The Keeping Room: D.S. Pearson

Showing posts with label D.S. Pearson. Show all posts

Friday, June 5, 2009

Funny the Way It Is...

Debbie Douglas Pearson April 13, 1951 - April 9, 2007

My childhood friend and Maid of Honor, on board the USS Alabama Battleship in Mobile Bay, June 1968.

Debbie and D.S. married just weeks after my own wedding.

Funny the way it is, when I think about it...I have been blessed to celebrate a landmark anniversary...and she cannot - now gone for two years.

We miss her ..... constantly.

Okay, I know I have homework due to all of you. I will be posting some photos from class and telling you all about my big three days of studying architecture and visiting 150 year old farm houses and the characters who lived in them in LaGrange and Troup County, and I really woke up this morning fully intent on getting this done. But first things first.....the Dave Matthews Band was appearing on The Today Show. Now kids, I have to tell you, I love music, and my tastes are eclectic to be sure, but it is summer and it is time for rock and roll! Wooohoo......so he began with some of his classics, but definitely included a new song.....and these lyrics really made me stop and think ... the music was good...but these lyrics....

"Funny the way it is, if you think about it
A kid walks ten miles to school, another's dropping out
Funny the way it is, nor right or wrong
Oh, a soldier's last breath, and a baby's being born

Funny the way it is, if you think about it
Someone's going hungry, and someone's eating out
Funny the way it is, nor right or wrong
Somebody's heart is broken, and it becomes your favorite song..."

These lines seem to have followed me all day long whenever I would think about the passengers of the lost Air France Flight 447 and certainly their families and friends who have loved them..Then I had to go out to an adorable store called Giggles and Coos for baby gifts for a very special baby shower tomorrow. My priest's daughter is expecting her first child. She and her husband are close friends to my younger son; they "hang" out all the time when they are not working. So tomorrow, I get to share in the joy and anticipation of a new life...a precious gift to the world. Then later, I am on my way to the Gulf Coast for a week at Seaside with dear friends and family. So....I was trying to catch up on my emails, and... D.S. Pearson, my personal poet, had sent me several poems....all good-- but one was particularly perfect for the end of this day.

Uninvited

Sorrow doesn't

call ahead

and inform you of its coming.

You answer the door

and find it

waiting there.

D.S. Pearson June 2009

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Just Like Romeo & Juliet

I grabbed a few of my Shakespeare props and had a little birthday cup of tea for the Bard accompanied by one of the first blooms from my son's little rose garden. Naturally, I turned to some of my Shakespeare and D. S. Pearson lines. D.S. is sort of my poetry portmanteau. We can have a discussion on a poem or a poet that lasts months.

Here is yet another of his creations ...a new take on one of Shakespeare's stories...

Quantum Shakespeare

say the universe explodes

or implodes

or is ripped apart

because

star-crossed

sub-atomic particles

dare

profess their love...

d.s. pearson

'09

"I can see him renting a room, destitute, working on a scarred desk, and writing with a quill. He probably wanted a bath, but wrote instead," said D.S. of writing this next poem.

Bard of Avon

Words

I reverentially consume

first

flowed from a quill

dipped into an inkwell

in a

rented room

beside a river

d.s. pearson

'09

Tonight as we discussed how we continue to be held in awe and inspired and always moved by his language, we wondered if the people of Shakespeare's time understood the loss when he died on April 23, 1616. I have heard the following lines used at weddings and funerals. But for this anniversary of his birth and his death, and to think "reverentially" on the writer who continues to eclipse all others, these lines we give back to the writer himself: He -- the Romeo....we --the Juliet....

Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die

Take him and cut him out in little stars

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night

And pay no worship to the garish sun.

from Romeo & Juliet Act III scene ii

Monday, March 30, 2009

Introducing D.S. Pearson

The poet is a dear friend. Godfather to my older son. Best man in my wedding.

He has been writing poetry since high school. By permission of the poet, I present to you....

redbird

morose emptiness
is

sometimes rendered

nil

Cardinal

one's windowsill

D.S. Pearson 4-15-08

Paininting by John James Audubon

Here is what I often call Crumbly Gingerbread

I found the recipe on a postcard I sent home to a friend when I visited Grasmere in 1986. This is very close to the gingerbread sold at St. Oswald's church there in Grasmere. This is marvelous with your hot tea. The real secret is adding the sugar at the very last-not blending it with the margerine. I use either a fork or pastry blender to "rub" in the margarine with flour and oats. I have copied it as it appeared on the postcard and added my American interpretation of measurements for certain ingredients.

9 oz brown wheatmeal flour
(1 rounded cup wholewheat flour)
3 oz porridge oats
(1/2 cup Three Minute Quaker oats)
3/4 level tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 1/2 level tsp cream of tartar
3 level teaspoons ground ginger
9 oz hard margarine
(1 to 1 1/2 sticks od Parkay-the less you use, the more crumbly the texture)
9 oz soft brown sugar
(1 rounded cup)

Set oven to 325 degrees or Mark 3. Well grease a shallow tin 14" by 9". Put flour, oats, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar, and ginger in a bowl. Add the margarine cut into small pieces. Rub in well with fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in sugar. Put into tin and press down firmly with a floured fork. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until pale brown. Cut into squares whilst warm and leave in tin until completely cold. Keeps well in airtight tin.

The Secret Heart

Here is my Valentine to every parent who remembers looking on a sleeping child...and lingering in the moment....
Enjoy & linger,
Firelight

by Robert P. Tristram Coffin

Across the years he could recall
His father one way best of all.
In the stillest hour of night
The boy awakened to a light.

Half in dreams, he saw his sire
With his great hands full of fire.
The man had struck a match to see
If his son slept peacefully.

He held his palms each side the spark
His love had kindled in the dark.
His two hands were curved apart
In the semblance of a heart.

He wore, it seemed to his small son,
A bare heart on his hidden one,
A heart that gave out such a glow
No son awake could bear to know.

It showed a look upon a face
Too tender for the day to trace.
One instant, it lit all about,
And then the secret heart went out.

But it shone long enough for one
To know that hands held up the sun.

May 20th is the 400th Anniversary of the Publication of Shakespeare's Sonnets: Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! It is an ever fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare