read a good poem: muse

MUSE
after reading Rilke

No angel speaks to me.
And though the wind
plucks the dry leaves
as if they were so many notes
of music, I can hear no words.

Still, I listen. I search
the feathery shapes of clouds
hoping to find the curve of a wing.
And sometimes, when the static
of the world clears just for a moment

a small voice comes through,
chastening. Music
is its own language, it says.
Along the indifferent corridors
of space, angels could be hiding.

--Linda Pastan via washingtonart.com

midtown nyc, june 7 2012

all photos © anita aguilar

read a good poem: today (and happy spring)

the first day of spring, 2012.

nyc

***

Today

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

--Billy Collins, via the poetry foundation

lens experiments: cloud pattern

parkway south

gsp (south)

© anita aguilar

cloudwatching

garden state parkway-style. april 24, 2011.

photos © anita aguilar

super duper

by the time i heard about last evening's supermoon (hat tip to mfw), the clouds had come out to shroud it. was the moon BIG, the night clear, a few hours earlier?

well, here's the view from 38th street/park at 10:03 pm.

super? maybe not.

but not too shabby...

lovely day, lovely night sky

fifth avenue/21st

feb 18, 2011

photos © anita aguilar

read a good poem: "every curd of cloud, clotted cream of cloud..."

driving home
Originally uploaded by ata08

i really love the food imagery here...

"highway five love poem" by ruth l. schwartz, from dear good naked morning.
for anna

This is a love poem for all the tomatoes
spread out in the fields along Highway Five,
their gleaming green and ruddy faces like a thousand
moons prostrate in praise of sun.
And for every curd of cloud,
clotted cream of cloud spooned briskly
by an unseen hand into the great blue bowl,
then out again, into a greedy mouth.
Cotton baled up beside the road,
altars to the patron saint of dryer lint.
Moist fudge of freshly-planted dirt.
Shaggy neglected savage grasses
bent into the wind's designs.
Sheep scattered over the landscape like fuzzy confetti,
or herded into stubbled funnels, moving like rough water
toward its secret source.
Egrets praying in the fields like
white-cloaked priests.
A dozen wise and ponderous cows
suddenly spurred to run, to gallop, even,
down a flank of hill.
Horses for sale, goats for sale, nopales for sale, orange groves for sale,
topless trailers carrying horses,
manes as loose and lovely as tomorrow in our mouths,
and now a giant pig, jostling majestic in the open
bed of a red pickup.