Ready or Not, Here I Come…

Beginning a New Year is cause to celebrate renewal as well as an opportunity to contemplate how time and circumstances transition from one phase to the next. Sometimes, change is gradual and unnoticed. Days slip by; weeks merge; seasons cycle; the years roll on. Bleak winter surprises Fall’s beauty! Biology jolts us as aging sneaksContinue reading “Ready or Not, Here I Come…”

Ready or Not, Here I Come….

Beginning a New Year is cause to celebrate renewal as well as an opportunity to contemplate how time and circumstances transition from one phase to the next. Sometimes, change is gradual and unnoticed. Days slip by; weeks merge; seasons cycle; the years roll on. Bleak winter surprises Fall’s beauty! Biology jolts us as aging sneaksContinue reading “Ready or Not, Here I Come….”

Presumption or Promise?

  A quintessential, summer morning sail along the Maine coast includes lobster boats and pots, wharf smells and screeching gulls, lifting fog and salty breeze filling hoisting sails, and a sense of uncertainty and adventure as one heads for open seas.   In her poem “As if the Sea should part”, Emily Dickinson likened theContinue reading “Presumption or Promise?”

Oh, What About Those Neighbors?

Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall “ deals with the difficulties of neighborliness. Frost and his neighbor had different philosophies about the stone wall separating his orchard from his neighbor’s pine grove, but Frost pointed out how unnecessary the fence was, “My apple trees will never get across/And eat the cones under his pines, I tellContinue reading “Oh, What About Those Neighbors?”

“Raging against the Dying of the Light” or Confidently “Going into the Good Night?” Thoughts from Dylan Thomas and Jesus…

Watching his beloved father become weakened by age and illness, Dylan Thomas lamented that “ Old age should burn and rave at close of day ” and wrote the untitled poem with the well known quote “ Do not go gentle into that good night.” In that poem, he observed the end-of- life ruminations ofContinue reading ““Raging against the Dying of the Light” or Confidently “Going into the Good Night?” Thoughts from Dylan Thomas and Jesus…”

Birches

Robert Frost’s “Birches” has been a long time favorite of mine, probably because it conjures up some special childhood memories of swinging on birches. “So was I once myself a swinger of birches/ And so I dream of going back to be”   But it is more than nostalgic verse. At one point Frost states,  “ ButContinue reading “Birches”