Poetry Friday: Happy anniversary, Atticus!

Atticus and I have been married for thirty-eight years. (Yes, those-of-you-who-are-young and young-ish, numbers do take on a frightening, other-worldly quality as you grow older. How are these numbers real?) 

What we count as "the beautiful" has changed a lot over the course of thirty-eight years, but some things never change: my husband is kind, funny, intelligent, has an astounding memory for all things important, sentimental and trivial, has fabulous taste in music, is an amazing father, keeps everything afloat, and I love his cooking. 

Happy anniversary, Atticus. If I live as long as Betty White did, we'll be celebrating another 38. I know you'll still be cooking. ❤️

The Beautiful Changes
by Richard Wilbur 

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns

...

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

(Read the whole thing here, at The Poetry Foundation.) 

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The Poetry Friday roundup this week is being hosted by Irene Latham. 

Poetry Friday: Jane Hirshfield's "I Wanted to Be Surprised"

This one by Jane Hirshfield was published in The New Yorker in 2019. I'm sure it's safe to say that we've all been surprised by a number of things since then. 

What I like about this one is the way it feels true to any time — any time in which humans are living, surprising, disappointing, and reassuring each other. As Hirshfield says: 

Also, the stubborn, courteous persistence.
That even today please means please,
good morning is still understood as good morning,
and that when I wake up,
the window’s distant mountain remains a mountain,
the borrowed city around me is still a city, and standing.

I Wanted to Be Surprised
by Jane Hirshfield 

To such a request, the world is obliging.

Just in the past week, a rotund porcupine,
who seemed equally startled by me.

...

What should not have been so surprising:
my error after error, recognized when appearing on the faces of others.

What did not surprise enough:
my daily expectation that anything would continue,
and then that so much did continue, when so much did not.

... 

Read the whole thing here. 

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The round up this week is hosted by Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference. 

I did a thing! I wrote a new book!

I did a thing. I wrote a new book! 

Whoosh, not gonna lie, I wondered for a while if it would ever happen again. The last few years have included some major challenges for our family, including some health crises that made me want to do nothing but retreat. But I've been working with The Word Among Us Press and now my latest book is available. (Both the publisher and Amazon are showing it as in stock. Yay!) It's called The Companion Book of Catholic Days: A Guide to Feasts, Saints, Holy Days, and Seasons. 

Here's the link to the book at The Word Among Us, and here's an Amazon link. And here's a link to Bookshop.org, which helps you support local and independent bookstores. 

I'm grateful to The Word Among Us for all their support, for creating such a beautiful cover, and a lovely color interior. And, as always, I'm so grateful to my editor, Cindy Cavnar, who always makes me a better writer. 

I'm so proud of this book, and I hope you like it.

Poetry Friday: "The Year"

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear, 

And that's the burden of the year. 

Well, Ella, you've summed it up rather nicely. Although I'd add that it's both the burden and the gift of time that it does what it does: it plods on, and we plod with it. 

I have no predictions about 2022. I don't know if it will be better, worse, or the same as 2021 and 2020, both of which passed through my consciousness as if I were in a fugue state. 

I won't say, "2022 has to be better than 2021, right?" because sometimes things get worse. On the other hand, sometimes things do get better, right? (Right?!) Sometimes they do.

And some things never change. I've laughed, wept, hoped, and feared for a goodly number of years now. I think it's called being human. Why should 2022 be any different? 

Happy new year, friends. 

The Year
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox


What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that's the burden of the year.

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Carol Varsalona has the round-up at Beyond LiteracyLink.