Stone Upon Stone

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

Stone upon stone upon stone.
Under this courtyard,
someone laid the first stones
that were walked on and worn
until a new layer of stones was added
on top of the old,
which wore down just as the first layer did.
How many layers? I don’t know.
But at this moment
I stand atop all of them,
thinking of the stone-workers.
Someone set these stones just so,
these rough gray stones I’m standing on.
With backs bent, their fingers deftly fit
stone beside stone forming fan shapes.
One fan of stones shoulders into another,
curves arcing in different directions
putting movement into still, staid stones.
Lines fan out like water flowing,
like palm leaves waving,
like the skirts of twirling dancers.
Someone clever planned it.
Someone set these stones just so
on top of layers laid long ago.
I doubt that the stone-workers
could have ever dreamed me here
at this moment,
my feet where theirs walked,
my heart admiring their skill and hard work,
my thoughts turning to how all of us
pave paths that someone follows,
and never in our most daring dreams
can we dream the ones who come long after,
their feet walking where ours walked,
some admiring our skill and hard work,
others unaware but taking our path anyway.
Stone upon stone, stone upon stone.
Step lightly.
Step gratefully.
And leave a path to guide the way.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:

Shadow of the week:

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The Caretaker’s Gift

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

The Tuscan hills have faded into darkness,
the wine is finished,
plates are empty,
the fire in the fire pit burns low.
We rise, four friends
reluctant to return to our rooms
in the stone house on the hill.
“Ciao,” says the caretaker of olive trees
and donkeys and fences
and ancient houses he helped repair.
He has treated us to a late, relaxed
outdoor, fire-cooked dinner.
“Take ten minutes,” he says.
“Lie on the ground on your back
and look up.”
The four of us say, ”Ciao
and gratzie”
and kiss his cheeks,
first one, then the other,
and trudge uphill in the dark of midnight.
We don’t have to say it;
we all know we will do it.
In the yard,
past a row of tall, thin, cone-shaped cypress,
we lie down and stretch out, silent,
backs on hard ground and prickly grass.
We hold hands and gaze up
into a violet-black canvas
scattered with stars so bright, so close
that I stretch up my leg
as if I could touch them with my toes.
From this vantage point,
the cypress and olives look upside down
a black border for this midnight canvas
of sky,
of deep space,
of deep peace.
We wonder what we did to deserve
this moment,
this wide, wild wonder.
The answer is nothing.
This is the way life is meant to be lived,
looking up at the stars.
This is the caretaker’s gift,
shared like a closely held secret:
Take care of this moment.
Take care of your heart,
your soul,
your life.
Take care of this wonder of a world.
Take ten minutes,
lie back on the ground,
and look up.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:

Shadow of the week:

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Late Afternoon in Tuscany

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

I’ve just returned from two wonderful weeks in Italy. So for a few weeks, my poems will bring you snippets of that trip.

The sun drifts slowly lower
in a lazy haze of clouds.
Soft, easy waves of wind
ruffle the leaves of the trees
and gently rock the tops
of tall, thin cypress,
the stately stewards of Tuscan hills.
Harvest is a few weeks away,
and the olive trees sparkle
as if they were edged in ice.
But that’s a trick of sun on silver leaves,
for it is still summer and fire hot,
by the calendar almost autumn
but not yet.
Ruddy tiled roofs angle here and there
down the hillside,
serene and sure of themselves,
watching over stone walls
with windows open-shuttered
to let in the easy breeze dancing
through open doors and arches,
up stone stairways,
across tiled floors,
cooling day-warmed bedrooms
waiting for sleepy heads,
kitchens waiting for cooks,
bathrooms waiting for bodies
to disrobe and yield to the kind,
cleansing rain of the shower.
Into one window and out another,
the wind journeys on
past tiled roofs,
over silver-green olives and stately cypress,
across a distant, evening-blue river
up sloping green hills
around darker, dimmer hills beyond
to a distant volcanic mountain on the horizon,
an ancient sacred site
now fading in a hush of blue.
Time seems to wait,
the moment unfolding in silence
interrupted only by the occasional buzz
of a passing fly
and the ruffled, muffled whisper
of a wandering wind
as the sun drifts slowly lower
and disappears
in a lazy haze of clouds.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:

