Falling Up// Shel Silverstein

poem3.
Falling Up
Shel Silverstein

I tripped on my shoelace
And I fell up--
Up to the rooftops,
Up over the town,
Up past the tree tops,
Up over the mountains,
Up where the colors
Blend into the sounds.
But it got me so dizzy
When I looked around,
I got sick to my stomacxh
And I threw down.

It is No Dream of Mine// Henry David Thoreau

poem2
It is No Dream of Mine
Henry David Thoreau

It is no dream of mine,
To ornament a line;
I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven
Than I live to Walden even.
I am its stony shore,
And the breeze that passes o'er;
In the hollow of my hand
Are its water and its sand,
And its deepest resort
Lies high in my thought.

I am reading to the los beautiful beasties one poem a day (mas o menos) to honor: Truth. Protest. Beauty. Awareness. Engagement. Honesty. Love. Change. Humans. To honor this fragile, exceptional Earth.

Is Love
Maya Angelou

Midwives and winding sheets
know birthing is hard
and dying is mean
and living's a trial in between.

Why do we journey, muttering
like rumors among the stars?
Is a dimension lost?
Is it love?

Fav Titles of 2011

Changing My Mind-- Zadie Smith*; Love and Other Impossible Pursuits--Ayelet Waldman; Maps and Legends-- Michael Chabon; Thousands Autumns of Jacob de Zoet-- David Mitchell; Fortune's Rocks-- Anita Shreve; Where the God of Love Hangs Out-- Bloom; The Postmistress; Beautiful Blue Death--Charles Finch; Wench--Dolen Perkins Valdez; Mysteries of Pittsburgh--Michael Chabon*; Just Kids--Patti Smith; Quite a Year for Plums--Bailey White; Twenty Years in Bed with the Same Man-- Joan Logghe; Stiltsville--Susannah Daniel; The Finkler Question-- Howard Jacobson*; The Distant Hours--Kate Morton; Let's Take the Long Way Home--Gail Caldwell*; Rules of Civility--Amor; The Thing Around Your Neck-- C.N. Adichie*; Girl from the South--Joanna Trollope; Visit from the Goon Squad--Jennifer Egan*; The Pig Trilogy--Joseph Caldwell

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Fav titles of 2010

My Life in France- Julia Child; Cutting for Stone; Elegance of the Hedgehog; Just a Couple of Chickens- Corinne Tippett; Persephone's Island- Mary Taylor Simeti; Jigsaw- Sybille Bedford; That Summer in Sicily; The Help; Away- Amy Bloom; Claiming Ground- Laura Bell; The Madonnas of Leningrad; Lacuna- Barbara Kingsolver; Run- Ann Patchett; Girl with the Glass Feet- Ali Shaw; Somewhere Towards the End, Instead of a Letter, Stet, Yesterday Morning- Diana Athill; The Yiddish Detective Policeman Society-Michael Chabon; Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian-- Sherman Alexie; Changing my Mind-- Zadie Smith