Mommy Brain

I want to write something
so simply
about love
or about pain
that even
as you are reading
you feel it
and as you read it
you keep feeling it
and though it might be my story
it will be common,
though it be singular
it will be known to you
so that by the end
you will think -
no, you will realize –
that it was all the while
yourself arranging the words,
that it was all the time
words that you yourself,
out of your own heart
had been saying.

~ by Mary Oliver, from Evidence: Poems

Happy May Day! Anyone else remember leaving flowers on people’s porches as a kid?

I did my update post yesterday, so I’ll get right to the links.

~ Tired of hearing about Swine Flu and the economy? Check out this news recap.

~ A list of 10 famous homeschooled people you can pull out next time someone questions your educational choices.

~ Upsidedown Bee: If I Had Been Eve.

~ Review of Leonardo’s Swans by Karen Essex.

~ My favorite historical fiction.

~ Review of 100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson.

~ Review of The Last Bridge by Teri Coyne.

~ Review of Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich.

~ Review of Pretties by Scott Westerfeld.

~ Monday’s Movie Review: Duplicity.

~ Review of The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway.

For those of you who miss my bookish posts, here are links to my recent posts at Books and Movies:

~ List of links to a whole bunch of book giveaways.

~ My favorite poetry for children.

~ Book review: The Laws of Harmony by Judith R. Hendricks.

~Book giveaway: I’m giving away five copies of the memoir Jantzen’s Gift.

~ Library sale bounty.

~ Favorite poets and poetry collections – for grown-ups this time.

~ Book review: The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart.

~ Book review: Sea Changes by Gail Graham.

At light speed, God speed,
time collapses into now, so that
we may see Christ’s wounds as
still bleeding, his torso,
that ready sponge, still
absorbing our vice, our toxic shame.

He is still being pierced
by every hateful nail
we hammer home. In this
Golgotha moment his body -
chalice for the dark weeping
of the whole world – brims,

spilling over as his lifeblood
drains. His dying into the earth
begins the great reversal -
as blood from a vein leaps
into the needle, so with his rising,
we surge into light.

~ Luci Shaw

Sorry for the lack of a links post last week – I didn’t have a lot of time for web surfing or posting. Today, though, we finished up our week of school – and we’re heading into Spring Break! I am so ready for it. Our weekend will be busy first, though, but with fun stuff. Tomorrow (I’m posting this on Thursday night), we have a play date at Michelle’s house and then tomorrow evening we will dye Easter eggs. Saturday, Josiah is promoting at Tae Kwon Do for the first time. Sunday is Easter, of course. After playing the piano for the service at church, then we will all head to Mom and Dad’s for Easter dinner and an egg hunt. Then Monday, break starts!

~ Did anyone watch House Tuesday night? Spoiler alert! Were you as shocked as I was over Kudner’s suicide? The actor, Kal Penn, had a good reason for leaving the show – he’s going to be working for President Obama.

~ Here’s a snippet of a poem to get you in the mood for National Poetry Month. You can read the rest here.

How to Read a Poem: Beginner’s Manual
by Pamela Spiro Wagner

First, forget everything you have learned,
that poetry is difficult,
that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you,
with your high school equivalency diploma,
your steel-tipped boots,
or your white-collar misunderstandings.

Have a wonderful Easter weekend!

Some random thoughts:

I love spring, but I would love it even more if someone could invent jeans that completely repel grass stains.

I think it’s sad that it has been necessary for the staff at Subway to put up a sign that says, “Please refrain from using your cell phone while placing your sandwich order.”

How is it possible that I’m purchasing fall curriculum for a 7th grader?

I am very proud of Kevin, who gave up chewing tobacco eleven days ago.

I re-connected with an old friend/flame on Facebook. How is it fair that he looks exactly the same as he did the last time I saw him – 16 years ago?

I hate that my sisters live so far away from me. I miss them.

PG-rated movies from the 1970s and 1980s are a lot more adult than PG movies made recently.

I’m going to be very angry if NBC cancels Life.

And now, some links:

~ Anne Hathaway will play Judy Garland in a biopic. Brilliant casting, in my opinion!

~ 1 More Chapter has the new trailer for Terminator Salvation. Can’t wait to see this one.

~ Take Your Vitamin Z has the trailer for the upcoming film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are.

~ Any of you moms Twitter? You’ll get a kick out of this comic.

~ Does Satan exist? If that topic fascinates you, check out the Nightline Face-off on this topic, in which Christians Pastor Mark Driscoll and Annie Lobert debate Deepak Chopra and Bishop Carlton Pearson.

~ This little girl singing The Lord’s Prayer is adorable.

~ April is National Poetry Month. If you’d like to receive poetry in your inbox every day during April, you can sign up at Poets.org and Borzoi Reader.

Mary’s Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast keep warm this small hot star fallen to my arms.
(Rest…You who have had so far to come.)
Now nearness satisfies the body of God sweetly.
Quiet He lies whose vigor hurled a universe.
He sleeps whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps to sprout a world.
Charmed by dove’s voices, the whisper of straw, He dreams, hearing no music from His other
spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes… He is curtailed who overflowed all skies, all years.
Older than eternity, now He is new.
Now native to earth as I am, nailed to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,
Blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,
Brought to this birth for me to be new-born,
And for Him to see me mended, I must see Him torn.

~Luci Shaw

A List of Praises
Anne Porter

Give praise with psalms that tell the trees to sing,
Give praise with Gospel choirs in storefront churches,
Mad with the joy of the Sabbath,
Give praise with the babble of infants, who wake with the sun,
Give praise with children chanting their skip-rope rhymes,
A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous poetry
living wild on the Streets through generations of children.

Give praise with the sound of the milk-train far away
With its mutter of wheels and long-drawn-out sweet whistle
As it speeds through the fields of sleep at three in the morning,
Give praise with the immense and peaceful sigh
Of the wind in the pinewoods,
At night give praise with starry silences.

Give praise with the skirling of seagulls
And the rattle and flap of sails
And gongs of buoys rocked by the sea-swell
Out in the shipping-lanes beyond the harbor.
Give praise with the humpback whales,
Huge in the ocean they sing to one another.

Read the entire poem here.

Te Deum
Charles Reznikoff

Not because of victories
I sing,
having none,
but for the common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of the spring.

Not for victory
but for the day’s work done
as well as I was able;
not for a seat upon the dais
but at the common table.

Concord Hymn
~Sung at the completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837~

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1837~