Shadow of the week:

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Storm-Glow

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

This evening radiates storm-glow
from the sunset bouncing off
orange-pink thunderheads
and filtering through the dusky air
like fairy-tale gold dust
lightening leaves, brightening blooms,
making the garden blush every hue
from yellow-orange marigolds
to red-orange nasturtium
to soft, subtle pink-orange coral bells.
Awash in this orange-veiled light,
a contented chorus of cicadas
plays an exuberant hum-buzz of evensong.
Even as they zing and sing
and celebrate this brilliant evening,
daylight subsides,
orange fades into a pale dusky pink.
Trees darken
as the fire of the sky
sinks over the horizon
taking the blush of the world with it,
leaving behind shade and shadow.
But now the neighbors’ windows
glow orange from the inside
as if, in passing, the storm-glow smiled on us
and lit windows all around
to carry our day-warmed hearts
into a welcome-home rest
while the looming clouds
turn into rain.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:

Shadow of the week:

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These Hands

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

Wrinkles, blue-green veins, age spots,
my hands look like Granny’s did.
When I was little,
I would take her hand
and study it with wonder.
Wrinkles, blue-green veins, age spots,
and soft,
so, so silky soft.
I would stroke her hand,
and she would smile,
never saying a word
but just letting me explore
the map of her hand,
the terrain of a life lived
picking blackberries and okra
and tiny green grapes,
baking rolls and cleaning house
and handing out lollipops
to all the neighborhood children.
Granny died long ago and,
wonder of wonders,
I look at my soft-veined map of a hand
and it’s like Granny’s with
wrinkles, blue-green veins, age spots.
I’ve seen this journey.
I know where it goes.
My hands will wrinkle more,
become translucent,
earn more dark splotches.
I never grew blackberries or tiny green grapes,
but I’ve weeded gardens of lilies and irises.
I’ve pulled pokeweed and errant hackberries.
I’ve hand-washed decades of dishes,
wiped up splashes and spills,
stirred lots of pots,
written words and words and more words.
I’ve been all over this map,
this near and far of the palm,
of knuckles and fingers,
privileged to count the years of
note-taking and kneading
tying ties and lacing laces,
getting ink-stained and rose-scratched,
opening windows and closing doors,
feeling flushed foreheads,
and washing—always washing,
soaping up, rinsing off.
Love is heart-felt but hand-delivered,
and it feels like winning some sort of prize
to live long enough to become an old soul
wrapped in a baggy body of
wrinkles, blue-green veins, and age spots.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:

Shadow of the week:

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Once Again, the Moon

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

Once again the moon is full.
From my window, I see her face
bright and beatific,
encircled by a hazy halo.
She looks like she is singing,
so I listen.
I hear only the hum of the air conditioner
and the tick of an old-fashioned clock.
The moon looks full of herself tonight,
satisfied with her song.
Whatever it is, it’s a heart song
felt in the soul.
Surely it’s a traveling song,
a sailing-the-skies song,
a song of the journey,
for the moon is softly sliding,
glowing, gliding sideways across deep space.
I’m surprised at how quickly she drifts
behind the elm,
peeks out through a lace-leafed veil
as if she is shy in the sky.
I turn off my bedside lamp,
and her soft song pours in
in the form of moonglow
across the hardwood floor.
And there she is,
framed in the window,
head tilted in a wondering pose,
her silent lullaby
singing me to sleep.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:

Shadow of the week:

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The Wonder of Waiting

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

As I wait for my grandson
in the school pickup line,
a breeze meets me,
and I turn my face to fully feel it.
Summer-green hills doze in the distance.
Thin, feathered clouds float in a lazy drift.
The afternoon sun warms my arm.
I sip toasty-sweet, cooling coffee,
listen to the call of birds
and the footsteps of one of the
after-school cleaning crew.
She checks her watch
as she make her way between cars
to the school building.
The woman in the next car
gathers her hair,
smooths and gathers,
smooths and gathers,
and at last decides it’s good enough
to twist a scrunchie around it,
her phone in selfie mode as a mirror.
Then she goes back to scrolling.
Everyone seems to be bent over
their phones, which is exactly
what I would be doing
if I hadn’t accidentally left my phone at home.
I am untethered to technology,
drifting along with the day,
soothed by the sights and scents and sounds
of the real, here-and-now world.
I inhale its richness and revel in the wonder
of waiting.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week (look closely—can you find the goldfinch?):

