Another Quote for Banned Book Week

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.  For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.  ~John F. Kennedy


       

Monday Mentions

A few things in no particular order of importance...

• It's banned Book Week and in recognition thereof, the following quote by Justice Potter Stewart - Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself.  It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. 
• I was delighted to get my copy of Letters From The Emily Dickinson Room in the mail Saturday. It was in the quiet of the afternoon that I read it through completely the first time. I will have more to say about it later this week, but I was so impressed by it I could not out it down.
• The Top Ten Ludicrous Reasons To Ban A Book
• The Ten Muses of Poetry
• I find the following both a disheartening and frightening aspect of the President's position on privacy.
• TAKE A POEM - LEAVE A POEM

Quiet Pleased - Letters From The Emily Dickinson Room came in the mail.

My copy of Letters From The Emily Dickinson Room arrived in the mail.

I cannot be disturbed!

Doggie Angst

After a day of behaving beautifully while men were trimming the maples in our back yard for about 4-1/2 hours, in early evening I left my journal on the bed and went out back with my wife for maybe 15 minutes. Upon return, Mo had decided to add a few non-verbal thoughts to my journal.  Fortunately he was kind to the leather and just worked on a couple of pages. I suppose he was expressing himself so how angry can I be. He just needs to have his own journal for the future. Mine is not meant to be a collaborative venture.

Magpie Tales 33



The Other Woman

I stare into the mirror

at the dressing table.

Another woman looks

back—

a young woman

amazingly foreign

to the ordinary geography

of my world;

black dress, string of pearls,

she draws her inner wrists
to her face, fair in the silver tone
background—

gently the essence of rose
regal and voluminous
laced in lilac and vanilla
rises as she fills her chest.

How different
from the aroma
of tomato sauce
crowed out by basil,
garlic and pepperoni
amid the musty smell
of dishes from the morning
mingling in the sink with those
the night before—

2010© Michael A. Wells - all rights reserved

Magpie Tales 33

Confession Tuesday - The simple and the complex edition

If you've come for the weekly confession, you're just in time. Come along...

Dear Reader,

It's been one week since my last confession and I have several things to confess this morning.

I confess that I remain in awe of the things in life that are simple and yet complex. A simple sunrise this morning (pictured here) greeted me. The layers of cloud cover with openings of sky soft pinks and orange and brilliant amber.

I confess that I am amazed that we (that I) can see with my own eyes things as spectacular as a sunrise like this. That these brown eyes of mine can take it all in and that somehow my mind processes all this and that I can in fact distinguish this as something of beauty.

I too confess that I am so impressed that we (people) can actually communicate such abstract things as beauty and hope and love and fear and desire and all these things that we take for granted as though they just happen and there is nothing complicated about the process of people coming to understand words that define such concepts.

Sure, I realize there are miraculous things that are happening every day in science.  But wow, you don't have to be looking through a microscope, a telescope, examining the contents of test tubes and petri dishes. There is awesomeness enough all around us if we just stop and take a deep breath and take it all in.

Magpie Tales 32

Time

A stingy creation of man
himself—

we are cursed
by its gritty currency
that will not be told
to sit still or held
but sifts through the fingers
and is lost in yesterday
and the days before
until reduced to memories
or specks of sand
one indistinguishable
moment from the other.


© 2010 Michael A. Wells

Magpie Tales 32