Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths.
These are worth it. These are what I have come for.
Margaret Atwood
You are currently browsing Colleen’s articles.
Tags: Quoting
One church bell rings
Singing out to a warm bed
While one mood is painted on the sky.
One cat purrs and stretches
Prostrating on the chair
While one licks the plate clean.
One flash of genius
Slipping into the ether
While one dreams in sighs.
One bird flutters
Flying into the trees
While one crows a song of morning.
One clock on the mantle
Ticking the seconds of our lives.
How many remain?
Colleen Sohn
Tags: My Poetry
I wonder if there is a quotation somewhere, one not revealed to my constant digging, that asks, as we pass that middle of life, if we spend near as much time reminiscing as we do in the here-and-now. Sometimes I get lodged in that past space, cozy and hateful of disturbance, moments of the fil-um of my life rendered with such stunning clarity that I simply want to stay. If only I knew the proper handshake or combination of words and gestures, I might actually step behind the curtain of my fading memory to reveal all.
In the mean time, I collect snippets and ferret them away for safe keeping, like these spent with my brothers, two and four years my junior.
Running wild and barefoot and fast, fast, faster, down hills on a bicycle without brakes.
Splashing in cheap plastic wading pools before dashing through icy cold sprinklers in Underoos.
Turning out elaborate Matchbox car cities of dirt, rocks, leaves, and soaring imaginations.
Frittering away the time in the creek. Fashioning shoe laces into crawdad lures.
Playing baseball, swinging, spinning, and spending hours as badminton-playing tennis idols on the back lawn:Ivan Lendl, Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe.
Eating popcorn in a circle of sleeping bags on the same lawn, eyes darting in a mad satellite search.
Dawdling on the path from school, coats fastened into fantastic flapping capes.
Diving grimy hands into the cookie jar to rise triumphant and crumb laden before demanding, “What’s for snack?”
Huddling around games of Monopoly, Clue, and Hungry Hungry Hippos.
Conjuring games of “lava” and “wu-tang.”
Fighting for our favorite cushion on the couch.
Tromping and digging caves in the snow.
And laughing, so very much, at everything and nothing at all…
You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… May you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.
Ray Bradbury
…
Little known fact: my head is tiny, and this hat, my very favorite, was made for a child.
Tags: Quoting
He hears voices and bird song, oh, and aeroplanes!
This was Easter, a rare Portland gem of seventy-five and sunny. Hoot and holler! To celebrate and soak up as much of the goodness that we could, we headed west to Beaverton and the Cooper Mountain Nature Park. Dear neighbors, have you ever been? Not only is its moniker one of the finest I can conjure, it is lovely in its organized wildness, and a royal treat on a smashing day.
We did a loop around the park, our eyes meeting every manner of tree and shrub, like this great stand of mossy oaks.
There were plenty of plants I didn’t know and quite a few that I did.
Then there were creatures, some soaring and others well hidden, despite their voluminous singing and rustling about.
There were teenagers, wholly unappreciative of nature and even louder in their protestations of being in her presence. Hopefully they will change their minds in future or be a little more closed mouthed in their fervor.
Then there was this madrone, one of the tallest I’d ever seen, with bark as smooth and cool as a worry stone.
And me, baring my whiteness to the world, ever so glad!
Tags: Oregon
