W.W SAYS IT ALL

I just really like this and thought I would add it here
                                               

                                                      

This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

- Walt Whitman

                                    

PEN PAL ART

                Online I discovered 'The Sketchbook Project'.  They come up with little art assignments no matter what your skill level and get your art mobile in various ways so that it's enjoyed by a bigger venue.

                This project is Pen Pal Art where they send you a small canvas.  You slip a little note about yourself in with the art you create and send it with the goal that they match you up with someone similar and send their painting to you!  You have now met a pen pal in the world of art and can follow up with them if you wish. eHarmonart!   An oil might even meet and acrylic.  Great idea.

                     The catch was I procrastinate and there was a deadline so on the final hour of the final day I dug out the acrylics and ran with my goat to the post office.

                     Can't wait to see what I get in return.   They'll probably match up this goat with a jackass.

DIVISION

               I think most of us at some time during our early years have had a teacher that has inspired us.  That special person embedded  in our memory bank that stood out as encouraging and real. Someone who went that one step further to make us want to learn.
               A friend told me the story of such a person.  A brilliant math teacher who later developed Alzheimer's and was known to 'wander away' from home and get into some odd predicaments.  She later had to be placed in a care home.  This poem that is influenced from my friends memory can't help but be tinged with sadness.  Or is it?  

                              DIVISION 

        Miss Betsy Love spends all her time 

        in the lower pasture

        she squats to pee by the sun drenched stump 

        of a rotting oak

        mice tickle her toes

        scamper under her skirt and chuckle

        she dips ripe berries in the crested brook

        sucks fresh fallen fruit

        smiles that rusted smile of happiness

        Miss Betsy Love no longer trusts the numbers

        old chalk dust memories

        circle her mornings like spiders

        so she measures her days and the pressure of

        water

        at Gorman falls

        the slant of the sun in late August

        she lies herself down in the afternoon rain

        to study the bellies of sheep

        and the earth

        like the bottom of and old wooden bucket

        Miss Betsy Love can't do the math

        if you take one life and divide it up

        she comes up with a number hard to believe

        as she claws through the brush and speaks to
        the wind

        the blood on her skin becomes crusted and dry 

        and she knows that somewhere

        people are counting

        counting her days 

 poem by annie

               

A TIME TO REAP

                 The haying is almost done.  Put in by my 74 yr old neighbor who has been kind enough to help since we moved here.  He's wiry with skin as weathered as the old equipment he drives but still moves with that spring in his step.  His favorite sweat encrusted hat is turned up and patched this year where it has frayed.   Around his neck is an old rag that he dips in the brook to cool himself.  I see him stop the tractor several times to look for pheasants in the tall grass and watch him pop a few babies in his shirt pocket. 

          " I can't save them all"  he says.  But he tries.

                I like him. He is an ad for the values I've come to appreciate as I get older.  Hard work,  tenacity,  perseverance.

           The two lads that show up to help stack the barn are a quarter his age but he can out do them both.  They sweat profusely,  guzzle water,  and compare blisters while he works around them. 
             
           I'm probably riding in a small pocket of misfortune right now but I've had a hard time getting good young men to help out.  They lack strength,  fortitude,  foresight,  and plain old common sense.  They should know how to stack wood,  fill gas tanks,  tie a slip knot.  These are things they should have learned from their fathers and grandfathers.  They complain of allergies,  bad backs,  fear of heights.

           One young man left the top two feet of our barn doors unpainted as he was afraid to go up the ladder further.

           I wanted to tell him that when I was his age I went sky diving.  I jumped out of a plane at 3000 feet.  I was scared too.   But it was Sunday and I spread open to the silence and finally descended close enough to hear the organ playing in the little country church far below me.    I wanted to explain it all to him.   To tell him there is nothing to be afraid of in this great country of ours,  our charmed world.  The only thing he should fear is that extra 85 pounds he was carrying around,  the little fat globules clutching the side of his young arteries.

          But he is not me.

          I tell the young men to go to the swimming hole to cool off.  I bring lemonade and more water.  I ponder over how much I will pay them.  I worry the hay will not be all in before tomorrows rain.  But then the miracle happens.  A car drives in the yard.  It's the neighbors wife and she's here to help.

WHEN I AM AN OLD HORSEWOMAN

Jake and I love this little poem by Patty Barnhart.  What an appropriate last name she has...


             

When I Am An Old Horsewoman

I shall wear turquoise and diamonds,
And a straw hat that doesn’t suit me
And I shall spend my social security on
white wine and carrots,
And sit in my alleyway of my barn
... And listen to my horses breathe.

I will sneak out in the middle of a summer night
And ride the old bay gelding,
Across the moonstruck meadow
If my old bones will allow
And when people come to call, I will smile and nod
As I walk past the gardens to the barn
and show instead the flowers growing
inside stalls fresh-lined with straw.

I will shovel and sweat and wear hay in my hair
as if it were a jewel
And I will be an embarrassment to ALL
Who will not yet have found the peace in being free
to have a horse as a best friend
A friend who waits at midnight hour
With muzzle and nicker and patient eyes
For the kind of woman I will be
When I am old.

-Author Patty Barnhart

CONVERSATION WITH A PONY

JAKE

CONVERSATION WITH A PONY

 It's true what people say

that you can talk to the animals

but the thing is

you must listen first

for that faintest whisper

subtle, precarious

like tendon sliding over bone  

Today he tells me that he will trust

this one encounter

shift his weight toward me

offer something up

beneath his eye a muscle shivers

It is not with words 

but the space between them

where animals speak

if you listen carefully

it will be a song

like the prayer of horses

in their own tongue 
poem by Annie and Jake the pony