I am going to add that poem to the bottom of Bonnie’s birthday post and then read it aloud to myself – when I read, I shall change the poem so that I hear, “It was my fifty-fourth year to heaven,..." for so it was for Bonnie.
Yesterday, Bonnie made an early morning list: “how to fill my day with choices of blessing in each hour”.
She began by making her own birthday cake – poppy seed.
She began by making her own birthday cake – poppy seed.
It needed 7 eggs, but only 5 were left in the carton.
I had already started breakfast and had another four eggs cracked in a yellow dish.
She scooped out of that dish, two of the eggs of the four I had already cracked.
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| Hey Lady with Jayne Eastwood and Jackie Richardson |
By some miracle, she was able to extract them without breaking the yolks into the whites, leaving me with 2 eggs.
This seemed like an easier feat than borrowing two eggs from our neighbours.
I halved the ingredients of my recipe to continue with curried scrambled eggs and she produce a cake that would get a 10/10 rating.
I would give her 10/10 instead for being able to separate eggs from whites as well.
Bonnie and I got into an internet conversation with Rebecca Jarvis during the day, all three of us wondering what we thought are the best feminist books to read.
Then Bonnie and I filled the rest of her birthday hours with entertainment – the best of Broadway right to our home.
Bonnie and I got into an internet conversation with Rebecca Jarvis during the day, all three of us wondering what we thought are the best feminist books to read.
Both Bonnie and I are going to think deeply about that question -- good material for blogging, I thought.
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| A Night with Janis Joplin |
Bonnie’s first pick was Kinky Boots (2019), Then Hey Lady (CBC Gems) 2020, and she closed out the day watching Janis Joplin: the Musical, which was a close-of-the-evening-surprise with how charming the show is.
A perfect birthday.
A perfect birthday.
And now a near-perfect birthday poem
Poem In October
by Dylan Thomas
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.
A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.
Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singing birds.
And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.
A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.
Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singing birds.
And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.
cake, poetry, books, and musicals... a perfect day!
ReplyDeleteI asked Bonnie to read the Dylan Thomas poem to me. She didn't read it. Like you, she has it memorized. Hardly anything matches the beauty of that poem.
ReplyDeleteAs to perfect days -- I am working on having every day be perfect in some way. Today my perfect day included phone calls to two of my loved ones, a lot of time in the outdoors, the joy of finding that the leaves I had composted last year are now black earth to be put in my garden, and the pleasure of knowing that the sun would dry out my gardening shoes -- the ones I left out when it rained. As you see -- lots going on that is perfect in my life.