Courses and Thoughts

Greetings. :)

I'm continuing to enjoy American Poetry and the Early Tudors. Both are challenging, but so fulfilling and fascinating. For the Tudors, much of the course includes translating the old English words to modern text, or more recognizable words. So far, my favorite old English words are:

Dyfferaunce (difference).
Loue (love).
Agayn (again).
Geue (give).
Eyues (eyes).

I've also been continuing to write and read as much as I can, and feel that I'm in a great period of inspiration. I meant to share this a few weeks ago, but I LOVED the inaugural poem ("One Today") presented by Richard Blanco at President Obama's second inauguration in January. A few of my favorite lines are below:

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind -- our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always -- home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country -- all of us --
facing the stars.

:)