Poetry Sunday

Another lazy Sunday. I spent a long, miserable day yesterday updating the database for the arts Festival. I didn't have much fun but I do have the satisfaction of knowing it is complete, correct and ready to go.

I cleaned out my cup and mug cupboard the other day in preparation for buying four new mugs. Starbucks has these black porcelain mugs that come with a white glaze pen. I am making a set of four with some of my favorite poems on them. I have completed the "decoration" and will now bake them for the required time in my oven. I'm really pleased with how they turned out and think they are sort of cool.

While I was looking for poems for my cups I reread the following poem, one of my very favorites.

(If you are not a poetry lover, you might want to skip the rest of this post. You'll be missing out on a great poem, but hey, your mileage may vary....)

Whelks

Here are the perfect

fans of the scallops,

quahogs, and weedy mussels

still holding their orange fruit---

and here are the whelks---

whirlwinds,

each the size of a fist,

but always cracked and broken---

clearly they have been traveling

under the sky-blue waves

for a long time.

All my life

I have been restless---

I have felt there is something

more wonderful than gloss---

than wholeness---

than staying home.

I have not been sure what it is.

But every morning on the wide shore

I pass what is perfect and shining

to look for the whelks, whose edges

have rubbed so long against the world

they have snapped and crumbled---

they have almost vanished,

with the last relinquishing

of their unrepeatable energy,

back into everything else.

When I find one

I hold it in my hand,

I look out over the shanking fire,

I shut my eyes. Not often,

but now and again there's a moment

when the heart cries aloud:

yes, I am willing to be

that wild darkness,

that long, blue body of light.