Susan's Thursday morning note January 29, 2009 Poems on Winter (Darkness Early & Cat in the Evening)
Good morning! Shall we pretend that spring is coming this weekend since it’s going to be so beautiful? We are going to have a “Cabin Fever” Open house all weekend at the store – I hope you can come in! Let your kids play with our new arrivals – you can sit with a cup of coffee surrounded by nothing better than a room full of books! What could be better than that?
A friend let me look in a beautiful poetry book this week for children and I can’t help but write for you two poems that I loved on first site. I can’t help but type them out for you!!! The book is called Winter Poems: Selected by Barbara Rogasky. The illustrations are beautiful. Let me know if you’d like me to get one for any child in your life (or in my case – I would’ve wanted it for myself!) I can only get a hold of seven paperbacks, and have ordered them. Sorry if I’m out before you get your hands on one. I think it must be out of print! I hope you enjoy these as much as I did!
Winter Dark by Lilian Moore Winter dark comes early mixing afternoon and night. Soon there's a comma of a moon, and each street light along the way puts its period to the end of day. Now a neon sign punctuates the dark with a bright blinking breathless explanation mark! Cat on a Night of Snow by Elizabeth Coatsworth Cat, if you go outdoors you must walk in the snow. You will come back with little white shoes on your feet, little white shoes of snow that have heels of sleet. Stay by the fire, my Cat. Lie still, do not go. See how the flames are leaping and hissing low. I will bring you a saucer of milk like a marguerite, so white and so smooth, so spherical and so sweet -- stay with me, Cat. Outdoors the wild winds blow. Outdoors, the wild winds blow, Mistress, and dark is the night, strange voices cry in the trees, intoning strange lore, and more than cats move, lit by our eyes' green light, on silent feet where the meadow grasses hang hoar -- Mistress, there are portents abroad of magic and might, and things that are yet to be done. Open the door!
Maybe I loved both of those because I loved the winter scene using punctuation marks (I thought that was so clever!!), and I see my cat staring one inch from the sliding door wanting so badly to bring me a mouse, but I won’t open the door for him, knowing he doesn’t really understand the pain involved if he went out. I loved the bossy last order from the cat! Do you think his mistress gave in? I am just trying to find enjoyment in poetry – an entirely new world for me the last few years. I don’t know why I have never wanted to read from poetry books, the desire just hasn’t been there. And then two years ago I picked up Edna St. Vincent Millay and have never stopped trying to find more & more in this world of verse that had always been so foreign to me. Maybe that’s how some of you feel with books – that they just don’t provide you with nourishment….that’s why I respond to you with – just wait, you don’t know when or where, but I can guarantee there is an author out there whose words will someday stop your thoughts – stop you in such awe that you understand the words, that your thinking is changed or at least becomes validated by what you were thinking – by someone that wrote their dreams, thoughts, arguments, desires in words….don’t stop trying to find that author. I have no idea who will affect me next week, but I am sure that I haven’t even tapped all of the authors who will change me. My friends. My confidants. My encouragers. Authors that give me worlds that I can enter from my own warm home.
If you’re hurting & the winter is dragging on & on, don’t give up. One guarantee I can give is there is spring around a corner…continue to look up, peace from God is only a glance and prayer away. I promise. He’s promised. Go make yourself proud of decisions only you know you make today – take your life up one more notch. Go after just one dream in your head. It’s worth the effort! Susan
Latin for this week: Sursum Corda - Lift Up Our Hearts Works Cited: Winter Poems: Selected by Barbara Rogasky. Scolastic. 1999.