Posts tagged musings

Choose another tag?

a january prayer

January Prayer

The pull away of all that bounty
leaves a hole
it seems.

I am scared,
uncelebrated,
my flesh unpatted,
assurance gone,
party over,
everyone done,
just me alone.

I am left to fill a vessel
still, and spooky.
Sleep has taken over
and I am left to wander
unseen, it seems
in town, when stores are closed.

Dreams separated by glass or ice
paint promise some other day.
And I reach backward
for my faith won by memory
that these are the days
that bloom in time
but for now are mine.

Clear airs of ownership possess this child
as it wanders corridors, now his.
This dormancy,
this wealth of vacancy
this fallow time
is mine, don’t you see?

I am free to move about the house of us
and plan our brilliance,
court our hope,
believe in these moments,
know our kind creator,
stumbling original
all the way.

It tickles Him to see me this way.

Bobby McAlpine
Catechisms

an october prayer

In addition to being an architect and interior designer, Bobby McAlpine is also an avid poet. In 2011, he spent the entire year composing a special prayer for every month. He explained that he felt these words welling up within him and they yearned to to be put to paper. At Christmas he presented the collection, entitled “Catechisms”, as a gift to his family and friends; a piece of his soul offered forth. The one for October is a favorite of mine so I thought I’d share it with our readers.

October Prayer

God showed light sideways again

this month like a raid

on this world

on this garden given us

and showed once again

what had become grainy to see.

And it hit me

I’m being overseen

I’m being pointed, anointed

arrested

kindly toward what is mine

for now.

•

And I am lighter myself

by this

And my mind combs memory for evidence

and gratitude long before

Thanksgiving.

•

Squirrel and chipmunk industry

is a sight to be seen

in premonition of a fallow time.

Who sent this wisdom to ones

so young

Who could not know what was to come

With greater margin,

humans fail

Where lesser beings prevail -

all to say,

The lessons come

The lessons go

But good to know

They come again

Slow to grow

Long to know

Faith of months

Faith of years

Become us

Most beautifully lit in this

fine October.

•

Once again made a glad being.

Walking blocks of Manhattan, my steps

catch every light.

I am given divine gait

I am making time

and gaining ground

Feeling smiled upon.

Bobby McAlpine – Catechisms

for the love of dogs

To wrap up the dog days of Summer, a love poem to our canine pals:

Selfish is the love of dogs
Selfish of me that is
To wade in their gaze
Drunk in love
They teach me
Teetering on an older person’s lenience
They watch and forgive me fluidly
And do not ever really waiver in their hearts
Erratic circumstance is ridden through
Skewered by unwavering love
Unrevisited
Tethered
Unfaltering
Weathered
And won
Theirs is a gladness
In the opportunity.
Powerful machinery they possess.

Bobby McAlpine
Finding Home

A few pictures from previous publications where our work was distinctly overshadowed by the beauty of the four legged models:

Bobby even designed a directoire-inspired console with a dog bed built in. From the McAlpine Home line and available from MacRae.

Go give your dog a hug. They really do make the grandest home accessories. Special thanks to our models: Joe, Agnes, Lucy, Scrappy and Ella.

I know a place

Sometimes when I am lost
I fall into a kind of trance as if sleepwalking
find myself unconsciously falling toward a place
known by few though by some
Its architecture began long before I get there,
for it transcends the physical.
Though I go alone, I always carry someone with me
perhaps an imaginary friend
and wear a silent, contained smile as if to say,
“I know a place”
It was conceived by no grown up but by a dearer creature
and was designed to veil the brashness that lay outside it

It has no exterior though
it has a lovely face for those who might not understand
and an almost apologetic one for those who do.
It is built of compassion and so, made to endure.

Anything new to enter is quick to have a healthy
coating of life rubbed over it to cloak and protect
it from any one occurrence that might make itself known
and appears forever too important.

