Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life
November 6, 2017

ready for harvest


Ripe and ready for harvest
The meadow lies before me
Still standing yet stripped
Of all but essentials

The sum of my present life
Waits for release into new life
Seeds dropped here and there
With no guarantees

There is no cure for death
The goal toward which
Every heartbeat has driven me
The home for which I long

I feel only loneliness and sorrow
At leaving behind loved ones
And this beautiful threatened world

D took this photo on our last visit to Longwood Gardens. No more stunning meadow flowers, and not so many joyous birds and butterflies. Instead, it’s full of late term life, ready to give its well-aged beauty to anyone willing to spend time looking and listening.

It isn’t as perky as it was just a month ago. Still, it isn’t ugly, or a sign that all is lost. Rather, it’s a sign that life is brief and fragile, and that it’s important to love it while we have it. One way or another, death comes to each of us sooner or later. With or without time for last goodbyes or heartfelt conversations.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 6 November 2017
Photo taken by DAFraser, 28 October 2017
Daily Prompt: Panacea

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November 4, 2017

Ikebana and Bonsai at Longwood | Photos


Last Saturday D and I visited Longwood Gardens for a late summer/early fall walk. The flower beds had been put to bed for winter, and the meadow was a seedy expanse of dying yet still graceful grasses. We took a meadow walk, stopped by the children’s railroad display, ate lunch in the café, and then headed over to the conservatory to see the annual Chrysanthemum Festival.

This year the Conservatory went all out with an Ikebana display, a Bonsai display, and Longwood style Japanese Lanterns. Plus thousands of chrysanthemums.

Below are my favorites from the Ikebana display. First, a few things about Ikebana, the art of Japanese flower arranging.

  • Ikebana goes back to Japanese Shinto worship of nature, and the Chinese Buddhist tradition of placing flowers on the altar to Buddha.
  • Today it’s more about flower arranging, following ancient rules and forms. Usually the arrangements are in the form of an asymmetrical triangle.

The exhibit hall is normally set up for musical concerts. This time it’s an Ikebana display of various kinds of Ikebana arrangements. All arrangements are by qualified members of the Ikebana Philadelphia Chapter, which includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Ikebana International has over 10,000 members in more than 50 countries.

Here’s a look just outside the exhibit hall, back toward the entrance to the Conservatory. You can see Chrysanthemum ‘mushrooms’ popping up, lots of water flowing, and behind all the foliage, lots of visitors!


Turning around from this view, we walked into a large area lined with Bonsai arrangements. Again, this wasn’t a competition, but a display by members of the local Brandywine Bonsai Society. Here are some favorites. I was especially intrigued by the combination displays of ‘large’ and miniature arrangements. The miniatures are shown enlarged; you can also see them beside their exhibit ‘partners.’


Well, friends, I’ve barely touched the Chrysanthemum Festival, and haven’t even begun to show you Japanese Lanterns Longwood style! Stay tuned, but don’t hold your breath. It’s bad for your blood pressure.

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 4 November 2017
All photos taken by DAFraser, 28 October 2017

16 Comments
November 3, 2017

weapons of warfare

intention to harm
shot from loaded heart and tongue
backfires brilliantly
exposing raw self-contempt
seething beneath thin skin

What will it take to give us, as a nation, eyes to see beneath the surface of bully tactics?

The best solution I’ve found is to stand before the mirror of my loaded heart and tongue. I’m still learning to acknowledge, comfort and care for deep wounds inflicted upon me by others and by myself. The cost, however, is high. I have to let others in, allowing them to see and love me in my self-contempt, sometimes showing me how it’s done.

Is this lifetime skill of loving ourselves as damaged yet unspeakably valuable persons modeled in our homes, our churches, our schools? Do we know how to see into bullies without being hooked by their bows, arrows and buckshot ways? Do we know how to value them without giving up the duty of holding them accountable for the harm they do us and others? No matter who they are?

Our nation is drowning in an epidemic self-contempt raging across every boundary on our maps. It festers and erupts within national and state politics, and within the homes and streets of our neighborhoods. Directly and indirectly it fuels every shot of every firearm ever invented. How do we address this crisis? Or even begin to acknowledge it as a national emergency that touches each of us, whether we realize it or not.

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 3 November 2017
Image found at theodysseyonline.com
Daily Prompt: Simmer, Neighbors

19 Comments
November 1, 2017

a great restlessness

Sometimes
a great restlessness
comes over me

I long for home –
for release from pain and sorrow
weighing heavy
even in the midst of grand beauty
and people I love

I can’t go back –
The distance grows greater every day
and I can’t start over –
Not while I’m held in this time
You have given me

I’m just not sure why it matters
to have me hanging around –
Please enlighten.

I wrote these words at the end of the day, over a week ago. It’s difficult to describe how it feels to have life almost completely turned on its head within the short space of a moment or two.

