1115.Two of my favorite things are sitting on porch, smoking a pipe, and playing my harmonica. ~Edited excerpt from Abraham Lincoln

I return to my front porch to find
the place where the air smells sweeter and
the sun feels warmer than at any other
bend in life’s long road.
~John Sarris

Screen Shot 2016-04-06 at 8.55.09 PM.png

After the end of a long hot day
At the end of my rope – with nerves all frayed
I sat on the porch…to rest a spell
As the sun slipped…slowly behind the hill.
Calmed…by the lingering…after glow
I watched…the star-speckled night unfold.
Crimson streaks…on a sky of blue
Melted…in a thousand…different hues
That got lost…in the dark…without the light
Leaving…just their shadows…in the darkness.
And in fields…of clover…across the way
The crickets…began…their serenade
As fireflies danced…with sheer delight
Glowing…in love…with the ebony night.
And there…ahead…at the end of the road
Above the bridge…where the river flows
It rose – like magic – before my eyes
An orange moon…so big…it filled the sky.
~Edited poem by Elaine George

You(God) know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. ~Psalm 139:2  ✝

**Images via Pinterest and the internet; collage created by Natalie

890. The music of summer yet flutters in the middle of the day around Autumn seeking its former nest. ~Edited and adapted excerpt by Rabindranath Tagore

Early mornings are cool now though autumn is still young.
Dew on the lotus scatters pure perfume;
Wind on the bamboos gives off a gentle tinkling.
~Edited and adapted excerpt
by Po Chu (772-864)

Screen Shot 2015-10-02 at 8.36.46 PM

The harvest moon hung round and high
It dodged clouds high in the sky,
The stars winked down their love and mirth
The Autumn season was giving birth.
Oh, it must be October…
~Pearl N. Sorrels

I will dance
The dance of day’s dawning
And scattering fragrances

I will dance
The dance of day’s closing
And twinkling stars

The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy. ~Psalm 65:8  ✝

**Lotus image via Pinterest

813. Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise. ~Alice Walker

Be happy for this moment.
This moment is your life.
~Oman Khayyam

DSC_0014

I’ve learned to love the quiet moments…
the Sunday mornings of life.
~India Arie

I wonder what it feels like to bloom like this, to be this wondrous, to be this beautiful, and to be a miracle! Seeing such as this should inspire mortals to be as confident of their own beauty and wondrousness as to bloom into the amazing miracle that they too are!

I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. ~Ecclesiastes 3:12  ✝

526. Heat lingers as days are still long; early mornings are cool while autumn is still young. ~Po Chu-i, Chinese poet who lived from 772-864 during the Tang Dynasty

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


~Excerpt from i thank you God for most this amazing… (65)

by e.e. cummings, a poet whose peculiar syntax
and lack of or strange use of punctuation
conjures up as lasting and as memorable
images as this photo

Screen shot 2014-10-22 at 10.39.37 PM

I think it curious when I read another’s perfect description of my current reality, especially when it is one like Po Chu-i’s that was written so long ago and so far away from where I am. When it happens, I can’t help but wonder what the writer was like, what he was doing when not writing poetry, and what the landscape looked like that inspired his thoughts and rhymes. Was he young like the autumn of which he spoke, or was he like me, one who has weathered many an autumn. I also  wonder if in China today the heat lingers again in Lady Autumn’s infancy. It’s certainly lingering hear in Texas in the 21st century. However, I’m not complaining because for some time now our early morns have been deliciously cool as have been the evenings that draw the days to an end. So cool in fact was it again this morning that after last night’s watering, droplets yet bejeweled the rose in the photo. That in and of itself is cause for thanksgiving since it wasn’t too long ago that all such surface water would have evaporated before dawn’s first light brushed away night’s obscurity. Actually, despite the lingering heat, this fall has been filled with more than a fair measure of splendor, a smattering of its usual intimations of holy mysteries, and now the first expected touches of nature’s autumnal poetry have been penned. Speaking of poetry, some poets like e.e. cummings write lines that challenge easy interpretation, but often poetry which defies easy understanding endures through the ages because the words and thoughts resonate in the deepest chambers of the human heart. Perhaps that’s why today I’m captivated by cumming’s poetic imagination as well as nature’s magical images and the Lord’s amazing genius.

The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life. Job 33:4   ✝

513. All things on earth point home in old October… ~Thomas Wolfe

…the year’s grown old,
mornings are dark,
and evenings come apace.
~Hilaire Belloc

Screen shot 2014-10-10 at 1.49.22 PM

Hummingbird, hummingbird
be gone.  Fly, fly, fly away soon.
September’s harvest moon
rose early on, but glory days remain
belying summer’s lingering, warm chant.


Temps too cold for you are on the march
as shorter grow October’s days
lessening sunlight hours
and the food 
a garden can provide.
Likewise, dark clouds bearing
high winds, 
rain, and hail
are on the move
 from northern climes.

Prithee take to wing tiny creature;
do not delay, for you have far to go and
deepening autumn will anon turn to winter and
beneath the soil its pretty flowers send.
~Natalie Scarberry

Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration. ~Jeremiah 8:7a    ✝

**Image via Pinterest