On the Ning Nang Nong

Golden Books

On The Ning Nang Nong 

On the Ning Nang Nong Where the cows go Bong!
And the monkeys all say Boo!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping
And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang!
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So it's Ning Nang Nong!
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning!
Trees go Ping!
Nong Ning Nang!

The mice go Clang!
What a noisy place to belong,
Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!

        Spike Milligan

Being stuck in the house with your family for weeks on end does something to your brain.

Miracles

Laura Thomas

Miracles


Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim-the rocks-the motion of the waves-the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?


Walt Whitman

 

Whitman is right. Miracles are common as dirt. Everywhere we look – can we explain the things we see, the normal, everyday things – a glass of water! Think of the mysteries in a glass of water alone – what is the water made of ? How has it come to be in the glass? Where has it been? And the glass – we may think we know what it's made of, but how was glass first discovered? Who was it that saw what could be done with it? One question only leads to another. One fantastic thing only leads to another. And we walk through our homes, through our streets, through forests, along beaches and streams – surrounded, innundated, swirled within an expanding crescendo of amazement. 

It's quite true, there is nothing I know that is not a miracle.

 

A Portrait of Grief

Unknown

A Portrait of Grief

When the lean shadows speed before the sun

And the mist returns to its white cavern

And the trees wake; when the ants, one by one

Follow and seek, go seeking Day's tavern

While the mice scurry home, and the fingers

Of the muslin daisy open here-there,

Wildly scattered, and the old barn limbers

His patched roof in the warming of the air;

When the robin tumbles from sleep and goes

Rocketing into light, and the grey wind

Combs the willow fur and ruffles the rose;

When gracefully, gracefully the russet-finned

Lilac settles her house and the dawn's cup

Is full, where are the small hands reaching up?

S. Bert Kingsley

My daughter would have been fifteen today. Fifteen. What would that have been like? What would we have talked about on a day like today? What would she have wanted to do on her birthday? As we brought flowers to her grave, my son asked me, "It's her birthday, are you happy?" A loaded question. Who do I miss - the baby she was, or the young woman she would have been? Who was and is she? Even that is elusive. I loved, and love her, she was there, we were together, all of that really happened. 

Plainsong

Ger Stallenberg

Plainsong

Stop. Along this path, in phrases of light,

trees sing their leaves. No Midas touch

has turned the wood to gold, late in the year

when you pass by, suddenly sad, straining

to remember something you’re sure you knew.

Listening. The words you have for things die

in your heart, but grasses are plainsong,

patiently chanting the circles you cannot repeat

or understand. This is your homeland,

Lost One, Stranger who speaks with tears.

It is almost impossible to be here and yet

you kneel, no one’s child, absolved by late sun

through the branches of a wood, distantly

the evening bell reminding you, Home, Home,

Home, and the stone in your palm telling the time.

Carol Ann Duffy 

 “Trees sing their leaves”. Is that true for us too? Do we sing through our actions, through our movements, through the things we make and say? Is there a melody in how we do our daily tasks, in our work? I get the image of a street full of people, their music colliding and harmonizing - winding, weaving, circling and rising up. An image, but the fact is, everything we do has an effect, a consequence, a percussion you could say, a sound. Music isn't so far-fetched. That line, "The words you have for things die in your heart, but the grasses are plainsong, patiently chanting the circles you cannot repeat or understand." just hits me. So often there are no words for what what's in us, yet listening to or watching the trees or the waving grasses embodies those unnamed thoughts. Being among these there is release, rest. The earth expresses what escapes us, what dodges the encumbrance of words, and gives us a movement and sound, a music. "This is your homeland." How beautiful. "Lost One"," Stranger who speaks with tears", "no one's child" - "through the branches of a wood...Home, Home." Earth and earthling together, singing - Home. 

Lost

Arkhip Kuindzhi, "A Birch Grove"

Lost

Stand still. The trees and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two branches are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you. 

David Wagoner

 

Another side of the lost and disorientated theme. Unlike Stafford's "The Way It Is" from a few posts ago, where the speaker follows a thread through unfamiliar territory and struggles, this speaker counsels someone who has lost their sense of direction. He seems to be a vocal presence rather than a "person", and I love the contrast between this poem and Stafford's. In one the person is holding to something in order to find their way, but here (!) the person is told to be still, to wait to be found.

 

 No frantic searching for the right direction, no anxiety about making the right decision, no, "Stand still." "Wherever you are is called Here." 

 

Isn't that another way of saying there is a difference between not knowing where you are and being lost? I mean, if someone knows where you are, are you lost? And then that phrase, "If what a tree or bush does is lost on you, you are surely lost." In the poem the forest breathes and answers. It's the second speaker, answering the sense of lostness with these most beautiful words - "I have built this place around you." The message is not only that you are found, but, you are known. This place was prepared for you. How beautiful! All sorts of things flood to my mind. Echoes - "Be still and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10), and,"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."(1Corinthians 13:12)