Stamina - GROWTH - Theme for September 2018

Gearing up

Rhythms and dance

Orbiting the earth

Weathering the storm

Treading the boards

Harbouring few doubts

“My turn shall also come:

I sense the spreading of a wing.”

~ Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems

Beneath the Sea

Eelgrass meadows wave

in low salt water tide lines.

Watery shelter for a living sea.

“The world’s finest wilderness lies beneath the waves……”

~ Wyland, Marine Life Artist

Too Late?

1:00 in the afternoon ~

equally early and late

preparations incomplete

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and 

I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

~ Abraham Lincoln

Outside of the Pack

Tattooed legs pumped in

the passion of cycling.

Multicolored spandex 

covered a lean body

leaning 

into the cool morning 

black curls 

fringed his black helmet

eyes alert and facing forward

clicking of gears and wheels 

underscored the cry 

of wheeling gulls

the only sounds in the stillness.

“Learn to ride a bicycle. You will not regret it if you live.”

~ Mark Twain

Change of Pace

Clothes gray and brown,

Neat gray brown hair in a tight bun,

Long skirt swished her pace,

Quick and focussed,

Only the passion 

Of getting to work on time

Moved her steps 

Down the concrete grey sidewalk

Beside brown tree trunks.

When she lets her hair down

does everything soften 

into moving dance-steps

as passionate as green leaves 

dancing in sunshine, rain and wind?

When her eyes look up and around 

does the beautiful world come into focus

so she steps joyously into the sunshine or rain,

feeling the wind tousling her hair.

“Never get so busy making living that you forget to make a life.”

~ Dolly Parton

Walking

Stay where your feet are

she said

beginning a passionate race 

through days and weeks to next year.

Already out of breath

no knowledge of 

who or what holds her future.

Only knowing

she must be prepared

for joys, gaps or crushing blows

and then she remembered ~

she had yet to tie her shoes.

“Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.”

~ Iris Murdoch

The Tree

October, 2017

The tree stood still

Waiting

For the next breeze

Or wind 

To stir passion into its branches

Or maybe

A bird - a heavy bird

Coming in to land

Only bouncing a few leaves.

“Patience is not simply the ability 

to wait ~ it is how we behave while we’re waiting.”

~ Joyce Meyer