Blackbird Song

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

    by Wallace Stevens (excerpt)

Section VII

"O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?"

  The things in life that give us the greatest pleasure are often right in front of us.  If we recognize that fact, and respond to local beauty, there is no need to "imagine golden birds" or other mythology. Watch, Look and Listen for Love. 
Love feeds us both physically and spiritually. 
   Listen to the song of the blackbird above. When I hear it, I am no longer a thin man of Haddam. I feel like I have heard a beautiful song. Perhaps it is also serenading the women around us. At that moment, the man, the woman and the blackbird are one.

"Three Men Walking" - Alberto Giacometti 

                                     
                                        

Seeing Love

Whenever you see love, you can somersault over the hurtful obstacles of life. That  love can be for beauty, nature, a person, or a song. Love is a force or energy more powerful than anything that opposes love.
   In Milton's  Sonnet, O Nightingale, the nightingale's warble symbolizes love as a "fresh hope" for Lovers.

 

O Nightingale

John Milton
O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy Spray
Warbl’st at eeve, when all the Woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the Lovers heart dost fill,
While the jolly hours lead on propitious May,
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day,
First heard before the shallow Cuccoo’s bill
Portend success in love; O if Jove’s will
Have linkt that amorous power to thy soft lay,
Now timely sing, ere the rude Bird of Hate
Foretell my hopeles doom in som Grove ny:
As thou from yeer to yeer hast sung too late
For my relief; yet hadst no reason why,
Whether the Muse, or Love call thee his mate,
Both them I serve, and of their train am I.

Instead of the nightingale, we have the pretty "liquid notes" of Steve Wariner to serenade us, in this most propitious month of May.

Breath

  

 

"To take someone's breath 

away" is an English idiom that means  "to overwhelm someone with beauty or grandeur; to surprise or astound someone."  Examples are "The magnificent painting took my breath away."  or  "My darling looked so beautiful that she took my breath away."   
     

Breathing is not easier when you are in love.  You can count your  breaths till you see each other again. You can get become breathless with anticipation. Still a life with love is the best way to breathe. Open the windows to love.

Heaven and Earth

The Jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins was looking for a place to practice the saxophone when he lived in New York City in the late 1950's. It's a loud instrument for an apartment dwelling,  so he took a walk and "came to this big expanse",  a pedestrian overpass on The Williamsburg Bridge.

     He went to the bridge to practice his saxophone, playing against the sky"just about everyday for two years." He was happiest up there on the bridge walkway and could have just stayed up there forever improving his volume and his wind capacity. But Rollins said: "You can't be in heaven and on earth at the same time."
   Without a saxophone, the closest mere mortals come to that heavenly state is being in love.
  Can you hear heaven as well as feel it?
     The Bible says it sounds like this (Revelation 14:2):
  New International Version
And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps.

     Thank you Sonny Rollins for letting us hear that thunder in the song above.

So In Love

The silhouettes we make when we kiss can compete with the best sunset, don't you think?

Walt Whitman wrote in his poem Song at Sunset:

O setting sun! though the time has come, 

I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated adoration. 

The Real Gift

“The real gift is time. Now. Each other, this night, and the wide, wide moon-silvered sea.”

― Amy McNamara, Lovely, Dark and Deep

When we step into love, we enter another world.  The clocks slow down and the exact time is no longer important.
 
   If we can remember that time, you will need no clock. Everyday is a great time to step into love and every moment is precious.

     

Seeds of Love

“Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” 
― Robert Louis Stevenson

The seeds of love are watered with friendship, care and love. To watch love grow a little bit more and a little higher each day is difficult, but wait, keep the faith, for the harvest is going to be great.

Diego Rivera - The Sowers