The last two years have forced me to become brutally honest about what I can and cannot do each day. I swing haphazardly between elation (I finally figured out how to pull this off!), to weary despair (Is this the agenda for the rest of my life?).

At first, two years ago now, it was all a frightfully strange yet challenging adventure. Today I want less strangeness and more adventure. The kind that fits me today, not the woman I was yesterday.

As for ‘normal,’ it’s out the window! I don’t even know what it is anymore. The prayer above is the truth about me today. Open, expectant, actively looking and listening for a way to fit all pieces of this restless puzzle together: poetry, a small group of other poets, close to home and life-giving. Something that fits hand-in-glove with the writing I’m already doing and the woman I am today.

Elouise♥

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 1 November 2017
Photo of Sunset in the Black Forest, found at pixabay
Daily Prompt: Mystery

13 Comments
October 31, 2017

Ghoulish Gallery

Behold my four ghouls
Some greater than others
Designed to affright
disgust or delight

Traditional Irish Jack-‘o-Lantern (above) inhabits
the Museum of Country Life in Ireland

Modern carving of a Cornish Jack-‘o-Lantern
made from a turnip

Modern carving of a North American
Jack-o’-Lantern pumpkin
designed, hand carved and photographed
by my delightfully irrepressible Sister #3, Diane
who died of ALS in February 2006

Happy Halloween, Everybody!

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 30 October 2017
Halloween witch image found at pinterest.com
Images of Cornish and Irish Jack-‘o-Lanterns found at Wickipedia
Photo of Jack-‘o-Lantern pumpkin taken by Diane Renich Kelley
Daily Prompt: Ghoulish

20 Comments
October 30, 2017

my small world

Living in a well-kept cave
Hunched over my desk
A mere speck of dust
On the head of a pin
I labor earnestly
To make all right within
And without my small world

Ducking my head
I make my way cautiously
Down narrow stairsteps
Into an underground cellar
Retrieving small bits and pieces
Of frozen life-support
Watching lest I bang my head
On a forgotten metal pipe
Or hefty wooden beam

Sitting at my kitchen table
Shades drawn to shut out the gloom
And chill of approaching winter
I drink to yet another day
Of life within this small abode
Lined with objects of a past
Now haunting my present as I
Dig deep searching for lost pieces
Of a life I once lived now frozen
Within ghostlike reminders

This poem captures a truth about my life. Is it overstated? I hope so. But then again….

Sometimes I use John Baillie’s Diary of Private Prayer for my morning and evening prayers. The language is a bit outdated for my ears, but this line grabbed my attention this morning, leading to the poem above.

Creator Spirit….Forbid that under the low roof of workshop or office of study I should ever forget Thy great overarching sky….

John Baillie, A Diary of Private Prayer, p. 30 (Fireside, 1996 edition)

Thankfully the sun is out today, with fluffy clouds sprinkled here and there. I want to walk this day beneath and within the roof of our Creator’s glorious, overarching sky. Indoors or out, though I’m hoping for outdoors!

Elouise♥

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 30 October 2017
Photo found at carlwozniak.com
Daily Prompt: Fluff; Gratitude

3 Comments
October 27, 2017

It doesn’t have to be the blue iris

It’s the end of a busy week, and we’re hoping to visit Longwood Gardens tomorrow (yay!). One thing that helped me stay focused this week was Mary Oliver’s poem below. My comments follow.

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Mary Oliver, Thirst, Beacon Press 2006

Mary Oliver invites me to attend to small things right before my eyes, often at my feet. Pay attention. So much attention that I can’t stop thinking about it/them.

One small thing caught my attention this past week. At first I didn’t see any connections. Or hear any voices speaking into my silence. Yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

‘It’ is a small, striped-tail chipmunk (ground squirrel) that regularly sits on a cement block wall just along the edge of our backyard driveway. He or she? I don’t know. I do know it’s often sitting or lying on that wall in just the same spot. And has been since the wall was completed several years ago.

Sometimes it runs down the wall and jumps into our pile of yard trimmings, looking for food. When the weather is chilly, it stretches out on top of its favorite cement block and soaks in the sun. Other times it sits there alert, watching for possible intruders.

I think it has a nest inside one of the cement blocks—on the unfinished back side of the wall. Sometimes when I walk by on the way to the garage it quickly races into one of the cement blocks.

Several kinds of hawks frequent our area. I’ve watched them swoop down into our back yard to surprise a large gray squirrel, a slow sparrow or a dove. I’ve also heard our small chipmunk squawking out the alarm, joined by other small backyard creatures. Sometimes the hawks have their way.

We live in unsettled times. It takes determination to focus on simple things that inhabit our lives. Especially when there are hawks out there with their beady eyes scanning the ground for juicy tidbits.

