Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. –Albert Einstein
The Sun Rose Again Today
The sun rose again today. In its light I watch as birds arrive and share our feeder. Three sparrows and a blue jay. Later, a cardinal settles on the right. He takes a bite then brings his color to other streets and zones. There is enough seed and light for all.
A goldfinch, his spring color hidden in February, appears. More birds land as the week continues. They join the blended beauty of my integrated neighborhood.
The sun rose again today. May the earth it touches warm hearts and open sleepy eyes to see the ways of the earth. May there be light, color, and seed for all nature’s humans as well.
Anne Frank’s words: “I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains.” Her voice was forever silenced. Yet, her heart rings true in this oh-so-similar era.
Hope. Insight. Peace. They grow inside seeds that don’t recognize their worth when planted. Small, invisible in a world where power and greed rule. May buds of integrity bloom, then refuse to die.
ICED WINDOWS, FROSTED VISION, revisited To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold. Aristotle White sky and ground blend into a seamless horizon of gray where snow-encased branches rise as part of both threat and beauty. Darkness and slick roads threaten travelers. Glistening ponds and crystal trees tempt artists and treat the spirit.
I kick off my boots, let them dry inside a warm house, and allow my toes to find feeling again. Then I embrace bitter and sweet for as long as each experience lasts, in order to live inside the fullness of each moment.
"I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it." –Frank A. Clark
My first attempt at writing a limerick (A rhyme with a rhythm AABBA) The critics who know everything are like birds who fly with one wing. As they drop from the sky without knowing why that’s when other folk hear what they sing.
“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”
Maya Angelou
Hope in Small Doses
The day’s news.
The details of a bloody shooting
rise with the same tone of voice
a stranger would use to give directions
to a local parking lot. Then a commercial appears
advising a product to prevent hair loss.
Compassion and energy
struggle to appear in human form.
Then a toddler grandchild
reaches out with a smile made of fresh energy.
A closer place of love emerges.
And while I can’t make the world kinder,
I can begin by planting hope into this moment.
It takes courage to be kind. Maya Angelou
ONE MOMENT’S LIGHT
“Hi, how are you?”
I almost ask an old neighbor
passing from the pasta aisle
to canned fruits and vegetables.
The expected answer is, “Doing fine,”
whether the individual celebrates a new birth
or news of a terminal illness.
Instead, I call out his name and say,
“Hello, good to see you.”
And the friend stops. For five minutes.
Sacred moments. A chance to open a smile
into places where worry or fear
can thrive. The evening news
bites through bodies and souls with war,
destruction, disease, political distraction.
Too large a burden. Four syllables—good to see you.
opens one moment of light.
"Why do we have this desire to tease the innocent? Is it envy?" Donna Tartt
Hate Mail
I see the twelve-year-old girl in my memory
as her mother holds a note left in their mailbox.
You are a baby and we hate you.
Two giggling girls, their mission accomplished,
run down the street. “They are jealous,”
the mother of the twelve-year-old girl
says in a tone unfamiliar to her daughter,
one that sounds protective, a sound that
doesn’t center on Ten-Commandment
stoicism. Did her mother suggest
that maybe the taunting the preteen hears could be separated from social disaster?
Since the family lives inside concepts, not hugs,
the girl stares, uncertain, into the narrow dead-end street.
She doesn’t know a possibility has been planted. She
will thank her mother fifty years later.
Dear Broken Concrete
“Some people think that if they don’t know their faults, they don’t have any.”
― Frank Sonnenberg, Listen to Your Conscience: That's Why You Have One
I don’t know why I get stuck staring at you
when the rest of the path is clear enough
to get where I need to go.
One moment or word blasts a past human break
covered by years, opened unexpectedly now and then.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter that the imperfection appears.
Only that blue sky lives above it.
Look up, see, I finally say, then listen
to a child’s laughter in a neighboring yard.
A cardinal chirping its unique song.
Then I can go to the next turn in the road
and sing a fresh verse on solid ground.
terrypetersen 