Poems and Photos and Rain

It's the first day of spring, and we are wind-whipped and rain-drenched, and I am not complaining one whit about it.  For Lent, I have been working through a contemplative photography course, offered by Christine at Abbey of the Arts.  You can see some of the images I've been receiving and reflecting upon at Flickr.  For this week, she gave us a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye (click here to read it), and what I took away from the poem, among its lovely images, was this line:  "Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us / we find poems."  Then I wrote one in personal response.


Poems Hide




The poem today rests

in my lower back, which aches from sitting to write too much

(too much sitting? too much writing?);

in the painful vein on the back of my thigh just above my knee,

a veiny area that feels it might burst;

in my wet cat, caught in the raingale,

dabbed dampdry with a half-used napkin from dinner;

in the attractive silvering hair of our tax lady,

with her black Volvo and black laptop;

in the alto deeps of Amy Grant on the iPod

whose albums have been on repeat for two months;

in the raindrops on the louvered windowpanes,

drops oranged by the sodium streetlight just outside

on the curb in which flow rainstreams with yellow pollen edges.

Tonight I reinvent the fwump and revving of the furnace motor

as it blows warming air only to the top floor of our home,

find the poem in the cornbread from a mix,

sweet like cake and crusty brown on the edges from cooking two minutes too long,

in the whiny mournful cat who does not want to go outside and does not want to stay in,

in the cooling wind that enters my inefficient home to blow the curtains and the edge of the rug,

in the chore of laundry that affords warm time for prayers as I fold underwear and socks.

Perhaps I will even find the poem in the ungraded papers that sit atop my table

and weigh me down with guilt and self-criticism.

He's back!

OMG, Mr. Arthur is back, and I'm finally hearing him sing tonight for the first time this year! We saw him cocky-flying around the neighbor's yard on Saturday; saw him again yesterday in her tree. And now...finally...he's singing to beat the band! Oh, how I love mockingbirds. Wonder how many of our cats he dive-bombs this year.

Another sign of hope, to be sure!

Signs of hope

Teacher Appreciation Week, and I actually do feel appreciated after these notes. God knew I needed these this week.

The jacarandas are kindling and flaring up.

Flowerday

It is spring. It was sunny. It was breezy. I was a homebody. I slept in. I finished a book. (Pat Conroy is a god.) I played with clay. The flowers were radiant. I couldn't help myself. They called to me. I took their pictures. I take too many flower pictures. But I didn't care today. Did I mention they called to me? The flowers made me do it.

Question: Why does spring bring so very many spider webs? All of our bushes (and some of the corners in our house -- ahem) look like this:

Profusion!

It is a ridiculously beautiful day in SoCal today! It is 86 degrees with a cooling breeze. The flowers and the trees and the animals are all happy. I am happy.

After a safari around the yards, both front and back, I sit upstairs with the window open listening to the sounds. The breeze rustles the ash trees' leaves. The bike horn of the Mexican rolling cart of snacks grows louder and then softer in the distance. LittleKitty's insistent meow as she asks for love rises from below, as does the sound of the garage door springs as POM opens it to work on her pots for her primitive pottery class.

Today isn't supposed to be a day of joy. Holy Saturday is a day of watching and waiting, of pensiveness. And yet I can't ignore the profusion of ridiculous beauty. It elevates my mood because I already know what's going to happen tomorrow.

Enjoy the profusion of photos and beauty.

Open House...

...turned not to be so bad, other than just being the end of an exhaustingly long day. Had the CAHSEE today, massive copying to do, a meeting after school at the district office, and then open house. Wow. Had a small turnout, but it's about what I'd expected; we've all had a very busy couple of weeks, students, parents, and teachers alike. Had some good conversations, met some parents I hadn't met yet, talked to a few I really needed to touch base with. Tomorrow is a late start day, but not for teachers, of course -- we have meetings and professional development, such as it is.

In other news, it's supposed to be wicked windy the next two days. Sigh. We kind of live in a wind alley, so we always get a stronger version than most other cities. Let the sinus blockage and snorting begin! It's been a rather excessively windy year so far, but if that's the tradeoff for all the rain we've gotten this year, I'll live with it.

In still other news, our lemon tree is blooming again, as are a number of other things, and the entire neighborhood is scented with floral perfumes. This ant agrees that the lemon flowers are the place to be. We hit the jackpot with this awesome tree; it blooms almost nonstop, year-round, and its lemons are exquisite. Bless it.

Yep, spring.

Diversity Week activities all week long. Student pregnant. Progress reports due Friday. Grading stacks all around me. High school exit exam next Tuesday. So...tired.

Springing Sunday

The bees were in full hum on this flowering tree in the Trader Joe's parking lot. This shot is fairly indicative of the gorgeous spring weekend we've enjoyed.

I've been in the cooking mood, for some reason, so after church, we stocked up on recipe ingredients at my favorite grocery (TJs). This evening I cooked cream-of-veggie soup, combining two different recipes (cream of broccoli and cream of spinach, with a few additions of my own) from Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook, an oldie-but-goodie. The final creation turned out OK -- it was a bit bland (my fault, I'm sure), so I dosed it with some Cholula hot sauce, which added at least a kick even if it wasn't really the missing element I was looking for. The addition of oyster crackers and shaved parmesan to the bowl helped. If nothing else, it's a fairly healthy soup, with tons of vegetable matter and minerals.

The Red-Leaf Tree...

...looks like this now. I think it happened overnight. Spring is on its way. The days are becoming longer, just perceptibly; when I arrived home today, there was light enough for me to see to clean dog poo out of the yard.