Poetry Friday - Keeping the Days

It's Poetry Friday, and Tracey Kiff-Judson is hosting HERE on her blog, Tangles & Tales for Poetry Friday. She is sharing a delightful history overview of Monopoly pieces, the changes and, perhaps, what it means when you chose one of the pieces as a favorite, plus, a poem about one. Be sure to check this post! Thanks, Tracey!

            I couldn't turn the calendar pages with you last week because I was still having Christmas! My son and family couldn't make it until after the new year so all of us had our holiday together last weekend. It was wonderful and over all too fast!

            So, I'm sharing a poem I wrote a while ago which I take out every year to remember the old times and to inspire me to start again, writing and keeping the days in my own notebook!  I cobbled together words from a diary of my husband's paternal grandmother, Lora, (husband, Roy) for my year's beginning poem, her days!

On the inside cover, she wrote:  Be a lamplighter.  We shall shine as the stars of the morning.  

 

Remember Rainer Rilke's words: "Now let us welcome the new year, full of things that have never been." Wishing each of you a Happy 2024! 

New Year Welcome

Welcome to the first Poetry Friday of 2017.

"And now let us welcome the new year—full of things that have never been." — Rainer Maria Rilke.

          Including this first Poetry Friday of 2017! For those who follow some holidays after Christmas, Firday is Epiphany, Three King’s Day, or The Twelfth Day of Christmas.  

          I have known the above quote for a long time (perhaps you have, too?). And I

use it in some way on every year beginning. This year, it feels both dark and light, considering my concerns about the coming change in our government, yet I know there will be marvelous things to celebrate too. A few years ago it became more special. A friend of mine gave me A Year With Rilke, translated and edited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows and I began morning reads from this anthology, thoughtful, sometimes seeming to apply to my life so closely that it made me shiver. Other days I read and passed on by. Here at the beginning of the new year, words fly about with OLWs, resolutions, wonderful poems, and quotes. I actually started a file to keep some that I’ve especially loved.

Today I’ll share one of the poems from A Year With Rilke, a favorite for beginnings. This also connects to me because I want to say thank you to Mary Lee Hahn and Catherine Flynn for their challenges that began December 1^st, #haikuforhealing and #commonplacemarvels. It was a pleasant thing to slide into this daily writing, and we have continued. If you’d like to join, some share on Facebook, but most are sharing on twitter. Take a look! Also, I joined Jone MacCulloch’s poetry postcard greet the new year group, and it’s wonderful to find a poem in my mailbox!  

Words for Beginnings

        You can write a slice for the Two Writing Teachers community today. Join us here at the end of 2015. It's always good to read what everyone shares.  Thank you Stacey, Tara, Anna, Betsy, Dana, Kathleen, Beth, and Deb. 

          I hope everyone has had a nice holiday, whatever you celebrate, or are still celebrating, and that it hasn't been too upset by the weather. I had a wonderful Christmas, my son and family are still here, we'll continue to be with my daughter and family when we can, and they are enjoying spending time with good friends, and skiing too. 
         A huge part of my life is literature, both old and new, and another part is old stuff, little things, furniture, art, and vintage greetings. I have old Christmas cards and books, and greetings given a long time ago on Valentine's Day. I enjoy looking at the beautiful art and reading the more formal language. Here is the cover and one page of a little book I found last summer at a used bookstore (not where I'm volunteering) in Denver. And the front and the back of an old postcard. 
          This "after Christmas" week is the time I begin preparing to welcome the new year, as Rainer Maria Rilke says so beautifully, "full of things that have never been."