An Invitation

Welcome, weary traveler! Come and rest by my fire. I see that your boots are worn from the hard ways of the road and your fine cloak is rent by the thorns of the world. Come, then, and sit. Shall I tell you a story?

There is meat aplenty here, and fine ale for the taking. More than these, though, there are tales to be had – I spin them myself – and thoughts to be pondered; but that part is yours. It is for me to offer such things as I hope shall instruct, interest, and amuse you. It is for you to taste my offerings and see whether they are to your benefit, or whether you were better having never tried them. Remember as you take your nourishment (and as another fine author* once said) that the mind, too, has a kind of blood. As such, it, too, seeks good wine and bread – and, I would add, something more than those.

But come, then, I pray you. Be at your ease and listen as this Caitliceach Cailín unfolds for you legends no mortal tongue has told and shows you paths no Son of Adam’s foot has trod. Listen, stranger, and hear: the door to other Places is opening. Will you not come in?

* Willa Cather, “Shadows on the Rock”

Haikus from Home: Some Musings on Mothering

Dear Readers!

Here are a few brief poems composed largely - and with one hand - in the midst of mothering.  They come from a mixture of experience, hearsay, and conjecture about what it's like to have a wee little lass or lad in the family.  I hope that you will enjoy them!

Blessings.

New Parenthood: A Haiku on Falling Sta

nd

a

     rds.

First child: sterilize!

Second: just soap is enough.

Third: did you lick it?

Chores and How Not To Do Them

Washing white laundry;

Finally - it’s dry! Baby

Spits up carrots. Sigh. 

Fifth Commandment

Baby is sleeping;

Stranger slams his car doors.

Try not to throw things.

Peace

Watching baby sleep;

Who knew perfection was so

Little and fuzzy?

Inevitable

New, beautiful child:

Only cries out and spits up

In church and the store.

Birth

First moment is here:

Look at those eyes! Depthless and

Eager to love you.

Growing

New mother cries out,

“I can’t do this!” Then baby

Smiles; she wants ten more.

Better Than A Raise

So tired and fighting

To nurse; baby snuggles close -

May all time be this!

The Joys of Life Go On

Dear Readers,

Forgive my absence, I pray!  

A strange, new, busy and beautiful time of life has struck: a brief while since, my husband and I welcomed a little daughter to our family.  

Below, then, are some thoughts that seemed fit for the occasion of my return amidst the great joys (and trials!) of raising her; I hope you will enjoy them.  I hope, too, that you may one day rejoice in the role of parent: truly, if you give yourself wholly and generously to this work, the rewards you reap will be beyond you.  Your children are your testament in time.  The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, you know.  It is a blessing indeed.  

As to the poem, though it is uncharacteristically unrhymed, it is somewhat hyperbolic, though not in the lines where you will first think to find exaggeration.  Look deeper, reader.  You may see, if the eyes of your mind are unclouded.  Seek and ye shall find.

May Easter Blessings redound unto you and yours!

+JMJ+

Hidden

By Caitlin LoTruglio

Copyright 2018

For Anastasia

Holding you here –

The first place you ever were

When you came forth to greet us –

I begin to understand

You are more than the sum of two

An echo of the great I AM

Not merely innocent

Not merely perfection

Not merely young

Simply radiant

God’s castle blossoms in your soul –

Living stones.

My child –

Why does the whole world not rejoice?

Pondering Amidst a Season of Penitence

A blessed Laetare Sunday to you, gentle reader!

In the spirit of Lenten sacrifice and keeping one's focus on things not of this world, I have for you today another, older, piece of mine that I lately found and polished up a wee bit.  It is, I admit, didactic, imperfect, and perhaps it will not quite please - but, then, were we made to be pleased?  Were we created for pleasure alone?  The answer, I would dare to say, is at once more simple and more complicated than it may seem.  But that is a question for another day.

In the meantime, then, I offer for your perusal and pondering this little tidbit which - I hope! - will encourage the practice of penance without itself being one.  But perhaps some queries are best left unaddressed...!


