Summer’s Exit, Stage Left

Summer’s Exit, Stage Left

by Kelly (of rituals) ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Summer distracts me with her bright sun & warm waters, while the other hand ever-so-slowly pulls the green from the grass and the pigment from the trees, claiming leaves here and there, while signaling the frogs–one by one–to slip from the pond, across the road, and into the woods…

kelly salasin

The Dog Days… of September

The Dog Days… of September

by Kelly (of rituals) ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

 

i love the sound of a body,

any kind of body,

entering the pond~

a person

a boat

a dog.

Yes, especially a dog.

i love the leaping plunge of all fours,

the giving over of earthly paws to the weightlessness of water.

When summer winds down and children return to school,

the dogs frequent the pond,

accompanied by a two-legged friend,

but sometimes on their own.

Like yesterday,

when an old Bassett Hound and a Shepard Mutt

crashed the gates to this member-only swimming hole,

taking turns dipping

and alternately shaking off

which they did next to me & my blanket–

as if they wouldn’t know they were dry

unless someone else

was wet.

 

South Pond, September 26, 2010

Poem for Autumn’s Graces

Poem for Autumn’s Graces

by Kelly (of rituals) ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I fell in under the spell of this poem at unlikely time–as a freshman in college.  I didn’t understand poetry at the time nor did I grasp its relevance to my life, but when Professor George read Pied Beauty, I felt it, in my bones.  I could appreciate the idea of “dappled things” like on this first day of a New England fall.

Kelly Salasin

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems.  1918.

13. Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; 5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: 10
Praise him.