Another poem by RT - about me. I think it’s pretty cool to be almost 60 years old and still having my man writing poems about me. There may be snow on the roof (figuratively speaking) but there’s still fire in the furnace.

Today You Appeared

Today I waited

Today I longed for you.

Built a fire

Thought of my desire.

Then you finally appeared,

My quest and heart at peace

With you by my side.

My wait now over

As you rounded the curve.

And walked with me back

Up the hill.

11/22/08, RTJ

Now for the background - which might take away a little of the poem’s romantic feel. I left the house earlier this morning to get a manicure and pedicure, then by RT’s office to pick up a print I had bought and left there for my daughter to look at. I took the print to Michael’s and picked out the matting and the frame and left it to be framed. Then I was off to Pier 1 to see if I saw anything that appealed to me for the house - I didn’t. I walked out empty-handed. Then I was off to Sam’s to get some paper towels, toilet paper, a few things for the next time our church packs boxes to send to soldiers, and a ham to cook for tomorrow’s church potluck dinner. Then I headed by Publix to pick up a few groceries. By the time I got home, it was approximately 5 hours after I had left.

In the meantime, RT had been at home all day. He had decided to burn a HUGE (no exaggeration) pile of brush that we’d been accumulating for a year and a half. When I say huge pile of brush - I mean a pile probably about the size of the barn. In addition to dead trees that we’d pushed together while building our house last year, our son’s landscaping company had been adding clippings and other brush to it for the past year, too.

Once RT started the fire, he couldn’t leave it unattended. So he was stuck at the bottom of the hill watching the fire all morning and into the afternoon. Lunchtime came and went. He was hungry. Now realistically, he could have walked up to the house and made a sandwich while watching the fire out the window. However, he preferred to wait for me.

Meanwhile, I was blissfully unaware of his “need.” I stopped mid-errands and got myself some lunch and enjoyed it at my leisure.

So RT was anxiously awaiting my car to round the curve in the driveway so I could come inside and fix him some lunch. I think having lunch prepared for him was the “desire” he referred to in the poem. Shortly after my arrival home he was happily munching on a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of chicken rice soup - and composing poetry.

The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach - no truer words were ever spoken. RT graduated summa cum laude from college. However, he is a smart man in other, nonacademic way, too. For one, he is always appreciative and complimentary of whatever I make. He is quick to tell any-and-everyone he meets that he loves my cooking. And then he writes me love notes and poetry. As I said, he’s a very smart man. If I had someone willing to cook for me, I’d wait, too.

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This morning I mentioned to RT that he had some comments on the poems of his that I had published here a few days ago - here, here and here. After I read the comments to him, he said, “Random Cabin” might be calling soon.

“Random Cabin?” I asked - totally clueless about what he was referencing.

“Well, Random House might not be interested.”

It is obvious that I was meant to be with RT because I am still laughing. I so “get” his humor.

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RT’s on a poetry kick lately. Here’s another of this morning’s poems:

What’s deep?

Deep is not defined by inches or feet.
Deep can get deeper and deepest
Without a rule to check it out.

A well that is deep to the weary digger,
but has not hit water,
Is not deep at all to a thirsty traveler.

A hurt that wounds another soul may be
Only a ahallow word but cuts deeper than a sword.

The deepest deep is deep love.
Deep love pours out and just keeps pouring.

Deep love injures not another.

A Mother’s love for her child is never measured
But runs deeper than any river ever flowed.

Don’t try to measure love nor deep
Just know when deep grows it gets deeper.
When love grows, it becomes lover.

Now that’s deep.

RTJ, Copyright 2008

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Here’s a poem RT wrote this morning. I like it!

What’s Funny About That?

Funny is funny.
No explanation needed.

When funny happens,
Laughter explodes.

What’s funny is not a question to ask,
If it is, it is.

Isn’t God a bit like funny?

What’s God is not a question to ask,
If God is, God is.

God put a lot of funny in creation.
Look around for funny.
See it. Let it happen.

Get funny.
You might just get God
With no questions asked.

RJ. Copyright 2008

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This evening RT wrote a poem to me. Here it is:

Thank God I Saw You
My Beautiful One

First, you caught my eye,
With your long blonde hair
Emerald eyes and shapely legs.

You were my first real love
And have always remained my only real love.

