Monday Morning Musings:

Scarlet, russet, orange, green—
the colors bright against the sky
pewter, lead, as clouds fly

one day bluster, one day calm
gulls and geese mind the storm
of swirling wind, cold and warm
opposites attract,
or do they simply fight
in thunderous rumbles, a response to flight.
In darkness, we seek light,
in longest night, the dawn
apricot and pink, shy sparkle then gone









but where do we go
when hate comes again
cycles of not if, but when
in endless journeys,
ships in the night, dreams
of a future— streams
of thought from the past,
ancestral visions caught or checked?
What happened, what comes next?
We need both bread and roses
to survive, to thrive
beyond existence, life and alive



to hope and beauty–
to plants seeds, then wait
for others to germinate
tender buds, well-nourished—
bread and roses, not
blood and lies, a nation fraught
with dangerous thoughts
bread and roses, not mobs and guns—
the ones
who shout loudest attract a crowd,
but circles and seasons, round and round
the sun rises, beams from sky to ground,




even if we’re not here, even if no one is around,
the star-birds twinkle and sing, wing light
into the future, red and blue shifts bright beyond our sight—
and perhaps—
some travelers in some time hence
may see not only relics of destruction and fear,
but traces of love sown and grown, still echoing here.

The weather has been strange, and the news has been frightening.
We took a trip to Longwood Gardens last week just to get out of the house. We wore masks indoors, though some did not. We had a recent COVID scare, but fortunately my husband and I both tested negative. Yet some people still refuse to wear masks or get vaccines and believe the pseudo-science they hear.
My theme was also inspired by this Marginalian post about Rebecca Solnit on George Orwell’s Roses. Bread and Roses was a poem set to music and used as a union marching song.
Last night we watched an interactive streaming play called Witness by the Arlekin’s Zero Gravity (zero-G) Virtual Theater Lab. It shares the experiences of the Jewish refugees on the St. Louis, which left Germany in 1939, only to be turned away in Cuba, and then other countries, and combines them with stories from more recent Jewish immigrants from Russian and Ukraine, along with discussions of recent acts of anti-Semitism. It was interesting and thought provoking. My grandparents came from what is now Belarus and Ukraine.
This morning I saw so many vultures just down the street from where I live. I could hear their wings flapping. It was thrilling.




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