+JMJ+

Brevity

By Caitlin LoTruglio (née Clancy)

Copyright 2015, 2016

Say not “I am not old”

Nor “I am well, I am healthy”

For in life you have no measure

You know not when you are wealthy

The boy on the playground swing

The man on the motorbike

The girl with her cat’s-cradle string

The working woman on strike

The one may fall from his height

The other meet with a crash

The child may take an infection

Her elder fall under the lash

No warning may precede each

A demise needs no clear call

Though warnings ever abound

One fate will soon befall all

Are you watchful, good sir, are you ready?

Little lamb, who will own your dolls?

Lad, do your playmates shout “steady”?

Lady, your Maker calls.

To each a solemn promise

To each a holy oath

Each day we arise from the ashes

Fall to dust as we plight our troth

Conceived in the glory of Heaven

Received by the frailties below

Made up by our doings and darings

Taken up or let down for to Know

So in your brief space of December

Which comes you know not how or when

Adam’s son, do your best to remember

That love is beyond mortal ken

One final injunction I leave you

One final thought to recall

Though the last of the last shall ensnare you

In the end it is gift to us all

Therefore, my dear,

Child of God’s breath,

Remember you are never more

Than an inch

From death.

Curiosities Abound

Dear Readers!

A miracle has occurred.  I have posted twice in the same month!  I dare not hope to assure myself or your good persons that this will become regular habit - though I hope much it shall - but I do intend to post again soon.  I have a few poems in the works which, thus far, please me greatly.  I hope they will in time take sufficient shape so as to be presentable to your better judgments.

In the meantime, I found this curiosity locked away in one of the digital drawers of my written warehouse.  It was one I scribbled wantonly but pleasantly one day on the white board of a room at my alma mater.  I was surprised and delighted to return after the summer break and, upon opening the white board, found it still there.  I wonder if anyone read it.

In any case, for your present perusal and, I hope, pleasure, I present -

+JMJ+

Poem Written on the Board of Stowe Hall, Room 209Which Remained There All Summer

By Caitlin LoTruglio (née Clancy)

Copyright 2014

Have you ever stopped to wonder

‘Mid your breathing and the thunder

That each day presents a mystery –

A tapestry of history?

The rain upon the street

Has moistened Solomon’s feet

And the sun high overhead

Has looked upon Ulyssey’s bed

The breeze has brushed St. Paul

And heard John’s desert call

Jordan’s wavelets held a prophet

And her waters washed a God

Some stones have known the tread

Of Alexander or Boabdil, dead

And others known the sandals

Of Turks and ruddy Vandals

Each piece of earth has seen

Tyrants and their vices green

And watched the steps of heroes

And witnessed bloody Neros

I must finish this rhyme

Not at all or at another time

Suffice it here to say

As you go along each day

Be watchful as you rush around

Where you stand could be holy ground….

Anticipation

Good day to you, gentle readers.

I fear I have left you long in darkness and silence.  Much has happened these past months, of both a joyful and sorrowful nature; too much to be properly penned here - too much to be catalogued, chronicled.  Let it suffice to say that in silence God's work is perhaps oftenest done to us and in silence life still shall be made to move.  But enough.

I doubt not that you are desirous of something more light, more literary.  I have written a number of works over the past weeks and the choice for which of these to present today was not an obvious one as it has sometimes been in months past.  After some thought, though, and in light of the Gospel readings of the day, I have here for your perusal a piece I left lingering a while but am at last desirous of uncovering.  I am, as ever, not perfectly satisfied with its sentiment and shape, but I think I have captured something not negligible.  I shall leave you to guess at what.  

May He Who Is be with you always!

+JMJ+

Anticipation: The Wedding Feast of the Lamb

By Caitlin LoTruglio

Copyright 2015, 2016

Flames erupting in a goblet

Ardor of the blest

The blaze of new wine

And laughter, hot laughter, in a girl’s calm breast –

Father, is this not how You love us?

