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Friday, February 17, 2012

poem: "the dreams that you dare to dream"

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“the dreams that you dare to dream”

goes the song
about somewhere

far enough away
to be uncompromised,

yet for a few minutes a day
plays in this room

when the sun and cut glass conspire
to drop a rainbow

on old cement
where the feet and guano

of chickens once fell
when it was a pecking house

of life, an egg factory,
before someone opened

a way in for more light
at the peak facing east,

a leaded glass window
that breaks the sun-yolk

onto the floor
into something dreamy

here and now,
something I haven’t

yet understood the truth of,
how and what happens

when life falls out
of the breaking and orderly
mechanisms of this world

February 2012




These shelves were the chicken roosts.


  photos from my atelier in warmer days;
once a chicken coop, which Don and Peter
transformed into
another kind of living and working space;
my Grandma Olive's easel from art school,
with Lesley's sunflower picture
from her art school days;
my paint brushes, cairn, jump rope
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47 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you for painting a rainbow into my day this morning. Big smiles. I adore the patina of it all, Ruth.

George said...

Wow! I love everything about his post—the sensational atelier, the images, and the very fine poem. I'm riveted by the last stanza of the poem, where "life falls out of the breaking and orderly mechanisms of this world." Beautiful, Ruth, beauty giving forth beauty!

James Owens said...

yes! the orderly mechanisms of this world are always breaking. what is a day, but the slow breakage toward night? but we notice that a song or light from a window shattered into color on a floor reverses the entropy for a moment, casually, with just the tiniest motion of its wrist, abolishing time and space ...

what a lovely place you have for working and thinking and being! i can feel how you fill it and it fills you :-)

Unknown said...

Ruth!!!!
It's perfection. I"m so thrilled for you.

and the poem is incredible. and makes me tremble.

Auntie sezzzzzz... said...

Beautiful words... Beautiful photos... Beautiful story... Beautiful place...

thank you...

Rubye Jack said...

I just love the look of the polished stained floor next to the white washed walls, and of course everything else about this room that makes it so special. What a nice place to retire to for pondering, relaxing, creating, serenity...

Very nice poem also.

hedgewitch said...

So many unexpected things are prisms, not the least of which are poems. What a delightful workspace, and that it carries its old identity forward in a totally transformed way is pretty cool ,too. Last lines focus this travelogue of image inward. Lovely piece, Ruth.

Maureen said...

Every writer deserves a room of her own. Yours is marvelous! Thank you for allowing us to take a peek.

Your poem is lovely, Ruth. I like how you tie the history of what was to what the space has become and is and then in those wonderful concluding lines expand the meaning so generously.

Reena said...

What a perfect writer's retreat!

The Solitary Walker said...

Oh, I like that studio...

... and, from your poem, 'when the sun and cut glass conspire / to drop a rainbow', and the rainbow's rhymic complicity with 'guano'...

The Broad said...

I just keep reading and re-reading, looking and re-looking. Wonderful!

Rosaria Williams said...

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh! I want to be there, live in that coop, enjoy that play of rays. Your men did a great job!

The Bug said...

I love your space. So many of my poems are written at my work computer - I wonder how they might be different if I were in a special place... On the other hand the view from my office isn't TOO bad :)

Kathleen said...

Oh, lovely, all around, thank you!!

California Girl said...

Those hens had a pretty nice floor on which to peck :)

Great transformation. Your colors draw me in. So restful.

A hen house. Whodathunk?

erin said...

this irony, ruth, because it all appears orderly, doesn't it, even the rocks of the cairn, but the light, the life, that is what is unpredictable.

xo
erin

Maude Lynn said...

What a gorgeous write!

Barb said...

To have a repurposed room of your own that let's rainbows inside is quite wonderful, Ruth. Your photos are special as is your poem.

Elisabeth said...

You are blessed to work and play in such a space, Ruth. What's that about 'a room of one's own'? A place in which to paint and to create such fine poetry.

Brendan said...

Great song of transformations, one work become another yet supple -- truer, perhaps, for giving credit to the old foundation ... We transform spaces we inhabit with new work, yet the ghosts are always present, looking down from the eaves, curious, lending resonance. What a cool looking work space. If we ever get the money, I'm going to transform our garage into a a sewing studio for my wife. Then I'll get my study back, ha ha ...

Shari said...

What a wonderful place! You have created such a rich environment and a beautiful life.

ds said...

Yes, mystery. How does the beauty of a rainbow come out of a chance glance of light? Why is it that life falling out of order can be hope or something other? Such a bittersweet ending to your gorgeous poem--like the song that gave you the title. Hope and longing, always entwined...
Oh, I love your atelier!! Thank you for sharing it.

Jeanie said...

I love seeing people's creative spaces and I can see why this is such a haven. Perfect poem, perfect photos, and even more wonderful story of how it all combines. Lovely to have a spot to "go" to -- and all
the more when it is created with love!

Amy @ Soul Dipper said...

A toast to the soul who took on the task of the conversion. Hope the hen's weren't shivering with anticipation of a new roost.

I have very little morning sun, yet my stained glass hang in east windows. Mid-summer, when I am up really early...colour and light waltz over my wall.

Ginnie Hart said...

I love that sacred coop, Sister. I even love cleaning it! :)

PeterParis said...

Lucky you to have such an inspiring place and a garden... soon ready to receive another marriage!

who said...

