Good poem of the day:

( Wendell Berry - To My MotherCollapse )

Which is to say, Happy Mother's Day to all the moms on my flist. Also, I know this isn't an easy day for some of you, and I'm thinking about you too.

Good poem of the day:

End of Winter

Bare-handed reach
to catch
April's
incoming curve.
Leap higher than you thought you could and
Hold:
Spring,
Solid,
Here.

-Eve Merriam

Good poem of the day:

The Bat

I was reading about rationalism,
the kind of thing we do up north
in early winter, where the sun
leaves work for the day at 4:15

Maybe the world is intelligible
to the rational mind;
and maybe we light the lamps at dusk
for nothing...

Then I heard the wings overhead.

The cats and I chased the bat
in circles - —living room, kitchen,
pantry, kitchen, living room...
At every turn it evaded us

like the identity of the third person
in the Trinity: the one
who spoke through the prophets,
the one who astounded Mary
by suddenly coming near.

-Jane Kenyon

Now that the Yuletide authors are up, I can thank inlovewithnight more officially for her abovementioned amazing Life fic, which was a real joy to read. Thank you so much!

I wrote this Life fic about Ted and Thanksgiving and stuff for agonistes, and had a lot of fun doing so.

Happy New Year, everybody! Here's to a delightful 2009.

Good poem of the day, from today's Writer's Almanac:

Song of the Wonderful Surprise

Start with the fact of space; fill it up
with snow. There will be snow in the sky,
snow on the ground, snow in the mysterious courtyards.
You taste snow's tang, smell snow, feel snow on your face.
If you walk forever, you will not come to a place with no snow,
but one day, looking around, you will find
a green apple hanging from a spray of snow.

-Kelly Cherry

We actually ended up with a pretty nice Christmas - since my parents were in pretty bad shape, I wasn't sure if we were going to have our extended family over as we usually do, but we ended up going through with it, which I think was the best thing for everyone. My aunt, wanting to do something to help, brought over about fourteen giant plates of every kind of cookie known to humankind, so yay for that.

My favorite present was a membership to the Art Institute, so I don't have to go only on free Thursday nights with all the creepy people. As for Yuletide, I received this flat-out wonderful Life story. Feel free to try and guess which story I wrote; I feel like it's a glaringly obvious window into my soul, and I'm sure the fandom is easy to guess based on the limited amount of fannish stuff I've talked about here this year.

I also want to thank you guys for the wonderful messages I got yesterday; they helped very much. I'm beyond lucky to have such good friends.

Well, earlier today our dog started acting very strange, and we realized pretty quickly that something wasn't right and that he was getting worse, so we took him to the emergency vet. They aren't exactly sure what's wrong, but right now they think that he's probably had a stroke. They told us he isn't in pain, but he isn't conscious either, and they're don't know if he's going to wake up or get better. He'll be there overnight and then I guess we'll see.

I wanted to let you guys know, but I also wanted to post because I may not be around for the Yuletide reveal (I don't really feel up to online interaction at the moment, although I guess it might be a good distraction), so I hope my writer checks here and sees this - if any of you guys happen to know her/him, could you possibly direct them here? Yuletide writer, thank you so much in advance for the story, and I apologize that I may not be able to give you more specific feedback for a while. I very much appreciate your writing for me.

An Advent/Christmas-type poem:

Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993

On the domed ceiling God
is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:

“We’re descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?”

God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.

--Jane Kenyon

Going on hiatus. Probably back soon.