it's beautiful

hanging clothes out on the line, dappled sunlight with a cool breeze hinting at winter. it's beautiful. lasting memories from when you first met your love, butterflies re-light. it's beautiful. watching the last light drain from the sky, while night time swirls in, inky - it's like watching watercolours spread. it's beautiful. savouring a glass of wine, beautiful. hearing your baby laugh, watching her body fill with joy. oh yeah, that's beautiful. walking through empty streets, breathing in the fresh air, walking with a spring in your step, anticipating what awaits. mmm. beautiful.

happy weekend!

c h a l k talk

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tell me why this hurry: julia hartwig

The lindens are blossoming the lindens have lost their blossoms
and this flowery procession moves without any restraint
Where are you hurrying lilies of the valley jasmines
petunias lilacs irises roses and peonies
Mondays and Tuesdays Wednesdays and Fridays
nasturtiums and gladioli zinnias and lobelias
yarrow dill goldenrod and grasses
flowery Mays and Junes and Julys and Augusts
lakes of flowers seas of flowers meadows
holy fires of fern one-day grails
Tell me why this hurry where are you rushing
in a cherry blizzard a deluge of greenness
all with the wind racing in one direction only
crowns proud yesterday today fallen into sand
eternal desires passions mistresses of destruction
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a quote: charles baudelaire

Poetry has no goal other than itself; it can have no other, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the name of poem, than one written uniquely for the pleasure of writing a poem.

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untitled: kevin goodan

white days, a passion for the winter-birds
cached in every elm, each goat
with its bell in the pasture
as the wind tolls diurnal through the scape,
a far gray band of willows,
the snow cross-harrowed, a barn
where every breath has faltered
where beasts lie down in stalls
quiver and are still, are hauled
to the fire, roil, and enter the earth
as wind skurls bright smoke
against the purple that is darkness blooming
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overblown roses: mimi khalvati

She held one up, twirling it in her hand
as if to show me how the world began
and ended in perfection. I was stunned.
How could she make a rose so woebegone,
couldn't silk stand stiff? And how could a child,
otherwise convinced of her mother's taste,
know what to think? It's overblown, she smiled,
I love roses when they're past their best.

'Overblown roses', the words swam in my head,
making sense as I suddenly saw afresh
the rose now, the rose ahead: where a petal
clings to a last breath; where my mother's flesh
and mine, going the same way, may still
be seen as beautiful, if these words are said.

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if you think it's kind of ugly, tell us. if you think it's blooming beautiful, tell us that too.

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i remember my grandparents' garden full of roses. fat roses. red roses, tangerine roses, baby pink, almost-orange roses, white roses, yellow roses, oh the most fragrant roses. dead rose heads. chop! chop! chop! sweet peas grew out the front, tendrils climbing. my grandmother gave me fragrant rose petal stamps, that i now give my little boy. i remember the heady smell of roses. beautiful.

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