Song of the day:
Video of the day:
National Poetry Month
Move - Alicia Ostriker
Whether it’s a turtle who drags herself
Slowly to the sandlot, where she digs
The sandy nest she was born to dig
And lay leathery eggs in, or whether it’s salmon
Rocketing upstream
Toward pools that call, Bring your eggs here
And nowhere else in the world, whether it is turtle-green
Ugliness and awkwardness, or the seething
Grace and gild of silky salmon, we
Are envious, our wishes speak out right here,
Thirsty for a destiny like theirs,
An absolute right choice
To end all choices. Is it memory,
We ask, is it a smell
They remember,
Or just what is it—some kind of blueprint
That makes them move, hot grain by grain,
Cold cascade above icy cascade,Slipping through
Water’s fingers
A hundred miles
Inland from the easy, shiny sea?
And we also—in the company
Of our tribe
Or perhaps alone, like the turtle
On her wrinkled feet with the tapping nails—
We also are going to travel, we say let’s be
Oblivious to all, save
That we travel, and we say
When we reach the place we’ll know
We are in the right spot, somehow, like a breath
Entering a singer’s chest, that shapes itself
For the song that is to follow.
Today I get to wish my lovely friend Amanda, who lives all the way across the country, a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
We’re mid-way through the week and mid-way through the month. And now approximately 8 million days into the pandemic. Give or take. There’s still a whole lot going on in this country and honestly, I don’t care to get back to what normal used to be. I want a new normal. A normal where people care more about other people, where they don’t pick up a gun to express their anger, where they don’t hate someone because of the color of the skin or where they’re from or who they love, where they put on a mask and realize exactly how far six feet away is. Can we get there? Somedays I think it’s impossible, and I know it isn’t easy, but I do have hope. And maybe that’s how we start.
Have a great day everyone!
I'm with you. I don't want to go back to the old normal. The old normal was not good for most people, except white Christian hetero men. I want a new normal where everyone is treated equal and we accept everyone for who they are, not who we (or our religion) want or demand they should be. A new normal where young black men are not routinely killed by police, where we don't have regular mass shootings, where a significant portion of our country doesn't believe lies and misinformation, where Christians are known for their love not their hate, where people actually respect science and care enough to deal with global warming and the pandemic responsibly, where all life (not just fetuses) is respected. There are times I think we are further from that than ever and times when I see what God is doing in my small corner of the world and it gives me hope. We need hope, we need faith, and we need love.
Thank you for this blog, it gives me hope.