Bottled Joy: Poem of the Day

Everyone should read Walt Whitman much more often than any of us do! "Song of Myself" has lines  that I think of regularly, which says a lot since I often forget what I read. Whitman's poetry feels like bottled joy or lightning or the untiring exuberance of a child. Just slowly, slowly open the cap...and breathe...and revel...

From "Song of Myself" 

by Walt Whitman

#6 

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;

How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. 

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green 

     stuff woven. 

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,

A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, 

Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see 

    and remark, and say Whose? 

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. 

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, 

And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, 

Growing among black folks as among white, 

Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I 

     receive them the same. 

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. 

Tenderly will I use you curling grass, 

It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, 

It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, 

It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out 

     of their mothers' laps, 

And here you are the mothers' laps. 

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, 

Darker than the colorless beards of old men, 

Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. 

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, 

And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. 

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, 

And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken 

     soon out of their laps. 

What do you think has become of the young and old men? 

And what do you think has become of the women and children? 

They are alive and well somewhere, 

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, 

And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the 

     end to arrest it, 

And ceas'd the moment life appeared. 

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, 

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Welcome to Holland

This little story was written by a mother of a child with special needs, but I think it's a great metaphor most of us could apply when we feel like our plans for something important in our lives didn't turn out the way we had wished--at first. Until the wisdom of hindsight shows that Holland was where we were meant to be all along.

From one fellow traveler to another--welcome to Holland, my friend.

Welcome to Holland

By Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel.

It's like this…

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

"Tulip Fields in Holland" by Claude Monet

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!" you say. "What do you mean, Holland?" I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland, and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to some horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

Unexpected Joy After Long Darkness: Poem of the Day

My husband and I pieced together all the places we had been at the same time before we finally met. The first time we know that we were in the same room was a small group gathered for a poetry reading by Leslie Norris in 1991 or 1992.

Mr. Norris gave some excellent advice on that fateful day when I didn't meet my husband. He said that one should read a poem every day. While I have failed to follow that advice most days, today I can correct it. And so can you.

Thank you, Leslie Norris, for holding up your candle in the dark world.

The Pit Ponies
by Leslie Norris

They come like the ghosts of horses, shyly,

from http://www.panoramio.com/photo/17676749

To this summer field, this fresh green,
Which scares them.

They have been too long in the blind mine,
Their hooves have trodden only stones
And the soft, thick dust of fine coal,

And they do not understand the grass.
For over two years their sun
Has shone from an electric bulb

That has never set, and their walking
Has been along the one, monotonous
Track of pulled coal-trucks.

They have bunched their muscles against
The harness and pulled, and hauled.
But now they have come out of the underworld

And are set down in the sun and real air,
Which are strange to them. They are humble

And modest, their heads are downcast, they
Do not expect to see very far. But one
Is attempting a clumsy gallop. It is

Something he could do when he was very young,
When he was a little foal a long time ago
And he could run fleetly on his long foal's legs,
And almost he can remember this. And look,

One rolls on her back with joy in the clean grass!
And they all, awkwardly and hesitantly, like
Clumsy old men, begin to run, and the field

Is full of happy thunder. They toss their heads,
Their manes fly, they are galloping in freedom.
The ponies have come above ground, they are galloping!