Balancing My Days

The heat is oppressive today but a quick lunch outdoors on my patio brings a new sense of balance. Flowers are popping, spreading their own brand of sunshine while some long for a cool shower from the watering can or a quick rainstorm. I move from air-conditioned rooms to outdoor living, admiring the summer plants, and their vibrant colors.

Returning indoors, I find a new post and challenge, This Photo Wants to be a Poem, by Margaret Simon, in my email. It centers around a mesmerizing, long-ago photo from the Library of Congress' G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection, titled "The bride" and invites us to write a small poem of 16 words or so.

Still'
  eyes.
Those hands.
This woman knows work.
She is there
gazing into the future
hoping.
Margaret G. Simon, found poem







I chose to write a golden shovel poem, The Young Bride. Look at the ending words of each line to see the strike line, gazing into the future, emerge.

For a moment while gazing,
my eyes wander into
a sea of endless thoughts in the 
desert days of my future.
©CVarsalona, 2020

Turning my thoughts back to a hot day in July when I married, I found a beautiful poem, To Be With One Another, by George Eliot and penned another golden shovel poem. This time, it is for my husband to celebrate another anniversary in our lives.

To Be With One Another

by George Eliot

What greater thing is there for two human souls

than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen

each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all sorrow,

to share with each other in all gladness,

to be one with each other in the

silent unspoken memories?

Using the strike line, silent unspoken memories, I wrote the following.

Now I turn my attention to my far-away friend, Ruth Hersey, who is hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup from Haiti. I was excited to gift her with a digital journal, Finding Balance in Troubled Waters. May we all balance our days during our Quarantine Life. Stay safe. Love and Peace to all!