New Year's In the Northern Hemisphere

you'll have to take my word for it -

the way the bright moon bounces

a blushed coral tint from our wall

to the cragged and snow-slicked Ash close by,

flushes its feathered grey shadows aside -

then cold light grows warm even in the night

and in the muted winter dawning

a Mourning Dove rests near

full of plenty from our feeders,

she's floating on the sparkle

of the deep, now daylit snow

Ravenna Taylor, December 31, 2012

Radha Giving Butter-Milk to Krishna, illustration to Bihari’s Sat Saiya, Basohli, c. 1690

Thank you for attending to my 50th blog entry today. I dedicate this entry to my wish for all to have the hopeful experience of tranquility, and especially those who have suffered the most from the forces of anguish and violence around the world.

Thank you for the image of Radha and Krishna, Fung-Lin Hall 

"We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed."

At the exhibition, I read the images, the tones and hues; I read the title, the medium, the date and dimensions; I examine the frame, its finish, the placement on the viewing wall, and the lighting as well. (I am not, as admonished, sufficiently "mindful of the stripe" on the floor; my toe creeps too near, my eyes stare too penetratingly - I am suspect.) 

Later, leaving the concert, funneled through a narrow passage, with the clotted crowd pressing past a closed door to reach the open one, I ask aloud,"Why aren't we using that door?" and the one next to me replies, "An alarm might sound, you have to be brave." So I weave through the crowd and push the door open, and as I walk out, a stream flows out behind me. No alarm went off, but even if it had, I was out and on my way.

I ask questions but I don't always ask them out loud. Today: laryngitis, literally and figuratively. I regret I won't be able to perform Messiah Sunday; I bear wordless grief that our culture's violent profiteering will bury innocence, and bury again, and again, and again.

Dedicated to the families of Newtown, Connecticut

Fragment

Insufficiencies and feints -
intentions fill, by the end incomplete;
shards and fragments pieced together 

to line your basket - never quite meet
- (obverse to the parable)
space comes down

to color, and light: not
to fullness, not to measure.
Only to pass through

Pass on.