click HERE to read her post.

Singing a Song of Mud

 Hello to all my Poetry Friday friends!  Happy March!

We had a lot of rain recently, and the river is brown with mud and my yard is squishy. When I walk I have to be sure to wear shoes that can handle mud. And when I get home, I clap my shoes together to get the mud out from between the lugs. If that doesn't work, I have to scrub with a brush. It is mud season. No doubt about it. So I wrote a poem for Poetry Friday!

Poetry Friday is a weekly blogging event in which poets, writers, readers, and lovers of poetry share blog posts about poetry. It was started by Renee La TuLippe back in 2015 and it's still going strong.

This poem is a nonet. It begins with a line of nine words, then a line of eight, seven, six...   until you reach the last single word.

I felt that mud would be a worthy topic for a poem. You can judge for yourself.

Nonet to Mud

Mud spatters, clings, pulls at wheels, tugs at feet

Mud traipses and tracks through bottomlands, barnyards, doorways

Mud plasters walls, cakes nests, slathers faces

Mud feels cool, gritty, pliable, damp

Mud squishes deliciously between toes

Mud stains rivers brown

Mud smells honest

Mud nurtures

Welcomes

© Karen Eastlund

Also, I remembered a mud song, and I found it performed by Flanders & Swann. Apparently they had a program back in the black and white television days. I don't remember them personally, but I find the performance amusing, and I hope you do also.

Thanks for reading my muddy words. Please leave me some comments. And thanks to Laura Purdie Salas for hosting today. She has a new book to celebrate, so please click in to her blog and give her a note of congratulations. You can find her blog HERE. Then, follow the links at her blog for more poetic goodness.

Songs of Spring Goodness

Welcome to my meanderings for Spiritual Journey Thursday. Ramona is hosting today and she offered the prompt of "gathering goodness." Thank you, Ramona!

This month offers a number of reasons to gather goodness. Spring officially arrives this month, and with it all the hope and labor of new life. And Easter arrives this month, a celebration of life and redemption. My OLW for the year is "song," so I am pleased to share with you this beautiful Redemption Song as arranged and played by the Kanneh-Masons. I always enjoy this family, and their musical offerings are surely good things to gather in your basket.

I've been watching the live video of an eagle's nest, which hatched two fluffy chicks this past  week or two. You can celebrate the new chicks by clicking HERE.  In a few short months these sweet little puffballs will turn into fledgling eagles. The transformation is miraculous and surely a good thing. 

Frederich Buechner wrote:  When God created the creation, God made something where before there had been nothing, and as the author of the book of Job puts it, "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" (38:7) at the sheer and shimmering novelty of the thing.   (from Wishful Thinking)

Buechner's description, his "sheer and shimmering" is a delight to me. I hope I never forget that the world awakes new every morning, always ready to surprise and delight us. I hear mourning doves regularly now, as well as a chorus of various twitterings, and I see robins and blue jays, and the geese honking as they fly over. Yesterday I walked to the river and saw several mallards and a merganser winging its way up the river. Every bush seemed to sprout buds overnight. I can almost hear the world waking up, ready to grow and thrive again. 

This beautiful song by John Rutter, sung by a wonderful young chorister, celebrates the goodness of the world. All Things Bright and Beautiful. Enjoy:

I wish you a sheer and shimmering sense of wonder as spring comes into full bloom. In the meantime, check out the offerings by Ramona and other SJT participants. Click HERE.