Ellie@Home by Nicole Kapise-Perkins

   Hallo and Happy May! I hope you are all enjoying this lovely weather now that May seems to have shaken off the blues. Beltane was a few days ago, but it certainly didn't feel like Beltane: wet, dreary, COLD; today May is living up to her light and lively name, giving us sun, a gentle breeze, and a beautiful greening everywhere. Yesterday I spent far too much money at Home Depot and got everything I needed to start my seeds. (More on that tomorrow) Today I am reveling in the lovely air and making plans for the month which sadly do not include a Memorial Day trip to the seaside or canoeing on the Connecticut River as I want to keep my family and my ladies and gentlemen at work safe, but do include revising wedding plans and researching how to hand-wash a wedding gown. My beautiful girl AlysonRose is getting married on May 30 to a charming, kind young man who absolutely adores her, so I think Nikolas is a keeper. Unfortunately they have had to completely re-think their wed...

Well, not really, because poetry is life, and as long as there is life there is poetry. Thank you for reading along during 2020's National Poetry Month. I'll close the month with these words by Ada Limon: Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot, enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds, enough of the will to go on and not go on or how a certain light does a certain thing, enough of the kneeling and the rising and the looking inward and the looking up, enough of the gun, the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost letter on the dresser, enough of the longing and the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough of the mother and the child and the father and the child and enough of the pointing to the world, weary and desperate, enough of the bruta...

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond E. E. Cummings - 1894-1962 somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if your wish be to close me,i and my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,...

     I am a newsletter junkie. I proudly admit it! I should probably scale back because I don't get the chance to read all of them daily, but then I DO spend my Sunday mornings enjoying a mug of tea and getting caught up, so that's okay, right? So, here is the list of newsletters I receive in my inbox daily or weekly. (This really does have a poetry connection, I swear) Check some of these out. They are both informative and entertaining, and cover such topics as art, literature, self-care, politics, civil rights, current events, and general human interest. Laura Olin Newsletter: https://www.lauraolin.com/newsletter/ Ann Friedman Weekly: https://www.annfriedman.com/weekly Brain Pickings by Maria Popova: https://www.brainpickings.org/ Call Your Girlfriend (a great podcast; their newsletter is called The Bleed): https://www.callyourgirlfriend.com/ Girls' Night In: https://girlsnightinclub.com/ The Snoozeletter: https://www.thesnoozeletter.com/ The Lily (f...

I have a fragment of loveliness for you, written by Terry Tempest Williams, from her book When Women Were Birds . I have not read this volume yet, but it is on my list. “Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The ... birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.” ~Terry Tempest Williams ―  When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice     

Tell the Bees by Sarah Lindsay Tell the bees. They require news of the house; they must know, lest they sicken from the gap between their ignorance and our grief. Speak in a whisper. Tie a black swatch to a stick and attach the stick to their hive. From the fortress of casseroles and desserts built in the kitchen these past few weeks as though hunger were the enemy, remove a slice of cake and lay it where they can slowly draw it in, making a mournful sound. And tell the fly that has knocked on the window all day. Tell the redbird that rammed the glass from outside and stands too dazed to go. Tell the grass, though it's already guessed, and the ground clenched in furrows; tell the water you spill on the ground, then all the water will know. And the last shrunken pearl of snow in its hiding place. Tell the blighted elms, and the young oaks we plant instead. The water bug, while it scribbles a hundred lines that dissolve behind it. ...

Introduction to Poetry By Billy Collins     I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide   or press an ear against its hive.   I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,   or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch.   I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore.   But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.   They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.   Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry” from The Apple that Astonished Paris. Copyright � ...