August 11, 2020
You have a smile that lights the world,
Shining from within,
Breaking out between the clouds
That form the skin of self.
Lucky we, to live nearby
That unpretentious sun,
To share its fire, to feel its love,
To know its warmth so well.
Just as the sun's sweet liquid joy
Is captured in the wine,
So with us your happiness
Is captured in our lives.
This week’s theme: Friendship
August 10: We’re Never Completely in One Place
August 11: You Have a Smile That Lights the World
August 10, 2020
Of us hangs out on streets we barely remember,
Or converses with faces no longer familiar. Or we start
Lunch in June, and sneak off into December.
Every encounter has a beginning, but never
An ending. Like an exquisite ecosphere,
The mind turns each raindrop into forever,
Nor does it allow one word to disappear.
Some evening, years from now, we'll be driving home,
Talking, I in your car, or you
In mine, driving through rich Iowa loam,
Or flowering Jersey suburbs, or Kalamazoo.
It will not matter, as we speak, whether
Our lives are bitter or sweet. We'll be together.
August 10: We’re Never Completely in One Place
August 9, 2020
Though you are not the children of my blood.
Love’s not lodged within one's flesh and bone,
But in one's heart, which goes which way it would.
I married into you, as into wealth,
Or into some bright mansion, just by chance.
You were not why I came, nor what I felt
That made me give my life to this romance.
Yet once we were a family, out of need,
Love came bubbling up from some sweet spring,
Watering the newly planted seed
That it might in the will of sunlight sing.
So may we long remain through love and art:
Stepparent and stepchildren of the heart.
This week’s theme: Family
August 3: We Once Lived in Israel,You and I
August 4: Cousins Are Our Siblings Once Removed
August 5: In-Laws Aren’t Always Good as You Are
August 6: Nieces Are the Children That We Borrow
August 7: To My Grandchild, with Overwhelming Love
August 8: So Close We Have Become in Thirty Years
August 9: I Love You Just as Though You Were My Own
August 8, 2020
Intimate as sisters, thick as friends;
So intermingled in our joys and tears
That each familiar glance a novel sends!
Even sisters sometimes grow apart,
Remembering but dimly days long past.
In us there is a closeness of the heart,
Natural yet loose enough to last.
Life often can with mad indifference cast
A pair together drawn from odds and ends,
While we could not be better matched by art.
August 3: We Once Lived in Israel, You and I
August 4: Cousins Are Our Siblings Once Removed
August 5: In-Laws Aren’t Always Good as You Are
August 6: Nieces Are the Children That We Borrow
August 7: To My Grandchild, with Overwhelming Love
August 8: So Close We Have Become in Thirty Years
August 7, 2020
To my grandchild, with overwhelming love:
On you may fortune smile with ample blessings.
May your happiness persistent prove.
Yet may you, in your angry inner wrestlings,
Grant others the compassion you'd be given,
Restoring not their sunlight, but your own.
All your life may what you do be driven
Not by others' ends, but yours alone.
Days of awe and wonder may you cherish,
Clarity and mystery the same:
Hymns antiphonal that never perish,
Imitating truths you cannot name.
Let love of life make your life ever new,
Deep and rich as is my love for you.
August 3: We Once Lived in Israel,You and I
August 4: Cousins Are Our Siblings Once Removed
August 5: In-Laws Aren’t Always Good as You Are
August 6: Nieces Are the Children That We Borrow
August 7: To My Grandchild, with Overwhelming Love
