THE MUSE, MARY AND ME

 The feet and eyes are for me the most difficult to get right. So it may take me just a bit longer to get this final piece ready for Sawdust Art Festival's Winter Fantasy showing.

Meanwhile, I will continue to look for inspiration and solace in my muse and poet Mary Oliver.

Crisp mornings of sunshine or fog filled with birdsong...aren't we fortunate? I ponder the question of what it might be like not to be able to have these things. What must that mean to someone's life/

And this brings me to poet Mary Oliver and the questions she poses in her poem Gratitude:

What did you notice?

What did you hear?

What did you admire?

What astonished you?

What would you like to see again?

What was most tender?

What was most wonderful?

What did you think was happening?

i wonder how answering these questions, no matter our circumstances, might be likely to bring us to a state of gratitude. So take a deep breath. Listen to the birds, Feel the sun on your shoulders. Enjoy the soft caress of a breeze. Smile at a stranger in passing. Ask yourself these questions from the poem and see if there is even a slight shift in your thinking. Hopefully, you will be brought to gratitude.

Let me know.

WHAT DO THEY MEAN?

With all that is going on in our country and around the world on this July 4, 2020 I found myself turning back to this piece created many years ago. It bears words that from long, long ago that spoke to me then and continue to do so today in the midst of the upheaval.

Again, I ponder the words. What do I find worthy of honoring? What would I choose to cultivate? And what, really, on this Independence Day does freedom ultimately mean to me?

So I thought to share these thoughts and the questions that arose from them with whatever follower chooses to read this sporadic blog and hope that you, too, will be moved by these words from another time and another place that just seem to continue to echo down through the years.