We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already.”
― J.K. Rowling
Tag Archives: water
Illustration Love: Airships, Bookstores, and Lakes
Wish I Had a River
I miss you the way I miss mooring docks and bright blue boats
and the fine frizzled fray of a slip knot; or a wooden bowl
worn smooth by the daily spoon and cloth,
all the ways we did and didn’t cotton.
It’s on the frozen Thames I sometimes dream you,
skating your way around apple carts, hand-presses,
coal-heaped sleds. Once I saw your beautiful bald head
as you handed your cap to an old woman, limping, fast, after her dog.
That day we flew over the Potomac, you said, here,
take this; and it wasn’t a matter of life or death
but the clamor of their conversation as I pulled
back or pushed forward on the yoke
like the honeysuckle branch you brought close to our faces
that night we climbed two fences to be alone. You said, here,
smell this; and when you let go,
I heard the sound loss makes—the way a thing going away slices
the air. Maybe it wasn’t a dog the old woman was chasing
but a fissure edged with ice;
and though she spent her whole life not knowing you,
she made, within her bony fist, your woolen cap her last soft thing.
-Annette Oxindine, Waccamaw
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Travel: Wisconsin
People are always under-estimating the utter beauty of the States between the East and West coasts. Wisconsin borders the Great Lakes that lie between the U.S. and Canada.
Sheboygan, Wisconsin, by Sarah Altendorf
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Sea
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It’s Summer
Breathe a little.
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Peace
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My Daughter the Sea
“I am saltwater and undercurrents
and not nearly oceanic enough.
I break on these cliff-faces like waves
but I bend where the water would roar.
If I have a daughter I will tell her
to look past the role models presented
by society and take the sea into
her small round fists.
I will take her to the beach and show her
the depths and I will say, learn
to be unafraid like this. Be
what your mother could not.
Give support to the boats that will come
but have always the storm coiled
in your stomach. Show the endless
stretch of your carelessness to those
who are careless with you.
Seawater baby, sleep dreaming
of the Atlantic swell. Be the lapping waves
and the Great White Shark beneath them.
When you are hurt cry yourself
back into your skin. May the saltwater
always replenish your self-belief;
know that your landlocked mother
will always have arms to fit you into.
and not nearly oceanic enough.
I break on these cliff-faces like waves
but I bend where the water would roar.
If I have a daughter I will tell her
to look past the role models presented
by society and take the sea into
her small round fists.
I will take her to the beach and show her
the depths and I will say, learn
to be unafraid like this. Be
what your mother could not.
Give support to the boats that will come
but have always the storm coiled
in your stomach. Show the endless
stretch of your carelessness to those
who are careless with you.
Seawater baby, sleep dreaming
of the Atlantic swell. Be the lapping waves
and the Great White Shark beneath them.
When you are hurt cry yourself
back into your skin. May the saltwater
always replenish your self-belief;
know that your landlocked mother
will always have arms to fit you into.
my daughter the sea | elisabeth hewer
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Cascade the Generations
Water is always with you. You undulate upon its lap until it breaks and you drop into waiting arms and hands. From baths to strides you swim, nourished by the sustenance water gives, just as one day
you may be drawn to its rhythmic code:
despite gravity, water ascends like faith, on bridges of fog and mist, bringing full ladles to rumbling skies that cascade in torrents down mountains and hills, filling the reservoirs of roots in fields and forests and streams, restoring over and over the oceans and seas.
Every moment, water moves forward even as it wills itself back to the clouds— much as one growing progeny within may absorb the ways of water and innately sense that she owns not the child, but rather the charge passing through her,
and the lives to whom this charge is given are renewed once again when this child reaches back and up to the parents of the parents
whose currents brought them here.
-John Middlebrook, Wilderness House Literary Review
Coffee and Irony 