Hot agony, pure ecstasy,

Sears me, scarlet lover,

Grieving through her fuller joy

I behold, my Lord, your Mother 

Beauty uncontainable

Blushes oceans, rivers forth

Repeatedly, repeatedly,

My Lord! Come to us speedily

Thoughts burning, yearning, greedily

Hearts parched for want of Thee

The phoenix of old resurrects himself

And from David assumes a new form

The roil of the ages lashes about

Burgeons and breaks in a blackening, beckoning storm

My Lord, is this not how You greet us?

At war is the soul reconstructed!

Divinity piercing the mind!

My Lord, My God, My Father,

Blaze – burn, flash, slash, and leave blind!

Whisper to us then in the darkness

When we, drooping to depths of the earth,

Ask –

Does emptiness reign in Your kingdom,

Or of feeling only is’t dearth?

Thorns and nails claw us, alive,

Incisions break open each mind

Thoughts belonging to others

Sink, bite deep, call others in kind

And there on the edge of the altar

At the brink of despair and the world

Flaming highly, my Lord, strikes white splendor –

From the pinnacle God is not hurled

Solace returns to the quiet

Interior fountains blue-flow

They softly, and softly, remember

The sigh of the love that they know

Tranquility seizes her triumph

And Peace thrusts his banner to stay

A silence burns over the stillness, burst

From the heart of a high holy day

Let the wine of triumph be poured

Let the heart of the lion breed flame

Let the wounds of the King be unveil’ed

Let the leper return without shame

And all that is left, the deluge of deeps,

Teeming with bright azure sheen –

All as it is as it was and shall be

My Lord – as it ever has been.

Sonnets n' Such

Greetings, Faithful Friends!

Today's contribution is more whimsy than wit, but I hope it will meet with your approval nonetheless.   It is a lighthearted and, frankly, somewhat absurd example of that noble form known as the sonnet.  For those of you who don't know, may I direct you to: Sonnets! That webpage, though by no means a perfect textbook, ought to give you the basics.  I have also included, after some hesitation, an analysis of this poem that was (graciously?) penned for the purpose of accompanying it; I leave you to guess at the identity of the writer, who wishes to be nameless.  All I can say is that the author of that assessment is someone whom I sometimes fall into the vile delusion of admiring, but toward whom, in my soberer and saner moments, I like to think I bear a healthily critical attitude.   They smile as I write this.

Without further ado...

+JMJ

Tempus Fugit

By Caitlin LoTruglio

Copyright 2015

If time were worthier, did not decay,

If hours, earthen vessels, stood empty men

This verse were labor of a summer’s day

That might be fuller filled and filled again

So like unto the red-capped drinking bird

Sipping till ambriosious liquors’ spent

It bobs and nods as though it would be heard

And, nodding lastly, then would be content

But, prodigal, these hours are not to be

They, wispy, steal as smoke-foam from my tent

Gone off to tempt with yet more transient glee

And in some other soul provoke desire –

Wherefore this burdened writer pens in ire!

Analysis: 

The speaker appears to be the “author” of the poem who, it seems, has run short on time.  This person desires that time might be, as it were, recyclable -  they wish to get more out of each hour (they want each to be able to be “fuller filled and filled again”).  The writer/speaker, perhaps because they are so short on time when they are writing this poem, then makes a hilarious comparison to an ordinary object, dressing it in language that suggests something much grander.  Namely, they liken the hours to a drinking bird toy (probably very like this one, which you might find in a dollar store or similar establishment) dunking its head in a cup of tapwater until the water evaporates so much that the bird stops and stands finished; here, in the poem, the bird is treated like a noble animal sipping daintily at its godlike sustenance (some “ambrosious liquor”) and listening for a break in conversation (it bobs “as though it would be heard”) so that it may speak its piece and then stand “content.”  The sestet expresses clearly the writer’s frustration that the hours slip away from him/her like smoke from a camp fire – apparently deliberately, for they “steal” away and go to “tempt” another into desiring them to linger as this author has been tempted and, in consequence, the author writes about the situation angrily (hence also his/her characterization of time as unworthy, or at least less worthy than it could be, in the first line).  What seems unfathomable, though, (and perhaps also inexcusable) is the author's choice of the term "smoke-foam" which, while syllabically acceptable, nonetheless seems odd and very much a pathetic image.  I cannot say I commend her for it.