Nadine's Blog

Sometimes you look at an empty valley like this,
and suddenly the air is filled with snow.
That is the way the whole world happened-
there was nothing and then…

But maybe some time you will look out and even
the mountains are gone, the world become nothing
again. What can a person do to help
bring back the world?

We have to watch it and then look to eachother.
Together we hold it close and carefully
save it, like a bubble that can disappear
if we don’t watch out.

Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world.
Hold out your hands to it. When mornings and evenings
roll along, watch how they open and close, how they
invite you to the long party that your life is.

William Stafford

www.nadineaiellographics.com

www.shasta-organics.com

www.covertwocover.org

In Response to a Question

The earth says have a place,
be what that place requires;
hear the sound the birds imply
and see as deep as ridges go behind eachother…

The earth says where you live,
wear the kind of color that your life is
and by listening with the same bowed head that sings
draw all into one song,
join the sparrow on the lawn,
and row that easy way, the rage without,
met by the wings within, that guide you anywhere
the wind blows.

Listening, I think that’s what the earth says.

William Stafford

www.nadineaiellographics.com

In out of the way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling your emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plentitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

-John O’Donohue

www.nadineaiellographics.com

There is a place where you can go
Where you are quiet,
A place of water and light

On the water. Trees are there,
Leaves and the light
On leaves moved by air.

Birds, singing, move
Among leaves, in leaf shadow.
After many years you have come

To no thoughts of these,
But they are themselves
Your thoughts. There seems to  be

Little to say, less and less.
Here they are. Here you are.
Here as though gone.

None of us stays, but in a hush
Where each leaf in the speech
Of leaves is a sufficient syllable

The passing light finds out
Surpassing freedom of its way.

-Wendell Berry

www.nadineaiellographics.com

To the Library!

Join us in Celebrating (and Supporting!) our Libraries
with an evening of Poetry & Music…

Friday April 8th at the Mt Shasta Library
Saturday April 9th at the Weed Library
starting at 7pm with

DOUG VON KOSS
Poet, Storyteller and Human Extraordinaire…
www.dougvonkoss.com

LESLIE TIFT & TOM SCOTT
An immensly gifted acoustic duo of local (and growing) fame…
www.tomandlesliemusic.com

BRING…
your favorite book of poetry to donate to the library
for yours and the generations to come…

These will be no ordinary evenings!

“May the library become the word on everyone’s lips
and the place to be in every community .”
-Cover2Cover

www.nadineaiellographics.com

…and a poem/song by Peter Mayer

I’m like one of those Japanese bowls
That were made long ago
I have some cracks in me
They have been filled with gold

That’s what they used back then
When they had a bowl to mend
It did not hide the cracks
It made them shine instead

So now every old scar shows
from every time I broke
And anyone’s eyes can see
I’m not what I used to be

But in a collector’s mind
All of these jagged lines
Make me more beautiful
And worth a higher price

I’m like one of those Japanese bowls
I was made long ago
I have some cracks you can see
See how they shine of gold.
-Peter Mayer
www.petermayer.net

www.nadineaiellographics.com

with a heartfull of gratitude…

Working together

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

passed at speed
round a shaped wing

easily
holds our weight.

So may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self,
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.

-David Whyte

www.nadineaiellographics.com

For Christmas Eve, a friend asked me to read a poem.
Here it is with gratefulness…..

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over the mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm and slightly humid?
Is it not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the
universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside the generous pocket of his silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck,
and our boots stand dripping  by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.
-Billy Collins

www.nadineaiellographics.com

Of what surrounds me…

Whatever it is I am saying, I always
need a leaf or a flower, if not an entire field.

As for sky, I am so wildly
in love with each day’s inventions, cool blue
or cat gray or full
of the ships of clouds, I simply can’t
say whatever it is I am saying without
at least one skyful.

That leaves water, a
creek or a well, river or ocean, it has to be
there, for the heart to be there,

for the pen to be poised.
For the idea to come.
-Mary Oliver

A few Mary Oliver poems online:
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/oliver/online_poems.htm

http://www.nadineaiellographics.com