Simply OCTOBER - Récolte ce que tu sèmes - Harvest what you sow

Bee on Cornflower - On the way to Honey Festival

Le Maine Meunier - Ferme Auberge - Chavenat, Honey Festival

Oak leaves - the Forest, Grassac

Autumn glaze, fall leaves tumbling, the warm gossamer air still embracing us - biking at first light past fields of burnt orange, mixed with buffy tweeds & pale greens, violet ferns, magenta leaves and red roses hugging stone walls, purple grapes, mustards and gold leaf -  October, I say it out loud and some melancholy creeps in - goodbye Indian summer.

Old Shed - Doumerac

Last roses - Doumerac

"Sometimes in our life, a door opens.  We enter, and a new landscape appears in front of us--a scene that is new, vaster and more striking than anything we have ever been used to. Before we were contained in a small safe place.  We did not imagine this door existed.  But once we open it, we find beautiful views, hills and valleys, sunlit rivers, mists like embroidery, wide spaces.  Our life will never be the same."   Piero Ferrucci from Beauty and the Soul

Roses against stone wall - Doumerac

Butterfly - Doumerac

 Some say life is short, I say life is tall, grab a straw - SARK





 

Girl Spinning - Hotel de Ville - Angouleme

Circuit des Remparts - Angouleme

The last few months my world has been blurry, as I've waited for eye surgery to burn off the cloud cover from my eyes.  As I waited and waited and waited, my French friend Annie gave me a wonderful piece of advice, passed on to her from one of her belles-soeurs (sisters-in-law) "Accroche-toi aux branches - "Hold onto the branches...and so I have.  

Alone, in the slant of sun, back against a stone wall, I've watched days pass from light to shadow - like a cat curling into warmth.   "I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude."
    ----Colette

Cat - Jonathan & Nicole's house

Cattails - field near Charras

 

Thistle - Tiny hands

 When our hands are alone, they open, like faces. There is no shore to their opening.  St. Gerard

All the blue canoes - Aubeterre-sur-Dronne

On the River Dronne

Father & Baby daughter - Aubeterre-sur-Dronne

Kevin - Bridge over the River Dronne

Stone Bridge, Aubeterre-sur-Dronne

 From the Notebooks of Anne Verveine, VII

Distance was the house in which I welcomed you.

But it was in the river 

that we became cadence, there where the current braided

together again, after the stone bridge stanchion parted the stream.

It was to last only as long as the beauty lasted.

Do you believe in the soul?

Words torn from the void, wet and mewling,

Where we walked on the mountain, water

poured around us, surged up from the springs, seethed

down into rivulets, rocky streams, and one long blinding cascade:

your kisses were an eau-de-vie and as bitter.

I am poured out like water.

Distance is feminine in French.

I held a knife to a man's throat and let him bleed quietly into a cup.

What does "us" mean?

Coiled serpentine headdress of Leonardo's woman:

you wanted her, I wanted you.

Chill sunlight flexing itself on the city river

gave me the emptiness I needed

to write these instructions:  Sorrow

is a liqueur.  Drink deep. We will all be consumed.

                --Rosanna Warren

Parrot - Parc Colonial - Grosbot

Statue - Parc Colonial

Antoinette & Moi - Parc Colonial

Berries & Bamboo - Parc Colonial

I spent some time visiting animals; we seemed to be on the same wave length.

Rasputin - Le Maine Meunier - Chavenat

Kevin & Rasputin - Honey Festival - Chavenat

Geese, Chavenat Honey Festival

Lizard - Doumerac

 

OCTOBER – cut up poem version

berries
watched you sleep
all summer long -
ripened junipers
changed
to vinegar,
longing itself
eaten
at dawn

if that broken, yellow dog
wakes again at twilight
to turn into the bronze bobcat
furry and sure
climbing sixty foot trees
following the cry of her tennis ball concert
under a canopy of oak fingers
you know she can't see Tammy's backridge fence,
but she can still smell
buckets of damp Eucalyptus earth clinging,
hear the copper mushrooms
dried to dust
fallen -
a train whistle vanishing
through summer doorways.

RA Martin

Champignons - Charras

After harvest, field resting, waiting

End of Day - Antennae waiting

Sunset - Charras

Tiny Buddha - Parc Colonial - Grosbot

Rose - Doumerac

Ever amazing, this world we live in... Technology IS Magic,
& today à la Johnny Nash:
 

I can see clearly now the rain is gone.
I can see all the obstacles in my way.
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.
It's gonna be a bright (bright) bright (bright) sunshinin' day.
It's gonna be a bright (bright) bright (bright) sunshinin' day.

I will be in Paris October 20 - 26 doing Tarot readings, meeting up with Irish friends from Ireland Poetry Tour AND to see Niki de St. Phalle's show at the Grand Palais.  Still some slots open for readings on the 25th - ramartin8@gmail.com.

Ruthanne Doll - Made by Susan Andrews

It says on the back:  Ruthanne, a real doll - her heart as big as the great outdoors

Susan gave me this doll sometime in 197? - I treasure it.  It has gone around the world with me & Susan is still migrating too with her other Oiseaux Sister, Carolyn Fellman.  Check out their amazing artwork and workshops:  www.oiseauxsisters.com

Susan Andrews - Artist/Dollmaker

From July 2014 Summer Retreat - Moravia, New York