In the month of April

April is also National Poetry Month. I will be posting a poem a day for my joy and I trust your pleasure...

Just Today

By Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney©09

It was virtually nothing except bare walls when I moved in.

And now I have trees to sit under with sweet smelling jasmine and honeysuckle and honey birds…

Any time now my golden shower is going to break out as an absolutely magnificent mural raining…

I am back in my peaceful centre and all is well with the world.

And even be able to conjure up the energy to dance at the edge of dawn in my garden…
If it

was only just today
All rights reservedJHM 3-31-09©

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In the Midst

"What you Say?" quilt 06JHM for Ray Charles

April is National Quilt Month. Remove the word "just" a quilt from your vocabulary & read about how the laying of hands to cloth has be a huge contribution to the recording of life for milleniums.

www.cafepress.com/meamoona

April is National Poetry Month

HeArt of the Matter

By Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney©03

While the water laughed all around me…
And the wind opened its mouth to sing this song to me… Again.
“I was moving backward on a forward highway…
Shall I question (again) if this is what makes me whole?”
That is, for me, the heart of the matter.

This…
This thing, I am tilted toward…
Is it a renaissance?
Regeneration?
Can this phoenix bend the river’s current…
To what needs fulfillment?
For me, it is the heart of the matter.

Leading a satisfied life is my heart’s dream.
Throughout my soul are songs reaching…
For what beyond what I settled for.
Suppressing no more as the bough breaks
The matters of the heart, is for me.


No longer fine with regurgitated whine.
A sad, sad song spinning its wheel...
All that it kicked up was dirt…
But going nowhere in so much hurry.
Can I do it? Will you do it?
Turn on the light! Banish the shadows, so I can shine.
That is the heart of the matter.

Let me whisper loudly from my heart’s recesses.
I need to walk proudly graced with dignity.
And preserve all the beauty that is going forwardly through the shining waters.
It is I, the heart that matters.
All rights reserved JHM 03©

A Written Thought

Well Hello
(And welcome back)

By Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney ©09

I found you, at last.
For awhile/ I thought/ l had lost you/ not knowing/ where you had gone off/ to.
Saddend me to such a point/Not knowing/ when or why
I set aside myself/ to such a point/ that I ended up/ putting me on layaway/forgetting where I put the receipt/ losing me
Which was not the plan/ course of action/ I purported
So my loss/ indeed was/ twice over
Losing you/ then losing/me
Staring off/ way off the beam/in the wrong place
That were simply not the in the right spaces/When in actuality/ you were not far away.
Just waiting/ waiting/waiting & s’more waiting/for me to look up into/ the right direction/ to spot you/ up on a hill/ not far from a valley of deficiency
You had not/ abandoned me/ which was a good thing.
But indeed/ had I really/ let you down?
Or had I simply seen/ things through a prism/ shooting images in willy nilly being all silly
And I accepted/ the most inaccurate one/ though I should have known better?

But for now/ that is totally irrelevant /as I am /beside myself to/ have you back!
All the places & times/ I said/ I searched for you/ in them were an adventure/ not always in Paradise
Not always/ the right ones/ at the right time to see/ for me to see.
Of all things/ it took a ant/a little ant/ that spark off /the aha/ that made me look in a different direction/And then/ (aha!)/ I grasped hold/ & held on.

with all my strength & my might/ that you were so near/ very dear to me.

All rights reservedJHM©3-27-09

Hair Photos by Yodith Dammilish

See the full photo essay at:

http://www.theroot.com/multimedia/strands-strength

When is a haircut just a haircut?

http://theroot.com/views/get-out-my-kitchen

I am so loving this essay by Michelle Martin of NPR. Check out her show Tell Me More


Last year, I cut my hair. I cut off my twists and went back to my legacy 'do, my beloved short crop.

There was no big political decision involved, no personal crisis, no spiritual journey. I just decided I wanted to spend more time in the pool for the rest of the summer, and I was tired of timing my workouts to my hair appointments.

No big deal, right?

The minute I left the salon, the two guys at my garage practically burst into tears. “What have you done? What happened?”

My husband is a particularly smart man. We've been married a while, so he knew better than to offer any opinion. But that did not stop all kinds of other people from weighing in.
What's going on?


What's up?

What does this mean?

Regardless of the ethnicity, there is entirely too much meaning attached to women's hair. There is so much angst, the whole blonde versus brunette, long versus short, frizzy-curly versus straight thing. I mean, just remember what happened to Hillary when she started having fun with her hair when she was first lady. Female news anchors are regularly flooded with hate mail about their choice of hair color. Then there was, of course, the now-infamous New Yorker magazine cover last year with Michelle Obama in a big afro, perfectly complementing her fatigues and an AK-47.

Amazing to me that any hairstyle still carries so much weight.

What other ethnic group has to have so much conversation about wearing their hair in the manner in which it naturally grows? What other group has had to litigate over wearing hairstyles like braids or cornrows, if you will, that are not only elegant but also an ancient art form suited to the natural texture of the hair?

Can you imagine if white women had to go to court to wear a ponytail to work at, say, T.G.I. Friday's?

Now most of the people I know just want to do the same stuff everybody else wants to do. We want to go to work, raise our children. On the weekends, we want to kick back, maybe get in a workout or two, maybe get our hair done.

So here’s my advice. If a woman in your life does show up on Monday with a new look, repeat after me: “New 'do? It's cute!”

Michel Martin is the host of the NPR program Tell Me More. This essay was adapted from a commentary she delivered on the air







http://theroot.com/views/get-out-my-kitchen

That Smile That Smile

An off chance comment by a friend remarking how all my grandchildrens' beautiful smiles made me think how today because of all what is swirling around us that is negative but absolutely fixable made me think about a poem I wrote a couple of years ago about someone whose smile was so gorgeous it made me smile and inspired the poem below.

And then today despite ones bent on causing needless grief in the cause of being right no matter who is harmed in the process, I found myself smiling over a simple thought of putting in my moon garden in the next few weeks.

For those who wonder what that is, I am planning to have all white flowers from tulips, to calla lillies to hibiscus and others so at night the yard will look as though it is lit up glowing from within which is what I want my heart to be like...

Enjoy in time for National Poetry Month (April)

That Smile That Smile
By Jacquelyn Hughes Mooney ©07

How gorgeous is that smile/That holds the pledge of all things beautiful/ And the joy that comes from/ whatever it takes to get that smile/The promise that /we can work it out/That we bring about/That we do indeed/Be in possession of ourselves/radiates from that smile/ Shall we get to together?/Well just ask that smile/It roars/Yes, yes oh yes/We are doing something new/Not ventured forth/Before that smile/ It shimmies with a bounce of future times/Forward dreams/And cleaves to the possibilities/From yesterday/That laid all out there in that smile.