Imbolc Angel

" . . . a little touch of Eternity . . .
a mixing of this world and the next . . . "
~ Evelyn Underhill ~

On February 1 / 2, we move from Yule to Imbolc [aka Candlemas; Groundhog Day] the Cross - Quarter Day that falls half-way between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox, a time of clear vision into other worlds and festivals of purification.

Yes, we could use some visions right about now!

"The word of the Goddess was rare in those days;
visions were not widespread."
I Samuel 3:1
[slightly modified]*

*I just have to do this sometimes,
especially when I come across a question such as this:

"Has it occurred to you that I may never
want to refer to God by the feminine pronoun?"
~ Sarah Condon, in Churchy, 106 ~

Uh, has it occurred to you that I may never
want to refer to God by the masculine pronoun?
One way or another, if I can, I'm going to fix it.

Wintry Synchronicity

Wintry Sticker Page
from
The Antiquarian Sticker Book: Imaginarium
~ Thank You Katie! ~
[See more]

New month; old month. Yesterday, it was still January, which can be a tough month even under the best of circumstances. Today brings the positive energy of Imbolc; and tomorrow, good old Groundhog Day. It's time to welcome a weekend of poetic prompts and seasonal synchronicity!

This morning: my email included February's Ink & Pixel from my friend, artist and poet Jan Donley. Jan recommends reading Kerry Hardie's poem Acceptance, which begins:

"Yesterday it was still January and I drove home . . . "
Inspired by Hardie's perception, Jan worked out her own poem about the calm persistence of January and the need for acceptance. [See more and subscribe.]

I loved the idea that we should all write a poem beginning with the same line, such as "Last night it was still January."

Perhaps out of laziness, I opted for the simplicity of a 3 - line haiku:

Last night it was still.
January breathed farewell.
Now, February.
This afternoon: I received an exuberant message from my friend Beata, suggesting that we all write a poem to welcome the new month. Even Beata's prompt sounds poetic:

Hey dear friends! It’s February.
Any poem for February, my dear poets and authors?
Here's mine:

Farewell to January

I’m sitting here waiting for
the right time.
It is a farewell to January
Grime. Outside my window
February is coming
And it will bring me
Rhyme to my humming.
Wait, oh southern wind
and dark days of rain.
Time will be coming
Again and again
There right is always there.

~ Beata Ribeiro ~

Goodbye January!

Hello February! ~ Haha!

The Artwork of Friendship

Drei Winterthurerinnen, 1822
[Three Women from Winterthur, Switzerland]
by David Sulzer (1784 - 1864)

Old Friendship
Beautiful and rich is an old friendship,
Grateful to the touch as ancient ivory,
Smooth as aged wine, or sheen of tapestry
Where light has lingered, intimate and long.
Full of tears and warm is an old friendship
That asks no longer deeds of gallantry,
Or any deed at all - save that the friend shall be
Alive and breathing somewhere, like a song.

Eunice Tietjens (1884 - 1944)
from Leaves in Windy Weather
Funny thing, the longer we live -- and the more friends we lose, inevitably, along the way -- even that part about "living and breathing" seems optional and, frankly, just too much to ask. We'll simply have to settle for "somewhere, like a song."

As Walt Whitman kind of said oh so long ago:"We were together; I forget the rest."

For more friendship in art,

see my recent posts

Sisters, Friends

&

Friends in Art

~ visual essays to lift your spirits ~

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

Parking Lot and Evening Star

This beautiful sunset reminded me of Tennyson's poem,
except -- as I observed to Gerry -- no evening star.
But wait . . .

The Evening Star

Tonight, for the first time in many years,
there appeared to me again
a vision of the earth’s splendor:

in the evening sky
the first star seemed
to increase in brilliance
as the earth darkened

until at last it could grow no darker.
And the light, which was the light of death,
seemed to restore to earth
its power to console. There were
no other stars. Only the one
whose name I knew

as in my other life I did her
injury: Venus,
star of the early evening,

to you I dedicate
my vision, since on this blank surface

you have cast enough light
to make my thought
visible again.

