Everything has to have meaning. Things have to stand for something.

Poetry for the day:

I have been reading some poems by Frederick Seidel recently and given that the first blush of spring flowers has greeted me in the front-yard, I thought today may be an appropriate time to share this poem.

Ode to Spring
by Frederick Seidel

I can only find words for.
And sometimes I can’t.
Here are these flowers that stand for.
I stand here on the sidewalk.

I can’t stand it, but yes of course I understand it.
Everything has to have meaning.
Things have to stand for something.
I can’t take the time. Even skin-deep is too deep.

I say to the flower stand man:
Beautiful flowers at your flower stand, man.
I’ll take a dozen of the lilies.
I’m standing as it were on my knees

Before a little man up on a raised
Runway altar where his flowers are arrayed
Along the outside of the shop.
I take my flames and pay inside.

I go off and have sexual intercourse.
The woman is the woman I love.
The room displays thirteen lilies.
I stand on the surface.

~*~

Music for the day:

Ode to Spring (Ode au printemps), Op. 76 by Joachim Raff, the German-Swiss composer and pianist.

~*~

Art for the day:

From the Almond Blossoms series by Vincent van Gogh, the painting,  Branches with Almond Blossom, painted in 1890 and currently in the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.

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