Daffodils and Spring

April is National Poetry Month. The gorgeous, sunshiny weather this weekend was inspiring, so here is a little poem I recall from grammar school (It was a favorite to write in autograph books--remember them?)

Spring has sprung

The grass is riz

I wonder where 

The birdies is.

Not exactly Robert Frost, but happy. And, if you're wondering where the birdies is in New Jersey, the answer for blackbirds is....everywhere.  

This picture doesn't capture it, but the flocks have been blackening lawns and swooping down from trees, squawking and swirling through the sky. I had a Tippi Hedrenesque moment running to my car parked in the driveway, but luckily no attack squadron dive bombed me. Check out this YouTube mashup of scenes from Hitchcock's The Birds. 

Such a deliciously scary movie. Whew...on a calmer note, here's a favorite springtime poem by British romantic poet William Wordsworth. 

Daffodils Wildlife Center - a few years ago- We're still about 2 weeks away from peak bloom for this year

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. Enjoy!

Cherry Blossoms

Spent the last few days "off the grid" in Washington, DC at the Cherry Blossom Festival. The peak is supposed to be today through Friday, but it was pretty spectacular over the weekend, even with a snow shower on Sunday.


What I learned about cherry trees: Yes, they were a gift of friendship from Japan in 1912, but several Americans had been lobbying and working hard to make it happen over several decades. This included First Lady Helen Taft, activist Eliza Scidmore and USDA official David Fairchild. Athough there are many varieties of cherry trees throughout Washington, most of the trees around the Tidal Basin are the Yoshino variety. These ornamental trees do not produce the sweet edible cherries we all love, but a small bitter fruit that birds eat. The buds appear pink at first, turn white, like fleeting clouds (a popular image in Japanese art and culture) before dropping like snow to the ground.

Yo no naka wa

Mikka mnu ma ni

Sakura kana

(Life is short like the three day glory of the cherry blossom)

The pamphlet I had, suggested you try composing your own Japanese haiku (a three line poem with the first and last lines having five syllables, while the middle line has seven syllables). So, here goes:

White snowy blossoms
Float like clouds--too bad they bring
oh so many crowds

Don't pick the flowers
Please keep your kids from climbing
The Park Ranger's job :(((

Ephemeral blooms

reflecting water, bright sky

soon a memory

Writing haiku is definitely addictive. Try it, but here's a warning. My Readheads book group wrote haikus for someone's birthday, but then we couldn't stop. Even our emails were syllabically correct, until we came to our senses.


Enough this must end
Twitter in 5-7-5
Leave email alone!


A final note:  in one of life's lovely coincidental connections, last week I went to a concert of The Wailin' Jennys, a folk group and loved one of their songs called  Cherry Blossom Love.  (click to hear the you tube version)

FDR monument

springtime in DC!

Jefferson Memorial

Thanksgiving

I was at St.Luke's elementary school when the good sister introduced us to Gerard Manley Hopkins. He was a Victorian Catholic poet (of course!), a Jesuit,  whose works were published in 1918, 29 years after his death. He is heralded by some as one of the first modern poets, inventing his own"sprung" rhythm, a precursor of free verse.

Sister Rose of Lima would be shocked at Wikipedia's casual descriptions of Hopkin's possible bipolar personality disorder and his unresolved anguish over his sexuality, but what I remember of his poem "Pied Beauty" are the brilliant images and the words that sent me scurrying to the dictionary...the brinded cow and the stipple on the trout..  Definitely was an awakening for me to a world of poetry and words that went beyond the strict Catholic school curriculum of the early 60's.

I don't  remember how the class responded, sitting in straight rows, 35 in a class, the girls in white blouses with green jumpers, the boys in white shirts and ties. They were probably collectively bored and puzzled by the way the words tripped up your tongue, by Sister's enthusiasm, by the strange, contrary theme of praising nature that is freckled and imperfect, sweet and sour, adazzle and dim, yet somehow right and wondrous. Do I remember the words because we had to memorize them? Maybe...

But, I'd like to think the phrases of this beautiful poem stuck in my mind because they resonate with the wonders of nature, especially in this season of thanks. And let's face it---what pre-teen could forget a phrase like "rose-moles all in stipple"? (I believe I had some rose-moles of my own that I worried about at the time.) Please read and enjoy and have a happy Thanksgiving. (whether you buy into the God part or not).


PIED BEAUTY by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

I get the urge for going...

Saw and spoke to Tom Rush in concert last night at Bergen Community College.  He's an old 60's folkie who introduced many of Joni Mitchell's songs and had a profound influence on James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Garth Brooks among others. I first saw him at Cornell back in 1969 or 70. (He loved being reminded of how long he's been playing and how old he is. ha!)

Just have to share the lyrics to the song, "I get the urge to going," which is so poetic and appropriate for this time of year:

And I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky and gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
And shivering trees are standing in a naked row
I get the urge for going but I never seem to go
And I get the urge for going when the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down winter's closing in...

Beautiful, huh? ... and when we're really facing winter, here's the last verse:

I'll ply the fire with kindling and pull the blankets to my chin
And I'll lock the vagrant winter out and bolt my wandering in
I'd like to call back summertime and have her stay just another month or so
She's got the urge for going and I guess she'll have to go


The song was written by Joni Mitchell and picked up by WBZ in Boston, where it was a "turntable hit" and got considerable play time before it was finally released as a single.

Here's a you-tube version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wq6_uL6AiY&feature=related

Here's Tom Rush website: http://tomrush.com/