Today A Day For Mothers, Rightfully So,pd lyons

Today A Day For Mothers, Rightfully So

but I want to tell about those other days
like every time I see my daughter
especially how she has those
dark brown eyes

Days when I whistle or sing
though my own voice so much harsher
still my love of music comes from having heard you

And now these days of early spring
when each flower I can name
I learned their name from you

The birds I feed,
mornings in the garden
even blue jays, even crows –
joy of which I learned by watching you

and how many other everyday things?
so many more, so very many more…

so sure, you’re not “here” today
at this restaurant
clinking glasses sparkling wine
but inwardly I take my own inventory
grateful for this life
how all the days of it
truly are my mother’s days.

 

for Flora

 

 

 

Today A Day For Mothers, Rightfully So,pd lyons

Today A Day For Mothers, Rightfully So

but I want to tell about those other days
like every time I see my daughter
especially how she has those
dark brown eyes

Days when I whistle or sing
though my own voice so much harsher
still my love of music comes from having heard you

And now these days of early spring
when each flower I can name
I learned their name from you

The birds I feed,
mornings in the garden
even blue jays, even crows –
joy of which I learned by watching you

and how many other everyday things?
so many more, so very many more…

so sure, you’re not “here” today
at this restaurant
clinking glasses sparkling wine
but inwardly I take my own inventory
grateful for this life
how all the days of it
truly are my mother’s days.

 

for Flora

 

 

 

Paper by Thich Nhat Hanh,

Paper

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “Inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be… Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, it is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. We cannot point out one thing that is not here–time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. –Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step

mix media by morgan lyons

 

but the who i am is that, by pd lyons

today when i sit at the little outside table the kitchen door in the rare gem of Irish sunny summer i think what if i really focus on those things that i don’t really know. like when those birds sound – instead of just concluding birds what if i allow for the fact that i don’t really know what they or that is – how could i describe what i call bird to someone who had no idea of bird? what is bird if i leave behind the concept of bird. what is sky? what is wind against what is skin, my body, what is the heat, what is sun? not just what we name things but what really are these so-called things? in that relinquishment of naming there is a kind of space a kind of freedom and what is this freedom? what is this space? not their names – but the who I am is that.

 

oh those days of sun and clotheses

And Unknown – poem by pd lyons

And Unknown

And Unknown

days grey through bare knuckled trees

sounds like snow slowing

 

 

small birds somehow silvering

 

as if they knew spring always returns for them

 

 

there are things I have no doubt of

 

there are things I know I know

 

 

window reflected my face

 

 the whole world behind me

 

 

Why We Like Kind Of A Hurricane Press… Morgan’s Birds by pd lyons

Dear Contributors,

I am pleased to inform you that Poised In Flight  is now out! The print edition is available for purchase through Amazon.com ($7.50 plus s&h), : http://www.kindofahurricanepress.com/. Just click on the “bookstore” page link in the main header.

And while you’re there, be sure to check out our other upcoming anthology themes and deadlines. We are doing seven this year!

Thanks again,

A.J. Huffman

editor, Kind of a Hurricane Press

_____________________________________________________________________________________

MORGAN’S BIRDS

In the almost tallest tree, Morgan’s birds wait.

sky near full blue but for clouds come from all the way westtangled up with sea shape breezes tasting salty even here.

 

yellow wasps angry buzzing in but rarely back out the kitchen windows

maybe unable to remember it’s only august and wild apples by the dozen still lay strewn along the back garden.

 

rugosa roses stretch up the stone of this house

where through the last while of the day

sun hits strongest.

sometimes my own fingers search out along those warm textures as if

attempting to discover something they need to know until

I must say thank you right out loud with out even figuring out who to.

 

 

in the almost tallest tree, Morgan’s birds wait.

they have time to be patient, preening, cackling, shifting branches

occasionally engaged in soft arguments,

remind me of some vague song until

like a shipwreck in the sky they rise.

true

morning hawk

salamander yellow pad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Morning hawk

 

Morning hawk on a derelict barn catch the sun reddish on her breast. Puritan crows complain the driveway, flit from tree to tree to ground to strut. How quick and occasional favour of scraps became an expectation a habit to be demanded. She’s on high alert now, breakfast is a thing we have in common, hunger, hers a more urgent affair. Mine a thing to be numbed by coffee delayed by choice; what will I have? what do I want? So unlike her, everything I eat dead long ago and far away as if shadow boxing karma makes a difference. So unlike her even at my age still not learned to fly. It was my mother taught me about small birds, names and feeding. She thought blue jays were bullies but I liked them for their colour and their secret sound. There was always bread saved for the birds, every morning coffee by the kitchen window she’d watch birds before the day began quiet days before there ever were siblings and sometimes we would watch together. My father was an Audubon man, the huge book of colour plates near as big as I was. Bald eagles with cat fish, great blue herons spearing frogs. But he made time to hang feeders filled with tiny seeds, teach us grackles, cow birds and spotted the first oriole we ever saw.

salamander yellow pad

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Today

Today on the great yellow sheet of possibility he hurried the blue notes of coffee too hot to drink comfortably. It was the gold dead grass of February, not dead, sleeping, not sure of the difference. Empty unsure sky whether snow or rain no birds at the apple tree feeders wishing to find out. Where ever it is they go, the birds are always out. Can you imagine a place where no one knows how they should behave, where the fear factor absent no motivation, no explanation, what would we be like? Compassionate birds always out never needing to steal. The cheapest coffee comes in a real steel container, has more weight than most and tastes as good as the rest. Now are there things un-wishing to do but wishing were done. The energy of that un-equated equation can be used to do which must be done. What is the term for an equation that is unequal? An un-equal equation is an error. Do all errors need remedy? Do they need to be remedied? And hot from the hoody sweat shirt and seventy degree thermostat he pulls it up over his head remembers five years old and getting stuck.