Need a little inspiration these days? Want to get moving, get creating, get dressed? 🙂 I have a little sign by my desk that reads, “Get up. Dress up. Show up. Do not give up.” On some days, that gets me moving. On other days, I just want to rest and enjoy some of my favorite things.
Photos and poems and books, oh my!
This post is just for fun. If you want, share something of your similar favorite things in the Comments section.
In this post, photos are last in a “gallery.” First come poems; second come books; then the photos.
Poems
Place by W. S. Merwin
On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree
what for
not for the fruit
the tree that bears the fruit
is not the one that was planted
I want the tree that stands
in the earth for the first time
with the sun already
going down
and the water
touching its roots
in the earth full of the dead
and the clouds passing
one by one
over its leaves.
Delta by Adrienne Rich
If you have taken this rubble for my past
raking through it for fragments you could sell
know that I long ago moved on
deeper into the heart of the matter.
If you think you can grasp me, think again:
my story flows in more than one direction
a delta springing from the riverbed
with its five fingers spread.
Hirokoji Plaza, a print by Hiroshige by David Campbell
Late afternoon, a muggy day,
the park, a fall of puppet-wire rain,
the ginger smell of gravel getting wet,
a nearby sky, a sign that says
No infinite longings, please.
Don’t wander past the lantern houses, sudsy trees.
You’re tired; stay right here
and watch the gravel darken chip by chip.
Books
- Over the Moat: Love Among the Ruins of Imperial Vietnam by James Sullivan. (Picador. 2004)
- Any book by Michael Ondaatje, especially The Cat’s Table.
- Any book of short stories by Alice Monroe.
Photos
Hope these photos (in no particular order) take you away, like that bubble bath, Calgon. Click the first one to start the slideshow.
Thanks for reading.
Your writer on the wing,
Charlene
Kathleen Brandt
This was beautiful, Charlene! Thank you. That blue-footed booby just makes my day.