🌻

JUNE

by Linda Pastan

The June bug

on the screen door

whirs like a small,

ugly machine,

and a chorus of frogs

and crickets drones like Musak

at all the windows.

What we don’t quite see

comforts us.

Blink of lightning, grumble

of thunder—just the heat

clearing its throat. 

     In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a      kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

— Marcel Proust

 

🦩

                                                        Flamingo

                                         turning round, she smiled

                                        with awkward flamingo grace

                                        piercing my heart through

This fugitive memory . . . I should so much 

Like to record it, but it’s dwindled. . . .

A skin made of jasmine-petals on a night. . . .

An August evening—but was it August? 

— Cavafy

tr. Lawrence Durrell

Yannis Tsarouchis

 

  

Some forms of metamorphosis require a sudden shift in Perspective 

 

  

💜

“And when people cease to believe that there is good and evil,

Only beauty will call to them and save them

So that they will know how to say: this is true and that is false.” 

― Czesław Miłosz

 

 

💜

“Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a last kingdom of peace.”

    -Eugene O’Neill

 

 

👽

“𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦; 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘬 𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘸𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 …”

 

 

The Calennig Apple - a Welsh tradition of decorating an apple with cloves or nuts and sprigs of greenery, then standing it on a tripod of twigs. It is given as a gift or kept in the home to ensure good luck and prosperity during the coming year.

Bit of Folklore for your New Years Traditions! 

 

 

Georgia O’Keeffe

 

A candle or lantern was kept burning through the night on Christmas Eve. If it wasn't, people feared a death in the family. Grocers in Yorkshire used to give out candles as a gift specifically for this purpose, to their customers.