gurgling water
redwoods sighing
peace
Note: All the plants in this 78 acre garden are native to the area including the coastal redwoods.
Santa Barbara Botanical Garden
beauty
Book 44 for 2025: “Kafka on the Shore”, Haruki Murakami
This is my first Murakami novel; it will not be my last. It’s fascinating and profound. A 15 year old boy, Kafka, runs away from home. His mother and older sister disappeared when he was four. He does not remember them. His father, a famous sculptor, ignores him. Although they live in the same house, they rarely see each other. After running away, he finds a private (but open to the public) library in another city and is taken in by the two people in charge of the library.
Nakata, another main character who is an elderly man, is not very bright due to a bizarre event that sent him to the hospital in a coma when he was a child. He talks to cats and makes fish and eel fall from the sky like rain. He becomes friends with another principal character, a young truck driver, who helps him out because Nakata reminds him of his grandfather.
The novel portrays the lives of these characters through their actions, dreams, and fantastical events. The unreal becomes real and people learn about their true selves through these events.
Summer in Carpenteria, California
Laid back beach town
Families eating ice cream
Main street organic market
Ocean breezes ruffling hair
Spring at The Huntington
Breezes caress
Scents of jasmine, roses
Rainbow colors
These are growing on a large rock.
“Barbie Doll”–in honor of my mother
Barbara Lewis Duke, pretty, petite, blue-eyed and blond, my
mother, one fearless, controlling woman. Long after Mom’s
death, Dad said, “Barbara was afraid of absolutely on one
and nothing.” They married late, 34 & 38. He adored her
unconditionally. She filled my life with horses, music, love,
cornfields, hay rides, books, and ambition. Whatever she felt she
had missed, my sister and I were going to possess: books,
piano lessons, a college education. Her father, who died long
before I was born, loved fancy, fast horses. So did she. During
my preschool, croupy years, she quieted my hysterical night
coughing with stories of run away horses pulling her in a wagon.
With less than one hundred pounds and lots of determination,
she stopped them, a tiny Barbie Doll flying across the Missouri
River Bottom, strong, willful, free.
Note: This was first published in an anthology and later in my poetry memoir, “On the Rim of Wonder.” My mom loved the color pink and roses, had a rose garden. In the summer there were always crystal bowls on the dining table with roses floating. Today I have roses floating in two stemmed crystal bowls in my kitchen.
Imagine–1
Imagine a world full of roses.
Simple Pleasures
Taste the honey on your tongue
avocado, dark brown
clover, golden
so many shades, textures
sweetness
pleasure
Feel the breeze caress your cheeks
bringing scents
honeysuckle
lilacs
peach blossoms
pleasure
Touch the silken fabric of your scarf
wind softness around you
midnight and snow
rainbows
desert sunsets
pleasure
Listen to the birds outside your window
mockingbird love songs
a rapture’s scream
the whir of hummingbird wings
emerald, indigo, grey
pleasure
Look at flowers blooming everywhere
crimson bougainvillea
roses, sunshine colors
pale pink, vermillion
beauty
pleasure
Sing a song of Gratitude
Book Ten for 2025: “Four Seasons in Rome”, Anthony Doerr
If you have ever felt enchanted by a trip to Rome, you will find this memoir delightful and informative. It made me want to return just to stay a while, wander around, visit the more obscure places Doerr describes, people watch, eat, and drink local wine.
In 2007, Anthony Doerr, the 2015 Pulitzer Price Winner, won the Rome Prize to become a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. He and his wife, Shauna, moved to Rome with their newborn twins, Owen and Henry. This memoir memorializes the four seasons they spent living there. They learn to care for babies; wander throughout Rome visiting tourist sites, local restaurants, the butcher, the baker, the toy store; learn enough Italian to acknowledge all the Italians who stop to admire the babies; and attend the vigil for the dying Pope John Paul II.
While there intending to write his later novel (the one that eventually won the Pulitzer) and failing to do so, he does manage to write a short story which I have read in one of his collections and to read everything by Pliny the Elder. His discussions about his readings makes me want to read some of Pliny the Elder myself. As in his short stories and novels, Doerr’s descriptions, language, and observations delight and enchant. This is a wondrous book about one of the world’s oldest and most fascinating cities which he calls, “a Metropolitan Museum of Art the size of Manhattan with no roof, no display cases…
Two Poems for International Women’s Day
I.
Why
and
What
draws me
to
witches
herbal secrets
moonlight
night riding
ancient ruins
and
archaic codes.
It is the Goddess blood I carry,
remembrance of a past
when women ruled
when peace reigned
and ALL were healed.
II.
Woman, wondrous, wild
daughter of the moon,
mysterious, magnificent
fierce secret keeper
guardian of the universal key.
Note: These poems were originally published in my book of poetry, “On the Rim of Wonder”, available online at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
Sunday Poem
This morning snow capped mountains
brought me joy.
In afternoon I
strolled through gardens,
lunched with daughter near gurgling streams.
Flowers smiled at me,
A bamboo forest beckoned.
Nature’s beauty overcame negativity, despair.
We will
Endure
Overcome.