Mary Oliver’s poem invites me to pay attention to the chipmunk. To hear our Creator’s voice speaking through the simple things of life. Not giving up, but staying alert, living each day simply and fully. Which can be a way of saying thank you. Without fancy gestures or heavy words laden with heavy thoughts. This isn’t a contest.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 27 October 2017
Photo found at Pinterest

9 Comments
October 26, 2017

The canvas of our dreams

The canvas of our dreams
Writ deep in hazy memories
Unfurls a Master Narrative
Embraced with godly fervor

Layer upon layer added thereto
Fills in once empty gaps
With stuff of dreams and whiffs of smoke
The snake oil of deceivers

Here, drink to this and drink to that!
We’ve always been the greatest
Just raise your glass and repeat with me
Our mantra of salvation –
Then head right to your voting booth
And punch for victory!

In the opening pages of his monumental history of multicultural America, Ronald Takaki defines what he calls “the Master Narrative of American History.”

According to this powerful and popular but inaccurate story, our country was settled by European immigrants, and Americans are white. ‘Race,’ observed Toni Morrison, has functioned as a ‘metaphor’ necessary to the ‘construction of Americanness’: in the creation of our national identity, ‘American’ has been defined as ‘white.’ Not to be ‘white’ is to be designated as the ‘Other’ – different, inferior, and unassimilable.

Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Little, Brown and Company, 2008 edition, p. 4)
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness in the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, Mass., 1992, p. 47)

This rules out groups such as those Takaki focuses on in his book: Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, Mexican Americans, and Muslim Americans.

The only way to fight surreal snake oil is with knowledge and committed resistance to the purveyors of snake oil.

As a highly persistent woman, I am yet again highly recommending this book. Even though you may not make it through all 445 pages, you’ll find a goldmine of correctives to our current misguided, surreal national obsession with who’s really ‘American.’

Cheers to all my neighbors, near and far. We’re in this together–even when it seems we’re not.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 26 October 2017
Image found at hallidaysutherland.files.wordpress.com
Daily Prompt: Surreal

8 Comments
October 25, 2017

Old before her grownup time


Old before her grownup time
A little girl in adult mode
Within her childhood body
Performs an adult’s duties

Reserves once bright diminished now
She wills her youthful girlhood back
To fuel her lagging body

Perhaps she’ll wake up one bright day
And find those long-lost years
Held in reserve for later use –
Life savings locked within a vault
Accumulating dividends

I woke up a few days ago with a thought flitting around in my head: What if all my unspent childhood energy—lost to adult responsibilities before my time—is sitting somewhere waiting for me to reclaim it? You know–to fill in energy gaps that crop up when least expected or welcome.

After nearly 74 years, surely I’m entitled to reap something from all that premature investment in adulthood. Not just in my spirit, but (especially) in my body.

Now wouldn’t that be something to shout about? I might even put one of those giant trampolines in my backyard to burn off the energy!

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 25 October 2017
Photo found at livingonthecheap.com
Daily Prompt: Identity

12 Comments
October 24, 2017

A Thought went up my mind today —

Here’s indisputable evidence of Emily Dickinson’s ability to capture everyday experiences with an economy of words. My comments follow.

A Thought went up my mind today –
That I have had before –
But did not finish – some way back –
I could not fix the Year –

Nor where it went – nor why it came
The second time to me –
Nor definitely, what it was –
Have I the Art to say –

But somewhere – in my Soul – I know –
I’ve met the Thing before –
It just reminded me – ‘twas all –
And came my way no more –

c. 1863

Emily Dickinson Poems, Edited by Brenda Hillman
Shambhala Pocket Classics, Shambhala 1995

I love this poem from Emily, especially the opening suggestion that her mind is a chimney. The poem itself is amazingly clear and simple, without losing its mysterious reference to the Thought.

In fact, we could spend a little time right now trying to figure out what Emily’s as yet unformed Thought was. Isn’t that what interpretation of poetry is all about? Emily’s poem is like a tongue-in-cheek joke as she sits back to see what we might discover about her deep Thought. So deep that not even she could remember or articulate it.

They say that if you’re a writer you should always carry a notebook to record all the stunningly insightful Thoughts that pass through your mind unbidden. Brilliant Thoughts! Creative Thoughts! Catch them before they fade away! You might use them someday. Right?

Well….the problem for me, and, I’m guessing, for most writers (including Emily), is that we’re an amazingly Thought-filled tribe. We don’t control the incoming tide or the evaporating mist of our precocious insights.

Just maybe, instead of carrying around scraps of paper or heavy notebooks for our genius thoughts, we should carry around butterfly nets! Then we could run around in meadows capturing those flighty bits of precocious wisdom and turns of phrase before they flit away!

Or then again, we might console ourselves with the Thought that having experiences like Emily’s is a sure sign we’re writers! Bravo! It’s our trademark! How else to explain and celebrate our brilliance?

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 24 October 2017
Smoking Chimney image found at cliparts.zone
Butterfly net image found at neh.gov
Daily Prompt: Trademark

3 Comments