Louise Glück
American Poet (b 1943)

. . . merely one minute later,
I took a second picture,
and there was Venus
(along with a very small cloud, just underneath)!

More by Gluck
another sunset poem: "Parable"
also "Iris" & "Penelope"

Above photos taken November 9, 2024
~ 6 weeks before the Winter Solstice ~
now, we're almost 6 weeks beyond the Shortest Day.

Yet, as I said before, I crave the dark days
and find them restorative.

The Artwork of Reading

Postcard: Hello From Portland!

Powell's City of Books ~ Portland, Oregon

"That bookstore is like a church to me, thought Erikka: words to listen to and think about, music sometimes to push the words towards other and grander meanings, friends to smile at and feel comfortable with, and all of that somehow adding together, making a total feeling that was larger than the good feelings of the separate parts." (29)

from The Daughter of the Moon
by Gregory Maguire (b. 1954)

For more books in art,

see my recent post

Getting Through January

~ a visual essay to lift your spirits ~

@Kitti's List

We Five Kings

Thoughtful Cartoon Concept
More on Facebook
More on the QK

Even though this chorus is so familiar, along with the well-known verses in which each of the three magi describes his gift, I felt there could be more to the story. In observation of MLK Day, I wrote some additional verses (last year):

Artaban, Fourth Wiseman am I
Precious jewels procured for the child
Ruby, sapphire, pearl of luster,
Each traded to spare a life

A Fifth King in latter day
comes alone to show us the way
Martin Luther King Junior
Preaching equality

Artaban and Batlthasar,
Caspar and Melchior,
Martin Luther King Junior
Five of the Wisest Kings

O Kings of vision, seeking right
Trav'ling through the darkest night
Westward leading, still proceeding
Toward the way, the truth, the life.

from the Christmas carol We Three Kings
by John Henry Hopkins Jr. (1820 – 1891)

click here to hear the original lyrics
performed by Pink Martini

Muses From Megan

Thanks to my friend Megan
for these angelic muses!
Designed by Kelly Rae Roberts

In keeping with my last post --
The Story Only You Can Tell --

My new angels from Megan say,
"Tell your story."
&
"Create."

*****************

American Poet & National Treasure
William Stafford (1914 – 1993) says,

When I Met My Muse

I glanced at her and took my glasses off—they were still singing. They buzzed like a locust on the coffee table and then ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and knew that nails up there took a new grip on whatever they touched. "I am your own way of looking at things," she said. "When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

Earlier Stafford Posts: QK ~ FN ~ KL

*****************

Way back in April 1980,
when I included Stafford's prose poem in my
Advanced Composition Notebook in grad school,
Professor Calvin V. Huenemann said,

"This is becoming a good selection of wise words. Someday you'll want to say it in your own way because only your own eyes, thoughts, and words can express it as precise truth -- all the others will be partial or approximate."

In other words,
tell the story that only you can tell.

The Story Only You Can Tell

A Wintry Wolf Moon Village
By Artist Vanessa Huyghe

Advice for the New Year:

It's time for you to tell the story
that only you can tell . . .
just believe in and concentrate
on your story, your towns, for a while now.

*****************

Old High School Yearbook Comment

"Do you get a headache from thinking so much?"

[Of course, the answer must have been: Yes!"

*****************

Thanks to my nephew Aaron Thomas Burrows
for totally getting both why do it & the amount of effort!

"I’m a huge fan of the fact that Aunt Kitti has her blogs that she’s been writing for 15+ years. That is a fantastic archive and is only going to become more invaluable. I would love to see more people do that. But again . . . lots of work."

*****************

I knew as soon as I read it -- way back in 1977 -- that "The Nose Poem" had changed my life forever, yet never did it cross my mind that one day I would be able to offer editorial assistance to its deeply and multi-talented author Lee Perron. But, lo, I am honored to say that it has come to pass.

P.S.
Smarter & Fancier

Whose Shed This Is

The Wolf Moon Sheds It's Light

“The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave a lustre of midday to objects below…”

“Whose shed this is I think I know . . . ”

Had We Only Known

"May this year bring us before it has flown
All we would have wished for had we only known."

