Poetry Friday

Atticus wants to know what I would like to have for Christmas.

There is always a long list of books, of course. And I've also been meandering through Lesley's (and I have Lissa to thank for introducing me) Small Meadow Press, which is like taking a quiet stroll through another time and place. I want my home to feel like that time and place, but that would require a lot of new things. (To be brutally honest, it might require razing the house and starting from scratch.) I may have to be content with small touches here and there: splashes of beauty, peaceful reminders, simple and lovely embellishments.

The list of things I covet is long. Which seems contrary and wrong, but there you have it.

Today, I'll share one of those things with you. Go here to see what Lesley created from this snippet of Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

And how I felt it beat
under my pillow
in the morning's dark.
An hour before the sun
would let me read!
My books!

And, so, this meandering little Poetry Friday post is about nothing and about many things ...

It's about Browning's keen understanding that to love a book is to enter into real intimacy.

It's about one woman's ability to envision and create things that transform a home into a haven, or a note to a friend into a keepsake. (I don't mean for this to become a commercial ... I just find Small Meadow creations to be perfectly enchanting. Perhaps I am under some kind of spell.)

It's about the spell that beauty casts.

It's about pondering what it means that encountering peaceful, lovely things can cast such a spell.

And it's about Christmas -- peaceful, lovely Christmas -- which isn't about making long lists but is about the most peaceful and sublime Gift of my life.

Happy Poetry Friday.

And, Atticus, I'll have that list for you soon.

(The entire Poetry Friday round-up can be found here at Becky's Book Reviews.)