Shadow of the week:

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Volcanic Vibes

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

The last days of summer stretch ahead
like a lava flow
halfway down a mountain
having burned and buried
the past weeks
on the way to burning and burying
the next few.
Hydrate, I remind myself.
The red-hot glow of summer
swims in sweltering waves
broken by brief breezes,
wisps of half-hearted wind
drifting away to elsewhere,
anywhere
cool.
It might help to hydrate,
I whisper to them,
hoping for rain.
I grew up in the dry summers
of West Texas,
where we saw mirages
on the highway,
and someone was always ready
to prove you could really and truly
fry an egg on the sidewalk.
One hot afternoon,
I left my baby doll, Connie, outside
on the concrete patio
in the mid-day midsummer sun.
She really and truly melted.
I wonder now,
in this overheated summer:
how hot do these volcanic vibes
have to be
before I melt too?
I grab my glass of water,
toast the veil-thin clouds and coax them,
Hydrate.
Fill yourselves
then spill yourselves.
Cool us and quench us
and hydrate us too.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:

Shadow of the week:

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Sensing Autumn

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

I know Autumn is still weeks away
and Summer still has lots of dance in her,
but my heart has begun to turn toward Fall.
Maybe it’s because one day this week,
as I poured sunflower seeds
into the bird feeder,
a hint of coolness breezed in.
Just a hint.
At that moment,
Summer paused,
looked over her shoulder,
and nodded.
This is the way of seasons,
Autumn giving notice to Summer,
even though Summer will swelter
for a few more weeks.
But children return to school next week,
which seems an Autumn thing to do.
(Here I must pause,
being of a certain age,
obliged to remind readers
that when I was school-age,
we never went back to class
until September.
So it will forever feel unnatural
to start in August.)
Yes, although school starts next week,
our part of the world
will still
wear summer
for a while yet.
But Autumn has given us a heads-up.
She is on her way with the wonders of Fall.
My sun-baked garden senses it.
Squirrels and chipmunks do too, I think,
and the birds as well.
Now that this bit of breeze
has cooled me,
I sense Autumn too.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:

Shadow of the week:

If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.

The Writing Class

Posted by karynhenleyauthor

Listen to the stillness—
nine writers writing,
thoughts full and circling
like wisps of colors.
Hands softly slide across paper,
catching muses mid-flight,
turning them into ink marks.
If I could see the thoughts,
I suspect some would have
jagged glass-shard edges,
while others would be
smooth as smoke.
Listen to the stillness.
Pens and pencils scratch,
soft and swirling,
sometimes hesitating,
sometimes racing
to keep captured words
from escaping.
Outdoors, the tide of traffic
ebbs and flows with a whispering whoosh.
Inside, we, too, ebb and flow
on a journey
through voices in our minds,
through memories
and wonderings
and questions
and answers—
though at least for me,
there are more questions than answers,
and every answer brings more questions.
Now a train rumbles past,
brakes squealing,
for we’re in a building by the train yard.
As the rumble fades,
quiet descends once more.
The rustle of a page turned,
a sniff,
a shift,
a soft scribble,
and the quiet of nine writers
writing.
-kh-

Nurture peace, cultivate kindness, and carry the calm.

Nature of the week:

Shadow of the week:

If you want me to send these thoughts to your email each Sunday, simply sign up on the right.

Carry the Calm

Karyn Henley

Stone Upon Stone

The Caretaker’s Gift

Late Afternoon in Tuscany

Storm-Glow

These Hands

Once Again, the Moon

The Wonder of Waiting

Volcanic Vibes

Sensing Autumn

The Writing Class