It is here I am safe
and here I am clever
and here I am known
and here I cannot stay too long.

I know a place whose beauty is incidental
for it is more a piece of understanding and in
every morsel a lesson in survival, and it will last.

I know a place that is infinitely complex
and at once simple.
It knows more than me for it leaves me clues.
And in its fog there is familiarity and clarity.
I have always known it.

I know a place and it is you.

Bobby McAlpine – “Finding Home” ©

on finding home

I rest along the way in this beautifully set camp of my making

But it is only a marker of what I know now

it is not meant to hold

For I love to fall through water in the moments when rush parts

And brushes back to touch and accept and be with me

But I also love the lift out and pull away nakedness that a giles the next climb

These points of arrestment and assessment are the evidence I crave

Making physical these subtle fleeting truths is building me

I have no notion that I should possess the portrait only to enjoy it for a while

And search for its lesson

Read its screen and marvel at it temporanious plate as though I were an unvested visitor

Curious, amused, gathering, apprehensive, tentative and smart

I’ll take only what is good

This process

This distallation

Awakens me

Perhaps it’s just roughage

Does binging and purging bring about the light fantastic?

I had an old roommate that said

“I think the only reason I date these guys

is for the exhilarated feeing I get when I break up with them”

And so she cut her famous long hair each time

And was beautiful again

Things are expendable to me

So I’m kind of cocky in the acquisition of them

I revel in these choices knowing they are but sand castles

Temperal and important in the loss

There is a light and cumulative wealth

But then so would say

A gifted whore

Bobby McAlpine – “Finding Home” ©

Congratulations to Christina@greigedesign.com, who was the lucky winner of last week’s giveaway. The prize, a signed copy of our book “Finding Home” is on its way to you.

love and the cottage

Do you remember when you fell in love?

How your heart leaned generously toward all that you came upon?

The state of grace that love permits?

The cottage stands as lucid testimony to that time when all you had was all you needed.

It is physical evidence of a state of mind that was full and simple and clear and strong.

Before you got everything you ever wanted

there was that time when you simply had what you needed:

One of each, two of none,

and there could be no more eloquent picture than that of the cottage.

Though the houses that follow may also depict your life clearly,

they will always be muddier in their complexity and never so lucid

as those days at the cottage when love was louder.

Thus the importance of the second home.

The revisitation and rediscovery of the cottage.

the power of rooms

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Stumbling on the same evidence again and again I’ve discovered a few secrets of my instincts

and they have led me to my parents

I’ve come to know how I have walked and prospered

in the presence of a love that has little circumstance

that all I have done these last twenty years

has been in front of the fixed plate of a benevolent love

on reflection I see the beginnings of a growth in its likeness

in this work, I plant this host that graces me

You see everything good is traceable to love so I dream of places with hearts

so big they are quiet

so tall they are quiet

so long they are quiet

so wide

always a host in your presence

asking nothing, giving all

and a place to be in its lap back far enough to ponder the beauty of it all

a witness box, a back seat, quiet, watchful, learning from the host

daring and intense intimacy, healing curative chambers

where house is a metaphor for love

rooms we wade into like a few cocktails til we feel the water rise to tickle our cheeks

and we become weightless, burdens withdrawn with gestures so large that they become quiet

like great love

great love you may dance and play before, for it will never change

never more

it is at your back, warm and earthen, securing any flight

beautifully mixing inertia with ascension

it is to be in the hollow of God’s hands

these are the chambers of the human heart

where lovely things are said, thoughts sustained, kindness exchanged and truth abides

where every object is not its own

where something larger than could ever be there somehow is there

collecting us, affirming us, grounding us, teaching us

the father, the mother, the transportation, the intoxication, the sanctuary

the power of rooms

reminding us we are not out here spinning by ourselves

reminding us we are not alone

after all, what are these rooms but manifestations of our own hearts

that they might be what we have learned

Posts tagged musings

Choose another tag?

Follow “finding home”