Somehow, I forgot to post yesterday, so today is a two-fer.  Yesterday there was a reading about meanings of colours to various American tribes, and I noticed what seemed a contradiction of an earlier one, that white was for the North. Here, it was instead for the south, but I don’t know the exact context, and I’m willing to accept that there can be such opposites in beliefs. It brought to mind childhood, and the way our stories change as we get older.

Jan 12

The world turned upside down
when as I read white for south
blue replacing it in the north.
How often do we spin, lose direction,
find our compasses no longer find
true North? As children, we knew things:

English: Thomas Nast’s most famous drawing, “Merry Old Santa Claus”, from the January 1, 1881 edition of Harper’s Weekly. Thomas Nast immortalized Santa Claus’ current look with an initial illustration in an 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly, as part of a large illustration titled “A Christmas Furlough” in which Nast set aside his regular news and political coverage to do a Santa Claus drawing. The popularity of that image prompted him to create another illustration in 1881. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Santa came at Christmas, there were fairies
and Peter Pan, we had to step over cracks in the
sidewalk so Mother’s back remained unbroken,
parents lived forever. The first broken promise?
The one about Santa, then fairies.
We didn’t stay young forever.

CAS Jan. 12, 2015

**

Jan 13

Why did I expect to live forever? Every autumn
evidence of impermanence. Flowers die,
the earth’s face ages into cold white, the obits
that sadden hearts every December. The mirror
has been telling me for years, but somehow

I’ve always looked right past the signs. Harder
now to ignore, but I am still looking away.
I keep hearing “It could be worse. Consider
the alternative.” And I try, but the words are
in a foreign tongue.

CAS Jan. 13, 2015

Bernardo Strozzi – Old Woman at the Mirror – WGA21912 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)