New Year's Day Dusk
Brace yourself for an Ominous New Year!
(across the street from our house)

I shared this poem a year ago; here it is again!
I see now that it is one to re-read annually:

Another Year

Another year gone and the old man with the scythe
Is mowing closer. He hasn’t been subtle, has he.
Too many good people gone, and I could sit and cry
For them except that you look exceptionally snazzy
Despite the miles on your odometer,
As if you have a few more aces up your sleeve,
Maybe you were born under a lucky comet or
Maybe it’s the wine, but I do believe
When I look at you and take your hand you’re
Positively glowing. Maybe we’ve been sorry a
Long enough time and now we get some grandeur
And do our dance and sing our aria.
May this year bring us before it has flown
All we would have wished for had we only known.

by Gary Johnson
Contemporary American Poet

Our front porch on New Year's Eve Day
Lightning, thunder, rain, sun, all within a few minutes!

Monday, January 3rd
Brilliant sun and whirlwind snow all at once!
By nightfall, totally clear for viewing of
Crescent Moon, Venus, and Saturn.

As with Gary Johnson's "Another Year,"
this poem has appeared previously;
but from here on out, I plan to re-read it
not only at Thanksgiving, but
at the beginning of every strange new year . . .

Minnesota Thanksgiving

For that free Grace bringing us past great risks
& thro' great griefs surviving to this feast
sober & still, with the children unborn and born,
among brave friends, Lord, we stand again in debt
and find ourselves in the glad position: Gratitude.

We praise our ancestors who delivered us here
within warm walls all safe, aware of music,
likely toward ample & attractive meat
with whatever accompaniment
Kate in her kind ingenuity has seen fit to devise,

and we hope - across the most strange year to come -
continually to do them and You not sufficient honour
but such as we become able to devise
out of decent or joyful conscience & thanksgiving.
Yippee!
Bless then, as Thou wilt, this wilderness board.

by John Berryman, 1914 - 1972

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Along with my foreboding sense of an ominous,
strange year to come, I add this observation:

"What a hotchpotch the world was!"

I am beginning to think that this line from The Bell Jar
is the most important sentence that Sylvia Plath every wrote.

Cold Weather Friends

Yule Gnome, Cat & Mouse
by Lennart Helje

To a Cat

Stately, kindly, lordly friend,
Condescend
Here to sit by me, and turn
Glorious eyes that smile and burn,
Golden eyes, love's lustrous meed,
On the golden page I read.

~ Algernon Charles Swinburne ~

Giant Snow Cat ~ Thunderpaws
by Artist ~ Monokubo

Nero the Cat in the Snow
Photo by Hannes Kilian (1909 - 1999)

The Little Owl
by Pirkko-Liisa Surojegin
from the storybook Olwen Finds Her Wings

Winter Morning (2016)
by Paolo Domeniconi

Lonely Looking Sky

In Memoriam
Leland Graves, III
June 9, 1959 - December 12, 2024

May 2013
Photography above & below by Lee Graves
~ friend, scientist, artist ~

Lonely looking sky, lonely sky
Lonely looking sky
And being lonely makes you wonder why
Makes you wonder why
Lonely looking sky
Lonely looking sky
Lonely looking sky

Lonely looking night, lonely night
Lonely looking night
And being lonely never made it right
Never made it right
Lonely looking night
Lonely looking night
Lonely looking night

Sleep
We sleep
And we may dream
While we may

Dream
We dream
For we may wake
One more day
One more day

Glory looking day, glory day
Glory looking day
And in it's glory told a simple way
Behold it if you may
Glory looking day
Glory looking day
Ah, lonely looking sky

Words & music by Neil Diamond

January 2012
Full Wolf Moon

October 2013
The Surfside Flautist:
"I was watching the sunset over the gulf
when I heard wonderful flute music and this
gentleman walked by on the beach playing his flute.
I haven't seen that in my neighborhood back home."