This is What You Should Do

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 labour 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....
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...
not only in its words,
but in the silent lines of its lips and face....
and in every motion and joint of your body.

Walt Whitman  from preface of "Leaves of Grass"
classification:  inspiration
Thank you to Valerie for the picture

I'd Rather Be the Father

Right from the start, it's easier to be the father; no morning

nausea, no stretch marks.  You can wait outside the

delivery room and keep your clothes on.  Notice how

closely the word mother resembles smother, notice

how she is either too strict or too lenient:  wrong for giving up 

everything or not enough.  Psychology books blame her 

for whatever is the matter with all of us while the father

slips into the next room for a beer.I wanted to be

the rational one, the one who told a joke at dinner,

If I were her father we would throw a ball across

the lawn while the grill fills with smoke.  But who

wants to be the mother?  Who wants to tell her what 

to wear and deliver her to the beauty shop and explain

bras and tampons?  Who wants to show her what

a woman still is? I am supposed to teach her how to

wash the dishes and do the laundry only I don't want

her to grow up and be like me.  I'd rather be the father

who tells her she is loved; I'd rather take her fishing

and teach her to skip stones across the lake of history;

I'd rather show her how far she can spit.

by Faith Shearin, from "Moving the Piano"

Austin University Press, 2011

classification:  Home and Family

Summons

Keep me from going to sleep too soon Or if I go to sleep too soon Come wake me up.  Come any hour Of night.  Come whistling up the road.  Stomp on the porch.  Bang on the door. Make me get out of bed and come And let you in and light a light. Tell me the northern lights are on And make me look.  Or tell me clouds Are doing something to the moon They never did before, and show me. See that I see.  Talk to me till I'm half as wide awake as you And start to dress wondering why I ever went to bed at all. Tell me the walking is superb. Not only tell me, but persuade me. You know I'm not too hard persuaded. Robert Francis (not your uncle) Category:  The Good Earth the best way to see the northern lights is to be, well, north.

Little Things

Little things, that run, and quail,

And die, in silence and despair!

Little things, that fight, and fail,

And fall, on sea, and earth, and air!

All trapped and frightened little things,

The mouse, the coney, hear our prayer!

Forgive us all our trespasses,

Little creatures, everywhere!

James Stephens, from Collected Poems

My English teacher was from Great Britain, and in my mind I can still hear him recite "Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic's in thy breastie!"  (Ode to a Mouse, Robert Burns)

I remember feeling quite moved by the poem. 

Every time I see a creature killed on the road, turned up by the garden shovel, or deliberately killed by people who won't share space with animals, I feel a moment of sadness.  I hope I have passed this on to my children.

Simon the Cyrenian Speaks

He never spoke a word to me
And yet He called my name;
He never gave a sign to me,
And yet I knew and came.
At first I said, "I will not bear
His cross upon my back;
He only seeks to place it there
Because my skin is black."

But He was dying for a dream,
And He was very meek,
And in His eyes there shone a gleam
Men journey far to seek.

It was Himself my pity bought
I did for Christ alone
What all of Rome could not have wrought
With bruise of lash or stone.

by Countee Cullen, part of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s.
(learn about this important artistic movement)

Classification:  social commentary, or inspirational

Tradition sets Cyrene in Libya, which puts a new twist on the Bible story
to consider that Simon of Cyrene should be black.
I have occasionally been overcome by the annoying things about going to church: 
Lugging 2 sets of scriptures (English and Spanish), Sunday school manual, "the Friend" magazine to help the kid be quiet in the service, a primary manual if I was teaching...
What about Cub scouts? A royal pain.  What about standing in a cold parking lot waiting for a youth trip?   
But when it comes right down to it, It is Christ Himself we are drawn to.
It is His meekness and kindness that soften our hearts and make us want to be kind 
to others too.  

The Horse

Hast thou given the horse strength?
Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?
Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper?
the glory of his nostrils is terrible.

He paweth in the valley,
and rejoiceth in his strength,
he goeth on to meet the armed men.

He mocketh at fear,
and is not affrighted,
neither turneth he back from the sword.

The quiver rattleth against the him,
the glittering spear and the shield.

He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage;
neither believeth he that is the sound of the trumpets, Ha, ha,
and he smelleth the battle afar off,
the thunder of the captains,
and the shouting

Job 39:19-25 King James Version
classification:  The Good Earth

Leviathan

He makes the deep to boil like a pot,
he makes the sea like a pot of ointment,
ointment in a mixing bowl.
He leaves a shining trail behind him,
and in his wake the great river is like white hair.
Upon the earth there is not his like.

Job 41:31-33 Revised English Bible

It appears many Bible scholars consider this to be about some kind of giant crocodile,
but I always visualize a whale or "great fish"