reading,
listening to birds
the gurgling of water,
looking up to watch
four hummingbirds challenge
each other at the feeder, and
I notice I’m surrounded by flowers
and the scent of orange blossoms.
Delights – 5
delights
Delights–Three
There is nothing like meeting a goal while enjoying it to bring a sense of delight as well as accomplishment. I walk daily–today I arrived at day 707 without ever missing a day–looking at the flowers, visiting with all the other walkers. I live in a walking neighborhood with friendly walkers who at a minimum wave. Some stop to chat and some check on me if they have not seen me out walking in a while because of the different routes we take or different times we walk. One particular person who checks on me taught me how to make some of her native food–India. Another lady several blocks away prefers to walk with others, not alone, so if she sees me out, we join together in the company of her little dog, June, whom I have never seen actually walking. June rides in a baby carriage.
Now, as I write this, I’m enjoying another late afternoon of delight in my backyard. The hibiscus is full of ruby flowers. Freeway daisies, bright white and purple, pop up everywhere. Four different colors of bougainvillea sport their joy. One nasturtium–they are popping in places I never even planted–is sporting the same color of ruby as the hibiscus. The lemon tree is full of almost ripe lemons some of which I have promised to friends and neighbors. One woman cannot eat all these lemons. Meanwhile, I listen to different birds singing their varied songs and to the gurgle of the water fountain by the Nile Blue French doors and watch the hummingbird who is watching me.
I feel grateful to be surrounded in beauty and quiet joy.
Book Six for 2026: “THE BOOK OF (MORE) DELIGHTS,” Ross Gay
As I mentioned in a previous post, his books on delights were mentioned to me by two different people in two totally different settings so I decided to stay sane in all the seriousness of my life, reading something lighter might be a good thing to do. I guess I was thinking delights like flowers, food, etc. but this is more like a series of short essays about life all written in the span of one year–his gardening, experiences strolling around his neighborhood and favorite coffee shops, food, his parents, his wife, some personal history, his experience as a college professor, children. However, he also addresses serious issues–his meeting a homeless veteran just out from a stint in a mental facility and how he was compelled to help out after first driving off, racism he has experienced, his issues with the government and social media, family death, and life in general. And above all, what it means to him to identify as a poet.
Delights–2
As a person who works with high school students mostly non-white, many of whom have family members who are undocumented, I worry and need to find daily delights to stay sane. I decided to make a list of some of the past week’s delights:
-afternoons 70 degrees, sunny, no wind
-hummingbirds sipping nectar from both flowers and the two feeders
-singing a song the lyrics of which come from a poem by Langston Hughes where he dreams a world with no racism
-sitting on the back patio, listening to birdsong while I read a book about delights
-learning that all the rains have eliminated drought in California
-appreciating all the colors of the flowers blooming in my yard
Delight 1- A Testosterone Story
After reading two intense, serious books, one fiction and one non-fiction, I needed a break. Several friends and acquaintances recently told me about Ross Gay’s delight books so I went to the local library and asked them to request his latest, “The Book of (More) Delights”. I had my doubts after reading the first few entries, but kept going and then #10 “Alright Baby” made me laugh out loud as well as recall an incident in a high school class I taught years ago.
Gay’s 2.5 page entry is about testicles, yes, testicles. He tells about a couple of young guys who think they are not stuff challenging him and his friend (they are in their 40s) to basketball. The two 20 somethings were doing their best to prove what Gay calls their manhood. As Gay relates the incident, he jokes about maleness and testicles and how testicles control a lot of what men do. I had to laugh. The two old guys won by the way.
This mere 2.5 page story made me remember a class of teenagers I taught from years ago. I do not even recall what caused whatever was going on in class, but one male student suddenly shouted, “There’s too much testosterone in this room!” Everyone laughed. Thereafter every time any sort of commotion, even if piddly, occurred, everyone shouted, “There’s too much testosterone in this room!”
Garden of Delights
A garden of delights
my my new goal.
Why do I/we need
such a garden?
Sanity, yours and mine.
Genocide in Gaza, Sudan,
eastern Congo, probably
even in other places where
there’s no news.
Poverty here in the richest
nation on Earth.
Poverty my neighbor seems
shocked when I tell her.
People living in condemned
trailers, no heat, no water–
It’s freezing inside.
People surviving, barely.
Malnourished children, big
hungry eyes, staring.
A garden of delights
my new goal.
Why do I/we need
such a garden?
Masked men and some women
attacking people in the streets,
in their homes,
knocking down doors.
smashing windows.
You’d think I’m describing
Russia, Nazi Germany
but no, I’m describing
happenings in my own
county and
across the US.
A garden of delights
my new goal.
Sanity = Delights
I look out my window
purple mountains loom
in crystalline air.
Recent rains create
emerald hills,
blooming freeway daisies,
roses in my garden,
pink, sunset colors, snow.
Bougainvillea the color of blood
climbs my garden wall.
The turquoise fountain gurgles.
Photo of daughter and grandson
make me smile.
Symbols, sacred corn grace
walls and make me
remember cornfields in summer
when on a hot day
I could hear corn grow.
Three different pine trees whisper,
the Soleri bell rings in wind.
Ah, yes, I live in a garden,
a garden of delights.
And I remain sane
for at least one
more day.
writingontherim 