If I've posted this before, please forgive me. Edna St. Vincent Millay is someone that I could read every day and never tire of at all. I know several people that this poem touches, one whose memory of a man in a flannel shirt keeps her awake, and another with thoughts of one in military uniform. For them, and others, here it is:
THE PHILOSOPHER

And what are you that wanting you,
I should be kept awake
as many nights as there are days
with weeping for your sake?
And what are you that missing you,
as many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
and looking at the wall?
I know a man that's a braver man
and twenty men as kind.
And what are you, that you should be
the one man in my mind?
Yet women's ways are witless ways,
as any sage will tell...
And what am I, that I should love
so wisely and so well?

I hope all of you have a great weekend. Oh, Valanne, please go to your favorite blogs on the right side and right click mine, then refresh, or erase altogether and add me later when you look me back up. I'm hoping that will take away the pink world that only you still seem to have of my blog. You will love the Sedona picture.
Smiles, Sharon

Another Rod Mckuen poem I love and wish to share:

OLD HOUSES
I love old houses
for their smells,
their must and dust and mildew
and for what they've been
to people I will never know.

The character
of caulked up cracks
means more to me
than plastered walls and pretty paper,
walls that play the neighbor's music
when the radio I love
has gone to sleep.

The faces of the old
are like old houses
every line's a highway
from the past.

And so I love old houses
and the people who sit rocking
on their sagging porches.
-from "We Touch The Sky," 1979, 1980
I do love old houses. When we were building this house I didn't think of putting anything inside the walls. Not long ago we added a screened-in back porch and I was going to put one of my Sept. 11th poems under the flooring, along with one that Rod wrote. It didn't get done. Now we have to redo the bathroom since our fire. I bet I get something behind the new walls or floor in there for someone to find maybe generations later. I watch this program called "If these walls could talk" on HGTV about people finding neat stuff when renovating old homes. It is so interesting. Have any of your found such a treasure before??? Smiles to all, Sharon

Help! Does anyone else see my blog in pink with pink lettering? I don't know how to fix it. I have gone back to palette and set work and live to default and to me it appears ok. But, I was at Valanne's yesterday and everything in here was in all pink and couldn't be read. I've noticed that my comments are less and less. Please someone help me to get it back to just plain old blog status so it can be read again. Of course, if you really want to read it you can highlight the words and read it that way, but who wants to do all of that?! In hopes that a few of you can see this I will post a short poem of another anonymous author:

I remember when you'd stare at me
...the way mothers stare at sleeping babies.
You saw me through a magic lens,
that airbrushed all my imperfections...
God...I was beautiful then
Because you loved me...

Hope to see all of you back here soon. Someone throw me a life preserver in my pink sea! I love the concept but I just want people to be able to read the words. Timid smiles, Sharon
ps. When I started this blog I signed my name Sharona. My real name is Sharon. Sharona was a pet name for me by 2 special friends. I regret using it so openly now. So from now on, I'll just be Sharon in honor of those 2 special people.

Please don't forget the first post from today below. Now I will leave you with one more Mckuen poem. Sorry, but he is an addiction. The man has so much to say that I agree with so I read and write it here. :
MOVERS
We are always on the move
from natural world
to social tradition.
From little wars
to bigger wars.
Negotiated peace,
then off again to war.
The heart seems bent
on traveling,
it think it knows
that any climate but the one
we choose to leave
has healing powers.

Some of us are leaving
for California
when our ship comes in
or if the market holds.
Others simply take
possessions and themselves
to other rooms,
with different corners
than the ones before.
Four more dead-ends
to bump up against
on nights as endless
as the end.

Not to worry.
Not to fret.
Mistakes are made
in private now.
No one watches people,
only The Great Electric Window
- and in stereo.

We are always going places.
Washington if we live
in Chattanooga,
St. Louis if we grew up
in Omaha.
Cherry Valley or the Hamptons
if we are quartered in New York.
Connecticut to get away,
Vermont to stay away.
Oregon to see what's going on.
To work. To school. To Play.
To the market for replenishing.
To the wall to hear
what's going on behind the wall.
To hell if we're not careful.

Toward eternity, saint-like.
Toward oblivion, without thinking.
Toward fast-forward button
not daring once to push replay.
On and on toward the edge
to meet the other lemmings
at the plunge
look back if you dare
only Lot's wife's granite stare
returns your glances.
- from "Intervals," 1986

More Smiles from me, Sharona

Before I post this poem I want to say that it has always struck me as one of my favorites because of the descriptions of emotion. It is not one of my poems. It is anonymous. I wish I knew the author. Here it is. See what you think. : ((((Hugs))))Sharona
SEPTEMBER 18, 1974

I pulled away from him slowly,
like a bandaid off a wound.
One by one
I could feel the circuits breaking,
slowly disconnecting us
like a slow motion instant replay
on a Sunday afternoon.
A face I once loved
became unfamiliar to me today.
A body I once hid against
in bed from the world
became tight and unresponsive.
It took hours to travel
from the couch to the leather chair
where I had left my coat.
There were pieces of him
stuck to me all over.
I knew if I could make it
through the door
I could explode alone
on the sidewalk to my car
and inside a block away
I could scream with my windows up
until it was safe
to go back to the world.
One by one I saw the frames
go out of focus and
all the love in the world
won't bring us home.
Cause home, after all,
was just another word for us.
And we can only be us
in a photograph that someone
could have taken that Christmas
if they had known.
Anonymous