You have made my life complete by giving me the greatest gifts that
Life and love can provide—

Yourself to become with me Ourselves
Our children together to become our family
And branch into our blessed and precious Lily and Sophie.

First you caught my eye
In time you captured my soul
And with the power of your love you set me free
To be all I could become.

Like the deep faces of a diamond’s inner core
You reflect light and inspiration back to me that lifts and supports me
With a “go for it spirit”.

With you I can fly
Reaching far up into the sky
On love’s lifting wings

The spark that caught my eye in you
Was the love of God
Shining thru the beauty of you.

RTJ, 11/14/08

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In 1846 Elizabeth Barrett met Robert Browning. She was a British poet and was 40 years old at the time. Browning was a renowned man of letter. Barrett had injured her spine in a fall and was a semi-invalid. She lived with her father who was overbearing and had actually forbidden any of his children to ever marry.

However, he also encouraged her to pursue writing, and even had 50 copies of her first narrative poem published himself. So Barrett and Browning, when they fell in love, kept their love a secret and ended up eloping to Italy.

Elizabeth wrote many beautiful love poems to her husband, and in 1850 she published 44 of these poems in a collection titled Sonnets from the Portuguese because Browning often called her “my little Portuguese” because of her dark complexion. The most famous of the sonnets if #43. Here it is:

Sonnets from the Portuguese, #43
~Elizabeth Barrett-Browning (1850)~

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Absolutely beautiful, isn’t it? My favorite line is “I love thee freely as men strive for right.”

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April Fools’ Day is my least favorite day of the school year. I’m always happy when the date lands on a weekend. For a teacher, it’s a matter of trying to respond appropriately to “There’s a spider on your back!” over and over and over again. I don’t know why, but that seems to be the prevailing “joke” that kids like to play on teachers.  It’s usually followed by uncontrollable laughter - as though the line was completely original.  And perhaps, for that particular child, it is, which is why I always try to keep a positive attitude about it.

Here’s a poem I found that the kids enjoy reading on this momentous day:

Good Morning, Dear Students
~By Kenn Nesbitt~

“Good morning, dear students,” the principal said,
“Please put down your pencils and go back to bed.
Today we will spend the day playing outside
Then take the whole school on a carnival ride.

“We’ll learn to eat candy while watching TV
then listen to records and swing from a tree.
We’ll also be learning to draw on the walls,
to scream in the classrooms and run in the halls.

“So bring your skateboard, your scooter, your bike.
It’s time to be different and do what you like.
The teachers are going to give you a rest.
You don’t have to study. There won’t be a test.

“And if you’d prefer, for a bit of a change,
feel free to go wild and act really strange.
Go put on a clown suit and dye your hair green,
and copy your face on the Xerox machine.

“Tomorrow, it’s back to the regular grind.
Today, just go crazy. We really don’t mind.
So tear up your homework. We’ll give you an A.
Oh wait. I’m just kidding. It’s April Fools’ Day!”

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Don’t you just love this poem?

      LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY

The fountains mingle with the river,
  And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
  With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
  All thing by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle: -
  Why not I with thine?

See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
  And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
  If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
  And the moonbeams kiss the sea: -
What are all these kissings worth,
  If thou kiss not me?
~Percy Bysshe Shelley~

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This is a poem my mother wrote.  Here’s her story about it: 

A few years before my husband died, we bought a cemetery lot in Conyers where his father and grandparents were burried.  Charles was still in a busy pastorate, but late one afternoon we finally went down to see the lot and to visit his mother who lived nearby.  As it began to get dark in the cemetery, I noticed lights going on in the homes near the cemetery.  It seemed like a parable to me, comparable to parents leaving lights on at night for their children.  I wrote:

The Light

My father always left a light  for me …
Against the nighttime shadows
Lovingly

He left the door unlocked
It opened wide
And I could safely find
My way inside

Beyond the grave
I see a light . . . I see
The Light of home.

God left a light for me
So I can walk through death
With faith . . . not fear
I see the lights of home
And God is near!

~RBS, 1980~

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This is one of RT’s favorite poems. He just asked me to look it up on the internet - within seconds I had it and read it aloud to him. I wanted to include it here, too.

The Bridge Builder

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim, near,
“You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you this bridge at the evening tide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head:
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him.”

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