Author: itoccurstocp

I read an article recently about a 2020 study in which scientists concluded that hearing is the last human faculty to go. They found that as we approach death, even into unconsciousness, and well after all other human faculties have been lost, our brains still register sounds and spoken words.  That seems like poetic justice to me since I spend so much of my conscious life not listening.  Thankfully, I still have some conscious time left (though one never knows how much) to even the scales a bit.

Photo taken during the most recent full moon. Text from the Mary Oliver poem – It Was Early

Full poem text at

http://yearsrisingmaryoliver.blogspot.com/2011/01/it-was-early.html

Reading today from haiku mind by Patricia Donegan:

“When we are present our senses are more attuned to the environment and the environment to us….  The environment is always presenting us with a new circumstance to learn from, be it a book, a shell, a lover, or a friend.  The more we realize how everything is interrelated, and the more our minds are open, then the more auspicious our lives become.”

I didn’t trust my sense as to the meaning of “auspicious” and so I looked it up in Webster’s: “showing or suggesting that future success is likely.”

What jumped out at me here is the “…and the environment to us…” part.  The admonition to be attuned to the environment, to be “present,” is old hat, but the thought of reciprocity, the thought that the environment can in turn be attuned to me, is, to me, new.  I’ll have to ponder that a while, but it does make sense that the more I pay attention to the interrelatedness of events and lives, the more I open my mind “the more auspicious my life becomes.” And that’s a good thing. Just look at the definition.

to laugh at one’s self                    

exposes the foolishness                         

in this thing called life

Photo taken from Pier 21 in Galveston out into the ship channel. Text from Marge Piercy’s to be of use. No ox or cart in the photo, but they seemed to go together.

Link to the full text of the poem below:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57673/to-be-of-use

Photo taken a few years back (as we say, “pre-Covid”) in Malibu.

A line pulled from Howard Nemerov’s poem, September, the First Day of School:

“I know my hope, but do not know its form.”

Rings true.  Hope comes in so many forms.  It occurs to me that the problem, one problem, is that I am looking for hope in “Form A” when it could just as easily show up in Form B, C, D…. 

Be aware.  Hope comes in all shapes, sizes, forms, and packaging.

Nemerov’s Poem:

https://allpoetry.com/September,-The-First-Day-Of-School

Photo taken recently in Galveston of a shrimp boat just off the shore one morning. Text from Donnegan’s book, haiku mind.