Remembrance

I shall not easily forget those long winter nights in the front line. Darkness fell about four in the afternoon and dawn was not until eight next morning. These sixteen hours of blackness were broken by gun flashes, the gleam of star shells and punctuated by the scream of a shell or the sudden heart-stopping rattle of a machine-gun. The long hours crept by with leaden feet and sometimes it seemed as if time itself was dead.
~F. Noakes

Commemorating the end of World War I:

Continuous Living

If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life.
~Pablo Neruda

photo by Larry Jacobsen

Today, poems about our commonalities, our struggles and joys, our rebirth.

Don't forget to send me your human rights poems by November 30th!

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from
Your Laughter
by Pablo Neruda

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.

Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.

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The Street
by Octavio Paz

It’s a long and silent street.
I walk in the dark and trip and fall
and get up and step blindly
on the mute stones and dry leaves
and someone behind me is also walking:
if I stop, he stops;
if I run, he runs. I turn around: no one.
Everything is black, there is no exit,
and I turn and turn corners
that always lead to the street
where no one waits for me, no one follows,
where I follow a man who trips
and gets up and says when he sees me: no one.

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photo by Tauralbus

from
Instructions on Not Giving Up
by Ada Limón

...Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

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

Today's Little Ditty has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Michelle!

Phlogopite Plus

I love rocks with the unconditional love that you lavish upon a newborn baby.
~Hope Jahren

Rocks today!

Smithsonite, Aurichalcite
photo by Rob Lavinsky

Phlogopite, San Vito quarry, Monte Somma, Italy
photo by Didier Descouens

Apatite-(CaF), Muscovite
photo by Robert Lavinsky

Azurite, cross-section through merged stalactites
photo by Tony Hisgett

Pyritized brachiopods
photo by James St. John

It's Time!

I’m just trying to do my part to save the world.
~J. Cornell Michel

I know everybody is already telling you to vote. Lucy is just here to say THANKS FOR VOTING!

Liberty Lucy

Protect Our Votes/Election Integrity

Hunnybee

The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.
~Henry David Thoreau

Unknown Mortal Orchestra:

Giving/Where Strength Lies

I know what I have given you...
I do not know what you have received.
~Antonio Porchia

photo by John Morgan

Two poems, thinking about Thanksgiving and Election Day.

When Giving Is All We Have
by Alberto Ríos

                  One river gives
                  Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,

read the rest here

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A Nation’s Strength
by William Ralph Emerson (1833-1917)

What makes a nation’s pillars high
And its foundations strong?
What makes it mighty to defy
The foes that round it throng?

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand
Go down in battle shock;
Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,
Not on abiding rock.

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust
Of empires passed away;
The blood has turned their stones to rust,
Their glory to decay.

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown
Has seemed to nations sweet;
But God has struck its luster down
In ashes at his feet.

Not gold but only men can make
A people great and strong;
Men who for truth and honor’s sake
Stand fast and suffer long.

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Vote! It matters!

Jama's Alphabet Soup has the Poetry Friday round-up today. Thanks, Jama!

Rose Windows

We must shine with hope, stained glass windows that shape light into icons, glow like lanterns borne before a procession. Who can bear hope back into the world but us.
~Marge Piercy

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg
photo by Ralph Hammann

Speyer, Germany
by Jakob Bradl
photo by Roman Eisele

Rosetón. Igrexa principal de Noia, Galicia
photo by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez

Église protestante Saint-Thomas de Strasbourg
photo by Ralph Hammann

Église Saints-Pierre-et-Paul
photo by Ralph Hammann

Vitrail de la cathédrale de Strasbourg
photo by Frédéric Chateaux