My Papa's Waltz

My Papa's Waltz

by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath   


Could make a small boy dizzy;   

But I hung on like death:   

Such waltzing was not easy.



We romped until the pans   

Slid from the kitchen shelf;   

My mother’s countenance   

Could not unfrown itself.



The hand that held my wrist   

Was battered on one knuckle;   

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.



You beat time on my head   

With a palm caked hard by dirt,   

Then waltzed me off to bed   

Still clinging to your shirt.

the road less traveled by...

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Philip Larkin

Days

By Philip Larkin

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Vintage Joni

Since I can remember my mother played Joni Mitchell cd's in the background of our house growing up. There is something (to this day) about Joni's voice, her melancholy open-heart, her vulnerable yet powerful soul, her brilliant lyrics and her poetry. Case and point:

"He’s my sunshine in the morning
He’s my fireworks at the end of the day
He’s the warmest chord I ever heard
Play that warm chord, play and stay baby"

I had to share this video because Joni's voice, her art, it is all magic and I am so grateful I grew up knowing that true art and music coexist. She translates and expresses the complexities of her emotions and the depth. I can go months without listening to Joni and then as soon as I hear her again, I know that I am home.
Thanks Mom

xoxoxox
Erica

here is the deepest secret...

Untitled, a photo by Esage7 on Flickr.

i carry your heart
by e.e. cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

A poem for you

Married
by Jack Gilbert


I came back from the funeral and crawled
around the apartment, crying hard,
searching for my wife’s hair.
For two months got them from the drain,
from the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator,
and off the clothes in the closet.
But after other Japanese women came,
there was no way to be sure which were
hers, and I stopped. A year later,
repotting Michiko’s avocado, I find
a long black hair tangled in the dirt.

Burn Bright Friends!