You have a strong voice Ruth, it's a voice I can appreciate. Some days nearly every voice is not what it seems, when the wind is carried in silence by one true voice, so that all who come up short and for nothing with sinister undertows that mean nothing, for no reason good enough to say on level ground, to be weighed on accurate standards

When the whole world is full of words that come up short, have often been days that yours carried the wind.

I honestly appreciate that Ruth

Cait O'Connor said...

when the sun and cut glass conspire
to drop a rainbow


I adore everything here... the photos are so beautiful as is your poem and your workspace. Thank you.

Ruth said...

Linda, I enjoy having you visit.

George, thanks so much, dear friend! I appreciate your enthusiasm and thoughtfulness.

James, thank you for the lovely visit here, and your quiet and touching observations.

Ruth said...

deb, thank you for such beautiful word-praises.

Auntie, beautiful comment. Thank you.

Rubye, I'm glad you love how it looks; I think if you sat in it you would feel its tremendous energy, too. My son and other musicians have done a lot of recording in l'atelier.

Ruth said...

Thanks, Hedge, for your kind attentions to my room and poem. I like your reflection that many unexpected things are prisms, very much. That thought alone is a prism.

Maureen, thank you. We have a bit more work to do to get the atelier sealed against bugs, and warm in winter, but even for now it is a joy. I feel there may be a hundred poems in me for this space.

Reena, I'm glad you like it. It feels to me like the pivot of the universe.

Ruth said...

Robert, it is a treat to read your response, always.

The Broad, well thank you for those repeated looks and reads!

rosaria, thanks so much. I would love to make it habitable, with an iron bed (which we have, it needs a mattress), a sink, heat, and no little holes to let in the bugs.

Ruth said...

Dana, truthfully, I have not written many poems in the atelier. I can safely say I have done more napping in that corner hammock chair than anything else. :-)

Kathleen, thanks so much!

California Girl, heh, Don and Peter laid this pine floor at my bidding. Isn't it great? By the way, Don's hens were in the barn coop, not here.

Ruth said...

Yes, erin, well said. xoxo

Mama Zen, thanks so much!

Thanks, Barb. It's a special place, I'm glad you like it too.

Ruth said...

Elisabeth, truthfully, I do not write much here, and I have painted only one painting, in part. I read, sit, meditate, and sleep in this space, so far. I write here occasionally.

Brendan, I had a friend visit our 100-year-old home, and she could feel the energies of people past. I think it's important to remember these lives. Thanks. I do hope you can find the means to fix up your garage, so you can each have your own space.

Ruth said...

Thanks, Shari! I am most fortunate to have a handy and talented husband (and son).

ds, thank you, my friend. When I'm in the atelier, I feel that almost anything is possible.

Jeanie, I imagine you in your creative space, making your beautiful crafts, and it makes me happy.

Ruth said...

Amy, thank you. Your stained glass window sounds beautiful and soul-filling. Way to use the light. The hens were long gone from this space when we got the farm, just a memory. Don's hens lived in the barn coop.

Boots, is that a hint for your next wedding job? :-)

Bonjour, Peter! Yes, I wonder what will take place in the atelier this wedding? Last time the children colored and played in it with a babysitter. :-)

Ruth said...

Dusty, I love your comment and was quite moved by it when I read it yesterday. Thank you so very much.

Oh Cait, thank you for your kind enthusiasm!

Montag said...

So this is were them chickens come home to roost!

Montag said...

Life will topple those tender stones' balance...

You use a prism of color at the beginning, a memory of the water in the jar holding sunflowers, the water acting as a prism.
The rock upon which the rainbow of color falls has linear striations - are they glacial?, or is this an ancient concrete of the original farmers? - and in the right upper corner an odd looking worn surface.

... And there is a Darwinian evolution of furniture from the textile hammock or swing, which depends from its bar of wood like a sloth from a tree branch, then the amorphous easy chair with no need of external support, and then the thin, Shaker-clean lines of easel, wooden chairs...
all set in the white wash of roughly hewn logs.
Dreamlike.

Marcie said...

There is something both whimsical and magical about this. I so relate to these dreams...and how we all dare to dream them. Beautiful!

Friko said...

When something mundane turns into something magical, you have caught it so well.

A wonderful space for dreaming, your ex chicken house. Use it well.

JeannetteLS said...

How on EARTH did I miss this post of yours? Prisms are an important part of my history, my life, my mom. In the last five years of her life, she hung all her prisms in the front bay window of their little retirement home. It got the morning sun.

Every single morning, Mom would not enter the living room until Dad said, "Jean, the rainbows are ready."

He had twirled all twenty of them, so she would start her morning in a dance of color.

Your poem is beautiful and I ENVY you a workspace of such light. A writer's or an artist's dream. An artist of ANY sort--be she dreamer, baker, quilter, sculptor, potter, you name it.

I am SO glad I am catching up tonight on the blogs I've followed for a fairly long time!

Vagabonde said...

What a great building and a wonderful way to keep it instead of destroying it. We have a chicken coop but it still is – yours is so lovely and so well decorated. Your pictures show how truly unique it is.

Pauline said...

gorgeous post from beginning to end!

shoreacres said...

Looking at your space and pondering your poem, I suddenly noticed Gurdjieff's words there, at the side: "Where our attention is, God is".

I see your attention like the light, gathered together, scattered by the prism of space and time, littering the world around you with beauty and presence.

Littering our world...

Stratoz said...

these words resonate: yet for a few minutes a day
plays in this room

let us make many a place for our dreams to be fueled with a desire that cannot stop them from coming into creation