Ok, Farmer's Go Next!

I wrote about fishermen and boats, and the ocean's tugging on them...now it's the landlubber's turn.  So I wrote this earlier in the week, or maybe last week.  I had just been up north in Aroostook County in potato land where the tractors had been busy plowing and the potato plants have been busy growing.
I wrote and rewrote and deleted and added and started all over when I totally deleted, and finally I think I have what I want.  I tried to keep it short and sweet in somewhat the same format as Tugging of Tides.

Tellers of seasons

Plows and harrows,

Tillers and harvesters

Dancing in dirt,

Row upon row of

Timelined soil.

Anchored to acres 

Cultivating hopes

Harvesting dreams

With calloused hands, 

Loving 

The living land.

Who's Paying Attention?

Sometimes things just amaze me, and I have to remember who's in charge here and who to thank.  And it isn't I...

Sunset last night

Who's Listening?

Are you listening for His voice
When faced with doubt and fear?
Are you watching for His hand
When problems disappear?

So easily we take a bow
Or thank our lucky stars,
When really it's not luck that we've
Caught moonbeams in our jars.

It isn't we who've done the job,
It wasn't on our own;
Without the hand of God to hold
The victory'd be unknown.

Will you give credit where it's due
And thank Him for His love,
Confessing that it's not of you
But by His hand above?

He listens for your voice today;
And wishes that you'd see
The blessings that are given you,
Those things that could not be.

Donna J.T. Smith
6/22/2012

Tugging of Tides

Tellers of tides
Boats in the harbor

Nosed in

Facing homeward
In an ebb tide
Tug of war:

Moored by land,

Pulled by sea;

Straining, tugging

Heart strings and ropes,

A fisherman

And his boat.

When I watch the boats in the harbor or watch the fishermen getting nets and traps ready on land, I think about the dual lives they lead and the love of both that they have.  To be a fisherman takes a special love of the sea though, where farmers have the love of the land.  My grandfather was a lover of the sea, my husband's grandfather a lover of the land.  Perhaps sometime I will write about the differences and similarities there.  They both...nevermind.  I'm going to write about that another time.  It would have been good for Father's Day, but that's how it goes.

This week's Poetry Friday is being hosted by Mary Lee at A Year of Reading. Head on over to read more great poetry today!

Daisy Days

"I'll give you a daisy a day dear..."Remember that song?
Sweet.
I'm reminded of that as I spy my first daisy of the season.
Daisies bring back many memories now that I ponder a bit. 
Daisy is the name of a sweet little girl in Peru that I sponsored for years.
When I was her age, it was the name of my blue Schwinn bike.
It's also the name in a song my friend and I sang in a her backyard..."Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I'm half crazy over the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage, but you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two." We were big into doing shows of any sort back then. My friend and I were having a circus to raise money for Muscular Dystrophy and that was our featured performance. We were really good, I'm pretty sure. It was a "Little Rascals" type affair, with all homespun skills and props. My brothers and sister were enlisted as local talent. I know we had an audience of neighborhood kids, so we must have made a little bit of change for the cause.
Being in the country, and so spread out it was a big deal to have a friend over or to go visit. You didn't just walk next door.
Walking next door meant hiking across the field in one of three directions.
Hiking through the daisies.
"He loves me, he loves me not..."

Cookie Cutters and Stars

Twinkle, twinkle little star,

How I wonder what you are.

Up above the world so high;

Like a diamond in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle little star,

How I wonder what you are!

My mother once told me that she imagined that the stars were little pinholes in a big blanket covering the earth, and the light on the other side was shining through them.  I have always had a fascination with stars.  I even took astronomy as an elective in college, thinking it would be the most fascinating course in the world.  It wasn't.  It's nothing like looking at the sky and dreaming.  It's about numbers and elements and drawing circles on a chalkboard with a piece of chalk and a string and about wondering when the spittle was going to form in the corners of the professor's mouth - which it always did before the end of the hour long lecture.  He tried to kill the stars for me, but I managed to hold on to them and resuscitate them.

Linda at Teacherdance has a collection of star shaped cookie cutters.  Her picture of the cookie cutter jar, got me to pull out mine and check for stars.  I have three as you can see in the photo.  In my cookie jar picture, I have the matching heart cutter for one of the stars she has.  Love those green handles!

