9 Comments

I'm so sorry I can't make it today. I have to get some plants in the ground. Peas, bok choy, etc. Here's my poem for our times:

I just want to be free

Free to think my thoughts

Free to sing my songs

Free to walk my dogs

Pleeeeease let me be, just let me be

You stood in line

You took the shot

You believed the prop

but, please don't push me down because I stood my ground

don't banish me, when all I wanted was to be free

Pleeeease just let me be

I just wanna go home to be left alone

To sing my songs, I did nothing wrong

All I wanted was to be free, pleeeease just let me be

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One of my favourite poems, "Late Fragment" by Raymond Carver, often read at funerals,

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

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What an awesome call today. I had to leave early - just shy of 4 hours in - to get to confession before Palm Sunday tomorrow.

Thank you, Celia, for being you. You bring out the best in others. Watching you lead this group, allowing people to speak and be heard, is pure grace.

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after the reckoning

after the reckoning, will be time to paint flowers

with a softening hand, in faded old trousers

mixing colors and hues of sedation

for the eyes of a nation once had

no raising a brush, with crimson of anger

no hard handed edge will you see in my flowers

just languorous softness of line

pass my time and the hours 

after the reckoning the stadiums empty

void of the stars who gave life to the lazy

citizens now all as one,

in a this late evening hour

after the reckoning, a new kind of sadness

we’ll keep to ourselves as we’ve all been embarrassed

for what had we done for our children

less shopping and having fun ?

after the reckoning I’ll start writing songs

of soft sentimentalized delicate chords 

flowers and songs all now stripped of their thorns

after the reckoning.

c dougauld 2014

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Happy birthday!

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I want to join the call so just checking!

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Ah, what a drag, noon today won't work for me, piles of stuff to finish before this evening...

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So sorry I’ll be traveling soon and can’t jump on the call…would be delighted to participate in a reading in the future 💗 Thank you to all! 🙏🏻🪷

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C is that 5pm here in the UK?

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