Estonia and Poland--Haikus from The Trip

***I may have lost mostly of my photos from my Scandinavian Adventure—the verdict is still out—but thankfully my notes and poems were backed up in that mysterious cloud of invisible information—and some of those notes included a few pictures! As seen in my middle of the night revelation that has resulted in my enrolling in graduate school (see last Thursday’s note), even though I was very far away from real life, my brain continued to think and my heart continued to feel deeply about things having nothing to do with the trip. Some of those “feels” (as a good friend would say) are seen here.***

Friday, 7.22.16, Tallin, Estonia

Today's my birthday
I am in a foreign place
This is rather neat

Professor Umbridge
She clears her throat like Umbridge
God grant me patience

If he wants to try
Let him try. Challenged is not
Incapable. At all.

Large Crowds of people
Pouring through the doors. Tourists.
If only worship.

7.23.16, Sea Day Poems

The day is lazy
A much needed day of rest
Vacation is hard

I want to be more
Than a negative mem'ry
There was so much more

I often wonder
Are the trails I leave behind
Lasting or fading

7.24.16, Gdansk, Poland

Morning bells ringing
Chiming the hour with bright song
Tickling the senses

Sometimes holding on
Suffocates pathways of breath.
Inhale. Let go. Breathe.

I’ve made huge mistakes
Turned left on a one way street
Yet some things were right

Moonrise

I walked in the door from a meeting tonight only to have Bullet demand that I take him out for his nightly potty break.

Because I still had my shoes on and because it feels great outside, I decided to take the little guy for a full walk tonight.

Just as we were returning home, I realized that I’d forgotten to check the mail. When I turned around to walk back to the mailbox, I was struck by a brilliant orange moon peaking over the trees at the end of the street.

I said to myself, “Wow. That wasn’t there just a few minutes ago.”

Then I proceeded to stand at the bottom of my driveway and watch the most beautiful moonrise I had ever seen.

“That is so beautiful, God,” I kept saying. “And to think that I wouldn’t have seen it had I not turned back.”

Sometimes, I suppose, we need to move forward and not look back because the pictures that we see of Egypt are deceptively beautiful and can hold us back.

But sometimes, just maybe, it’s okay to look back. Because, sometimes, just maybe, looking back helps us see something beautiful that we didn’t know was there waiting to peak above the horizon.

The rabbit in the moon is very clear tonight.

Thank you, God, for its beauty. And thank you for the reminder of your presence tonight…and every night. Amen.

---

Moonrise (by D.H. Lawrence)
And who has seen the moon, who has not seen
Her rise from out the chamber of the deep,
Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber
Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw
Confession of delight upon the wave,
Littering the waves with her own superscription
Of bliss, till all her lambent beauty shakes towards us
Spread out and known at last, and we are sure
That beauty is a thing beyond the grave,
That perfect, bright experience never falls
To nothingness, and time will dim the moon
Sooner than our full consummation here
In this odd life will tarnish or pass away.

On The Bradford Pear

Bradford Pear trees are blossoming in the world.
They’re beautiful.
But they stink.
Boy do they stink.
And I find this fact sad: that
Flowers so beautiful can smell so bad.
But I guess this is true about a lot of things:
So many things look appealing but,
Through and through,
They are not.

I hope, and
I pray, that
I will not be limited or deceived by outward beauty but
See and embrace people and things as they really are…
Even if they stink.

G-Mama Lights The Way

A few years ago, in preparation for a whole family beach trip, my grandmother, at the height of her QVC shopping days, purchased small lanterns for use by each family member.

For as long as I can remember, my grandmother’s house has been decorated with candles. My sister always enjoyed lighting the candles before family meals…

Until G-mama discovered battery-operated candles. At that point, the wax candles in G-mama’s house, slowly but surely, were replaced by battery-operated candles that light with a button rather than a flame. During the replacement process, the battery-operated candle movement moved its way into the rest of the family and now many of our houses are lit by candles that won’t burn down the house…

They won’t burn down a campsite either.

We should know. G-mama’s light sources lit the way for us to set up camp at Stone Mountain on Friday night.

I can’t remember the exact numbers, but I think that G-mama showed up on our campsite through two small lanterns, one battery-operated candle, one jar candle, and three taper candles. Griffin and I had to change the battery-operated candle so that it could light my little tent. But it worked with new batteries and was super helpful when I crawled into bed each night…and when I heard rain pouring down on Saturday night and had to rig a little curtain out of a Nemo sheet because I hadn’t put the rain guard over my door before going to sleep.

The small lanterns helped us change the batteries in the above candle as well as the big lantern whose batteries were dying.

But it was the jar candle and taper candles that proved most helpful—a jar candle that was really ugly because it had once been melted and taper candles that were old and partially burned but had been abandoned. Naturally, my sister didn’t pack candlesticks. Who packs candlesticks for camping? So we made our own. Out of plastic water bottles.

With a little bit of water to anchor the bottle, the plastic water bottle served as the perfect camping candlestick. And when the candle burned down, it dropped through the bottle opening, landed in the water, and the flame extinguished. Or maybe the flame extinguished before hitting the water. I don’t know. I wasn’t watching. All I know is that the candle was burning one moment and it was safely out the next. Which was really neat. And I know that just one candle provided enough light to penetrate the darkness.

After Amelia and I returned from our first trip to the potty on Friday, my sister asked us if the bathhouse was very far. Amelia responded, “No. We were talking the whole time.” While her answer was very cute and heartwarming—and a testament to her extraverted nature—it wasn’t completely correct. Our campsite was a few minutes away from the bathhouse—not somewhere you’d want to venture to in the middle of the night. But it was easy to find on that last night-time trip to running water and electricity because of…the bright light of the taper candle.

It was a beacon to a campsite full of love and laughter and light…provided by G-mama.