Though it looks as if I might collect cookie cutters, I don't really.  I have a set of the 12 days of Christmas figures cookie cutters....hmmmm.  I haven't seen them in years.  I wonder where they went after the fire?  Guess I'll be hunting them down.  I haven't thought about those for a long time.
Anyway.  Collecting.  I've tried not to collect lately.  At one time, as a young girl I collected porcelain horses.  I got good at gluing their legs back on.
Then I collected gum wrappers, to make those long chains to see how tall your husband was going to be.  I think Tim is taller than as far as I got.
For a while in the 70's and 80's we collected real live horses on our mini-farm.  We had 10 at one time... bought high and sold low. 
I collected Cabbage Patch dolls when they were all the rage.  They were going to be very valuable someday, especially if I didn't take them out of the boxes.  MIB.  Yup.  Paid $32 each for them way back in the 80's.  I can sell them today for $30 each.
I guess I have never quite gotten the hang of collecting and cashing in.
I have a fairly good collection of The Night Before Christmas books stashed away for grandkids.  I started collecting when my kids were born.  I'd read them one of the books each night leading up to Christmas.  I loved the different styles of illustrations.  I started with one book a year, but by the second year, I was buying at least two.  Didn't take long to build up a good assortment.  As the years went by, I'd have to start reading earlier and earlier.  They got a bit tired of the story mid November.
I now collect anything thistle patterned, as that was my maiden name (my poem and picture of Thistles by the Sea).  I have pins, pendants, cups and saucers, mugs, trivets, butter molds, an old hand-carved cedar chest, and anything else I can lay my hands on.  But most of it is packed away.  As much as I love collecting, my passion for dusting is equal and opposite.
Here are the few items that I will allow into the light of day and the load of dog and cat hair.

Now I'm trying to collect my memories.  

They can be stored in particles smaller than dust.

Fall to Winter Haiku

I know, it isn't fall yet, but Renee LaTulippe challenged me to finish the year of dance...so I did. Funny, but I'd already begun pondering the other seasons' dances, so that's all the push I needed! I don't usually publish on Sunday, but I'm just riding in the car and the thoughts all struck me.

Fall's quadrille complete,
Winter's curtain rises on
A snowflake ballet.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

The leaves are inside out,
Now what's that all about?
It seems without a doubt
There are no clouds enroute
That carry any clout.
We've had rain to end all drought;
Enough to make us pout,
Mosquitoes soon will sprout
In water from downspout.
So what's this all about
With the leaves all inside out?
"No more rain!" I want to shout.
"I'm feeling like a trout!"

Summer

Thank you Jama for hosting this week's Poetry Friday!

A haiku to the start of summer

Spring's exuberance
Pauses for lazy summer's
Waltz of golden fields

You know what?  I started to think about this poem off and on all morning after I wrote it, and now I'm thinking I should have done it this way:

Spring's jitterbugging
Pauses for lazy summer's
Waltz of golden fields

My first thought was with the word 'exuberance', but after using 'waltz', it seemed to make more sense to use another dance term for spring...and of course, it would have to be 'jitterbug'!

What do you think???

SssspppprrrriiiinnnnggggggggnnnniiiirrrrppppsssSSsssuuuummmmeeeerrrr

Can you feel it? Do you sense the changeover from spring to summer?

Here it starts as the migrating license plates return here to the north after wintering in the south.

If you can count three cars "from away" for each Maine plate, it must be summer.

If there are frantic people backing up on the busy highway to catch a missed exit, it's summer folk who don't know you really can take the next exit and still get here from there.

If there are trailers with boats on them cutting you off, it's someone from away who only tows a trailer twice a year - once to bring the boat to Maine and once to get it home again. And they can never quite remember it's following them.

If the highway is littered with life jackets, lawn chairs and styrofoam ice chests that have floated into the air from the back of a pickup or the inside of a towed boat, summer is back. There are some really good deals out there on the edge of the highway.

If someone thinks you said the guy's name was Mac, but you really were saying Mark...one of us is not from here. It HAS to be summer!

If you are standing on the dock and someone asks where the ocean is...oh, dear...

Ah, yes! Summer in Maine has started. Time to kick back and relax!