Anniversary Bouquet

Forty-two Spirals Around The Sun

Me the poet
dreaming my dreams,
you the artist
creating new scenes,

me dissolving
in desperate tears
you holding tightly,
dispelling my fears,

we jumping into
improbable things
learning new patterns
and finding our wings

creating our world
and living our life
of balance and beauty
as husband and wife

not perfect but happiness
spirals between,
somehow we’ve discovered
our own Golden Mean.

©2019 Sharron R. McMillan

“The power of the golden mean to create harmony arises from its unique capacity to unite different parts of a whole so that each preserves its own identity and yet blends into the greater pattern of a single whole.”                                   ~György Dóczi, The Power of Limits

Transformation

Transformation has little to do with intelligence, willpower, or perfection.
It has everything to do with honest humility, willingness, and surrender.
~Richard Rohr

Light In Darkness

She,
In the dark,
Found light
Brighter than many ever see.
She,
Within herself,
Found loveliness,
Through the soul’s own mastery.
And now the world receives
From her dower:
The message of the strength
Of inner power.

~Langston Hughes  “Helen Keller,” The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes,

Puddles

Paths change to puddles in the woods

Mini Mushrooms

Mini Mushrooms on a branch growing upside down

If There Is. . .

If there is light in the soul, There will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person, There will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house, There will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation, There will be peace in the world.

Chinese Proverb

Winter Wardrobes

Photograph: Sharron R. McMillan

Winter is on it’s way. . .
Evergreens wait patiently
for cold weather,
their trendy green tips
accenting darker winter wardrobes.

Maples, finding nothing new to wear,
choose to spend winter naked
rather than wear the same thing
two years in a row.

©Sharron R. McMillan

Mycelium Quartet

Warmth of Kindness

I place another dry fir log onto hot coals
in the wood stove,
I am warmed and filled with thankfulness
for a tree once dead and seemingly useless
that fell one windy night
across our power lines.

Hydro was there at 2 o’clock in the morning,
three trucks, crane, 6 men,
lights flashing.

They worked till 4 to safely remove the tree,
piling it neatly beside our driveway,
carefully protecting our home-made gate.

The memory of the thoughtfulness of strangers
on a dark cold morning
warms me almost as much
as these flames.

©2019 Sharron R. McMillan

December

When winter winds are piercing chill,
And through the hawthorn blows the gale,
With solemn feet I tread the hill,
That overbrows the lonely vale.

~Excerpt from Woods In Winter by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – 1807-1882

Cures For Depression

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.
~ Dodie Smith born 1896 English playwright

Sufficient

“We each have a choice in any setting to step back and let go of the mind-set of scarcity. Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency. By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything. . . . Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough and that we are enough. . . .
When we live in the context of sufficiency, we find a natural freedom and integrity. We engage in life from a sense of our own wholeness rather than a desperate longing to be complete. We feel naturally called to share the resources that flow through our lives—our time, our money, our wisdom, our energy, at whatever level those resources flow—to serve our highest commitments. . . . ”

~Lynne Twist from “The Soul of Money”

Council Meeting

Discussing the mess left on the forest floor and should those squirrels be allowed to drop fir cones everywhere.

Art

Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.
~Pablo Picasso