Wild Apples

Gold

Gold

 

Curiosity makes me ask,

What first thought bloomed

hearing this small word?

Gelt, loot, wealth or booty,

Or the color of a lost love's hair?

Did you feel the life tide flowing

From a flaxen-red leaf,

Or imagine the sunset on

a day in May?

 

Does it wring your heart

That these are the golden years?

Racing by us as we sleep,

Or do you run with joy at the

thought of daffodills

on a hill far away?

A small 4 letter word –

Only one in trillions

That keep us

A million miles apart.

You encased in your world

and I in mine. 

 

 He loves me

He loves me not.

Sue Matthews Petrovski

Love

On this day, in 1846, Elizabeth Barrett secretly married Robert Browning against her father's wishes.   When I read this on The Writer's Almanac it brought back a fond memory.

Sonnet 43: How do I love thee, let me count the ways

 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

I read this, for the first time, in a Downstate Illinois Speech Contest.   I was 17 years old and I knew everything.  We were given a poem that we had not seen prior to our event, and we were evaluated on how much feeling we could muster in reading it.

 I must have done a tolerable job of creating a love facade, for, much to my amazement, I won first place!  Of course it said nothing about my grasp of the meaning of love, but only that I was a dramatic little twit.   I could fake it.  Alas, remember, I was only 17, so have pity.   I remember that I liked the feeling of being a winner, and I fear the love I felt was more for myself than for any other.  How often is this true?  We want to be loved, adored, cared for and cherished more than we know how to exhibit those qualities to another. 

 I am now in my 70s, and life has been instrumental in teaching me something about the meaning of many emotions:  love, hate, fear, compassion, grief and sympathy among others, and today, with due modesty, I think I am closer to understanding Elizabeth's expression of love  than I was so many years ago.  If I were to describe love today I would say:

 Love brings us closer to the center of our very being.  It is part of our deepest and most profound feelings.  It is not something one can turn on and off, or even replace.   It is there in sun and candlelight.  It must be given freely, and without even a hint of how it will benefit the giver.  Those who have known love see in it a passion that exceeds any other emotional experience, and, perhaps the hardest test of all, it must be accepted with a childlike faith and trust.  If given completely there is something in love that causes us to understand our lost beliefs – our lost ideals.   Love is all consuming, now and forever more.

"Only from the heart can you touch the sky."  - Rumi

"There is no remedy for love but to love more."  Henry D. Thoreau

 

The Natural Madness of Nature

 

Many green-briar leaves are very agreeably thickly spotted now with reddish brown, or fine green on a yellow or green ground, producing a wildly variegated leaf. I have seen nothing more rich. Some of these curled leaves are five inches wide with a short point.

It is a leaf now for poets to sing about, a leaf to inspire
poets.. . . It excites me to a sort of autumnal madness .

    ­­­­--- Henry David Thoreau, Journal 8 Sept. 1854.

 

The chill morning air climbed in my bedroom window this AM bringing with it that autumnal madness that excited Thoreau 155 years ago.  One can feel the chill in that northern wind for the first time, and there is a stillness and ripeness as our leaves begin to turn. 

 

Yet this is a strange year.  Miracles can happen in this madness of nature.   The mini-tornado swirling with hail that we experienced two months ago stripped nature of her natural garment;  the roses were sticks, the garden was flat, the trees were winter bare.  Thinking Nature had done her Spring/Summer thing for the year, we expected a barren landscape for the next few months.  But nature can give lessons on stubborn determination and single-minded purpose.  The roses are blooming as they have never before bloomed in September.  The trees have a new  portion of leaves and some are even blossoming for the second time this year. 

 

 I have seen nothing more rich.  We have been the luckiest of creatures to hav been blessed with two Springs  But the telling wind reminds us that nature must rest and we are on the edge.