The Farther Star

It is simple to be a bright star in a dark sky.

The rarer success is to be a bright star in a blue sky, able to withstand the nearer sun and still reach a beholder, should there be any who will lift their attention from the paths at their feet and the surround of distraction.

There then a reward to lay lightly to a touch and reveal your truth: Resourcefulness is the seed set upon the wind, freedom is offering up everything you are to the risks, and tenacity is finding purchase wherever you next set to ground.

©2013 Sandra R. Davidson—photo and text.

Joys of Aging? Yeah.

When I saw the title, I knew this book is where I’m at. By no means am I an octogenarian, and I’m double twenty and some.

A collection of connections on aging, I Feel Great about My Hands: And other unexpected Joys of Aging, edited by Shari Graydon, seems just the thing when pronounced with “the knees of a 70-year-old.”

I do fit right in among these women who have come of age, the second age of womanhood and third age of life. Joys of aging. I’ve certainly not heard very many olders through the years who gushed with joy about

Inagural Inspiration

“One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives…”
From the inaugural poet Richard Blanco’s poem

No Peace

I find no peace today.

I would follow my feet through the wet grasses and walk in wind among the stone remains of the dead; there is no peace there either. They cry from abandonment. They speak of the hauntings of war. Some are buried far from home and family, caught unaware by death. A mother embraces her child no longer though they are side by side in death on the same day and buried in the same ground.

I find cemeteries poignant. Like the streams that feed the rivers to the ocean of humanity and inhumanity, I follow the steadfast families anchored in generations and those filled with wanderlust in single or in company. Likely my blood is from among the ones beneath my feet who travel no more.

No peace today.

©2012 Sandra Davidson

Greeting Seasonings

Whichever hour I woke, I would set the coffee on and get dressed. With a cup full of light, sweet brew, I’d sit on the top front step. She’d be beside me, sometimes close for warmth, sometimes sprawled on the cool cement.

I wish I could say it was idyllic. With a state highway, train tracks, and industrial river traffic, it was either less or more noisy. I came for the movement of land and sky. She came to heal me.

The Ring of Patriotism

This gallery contains 3 photos.

My father’s father was a mostly-silent figure in the chaotic childhood life I lived. The very essence of stern came with Grandpa’s partially-cocked head when he needed you to understand wrong-and-right or an accident into which you were about to step. And…mischievous. I love his ornery laugh and hope he has many years more of […]