In honor of Mother’s Day, May 13, 2018

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Day to Night. Author: Kathie Malley-Morrison

Poems by my grandmother, Ernestine Cobern Beyer, that my beloved Mom, Barbara Beyer Malley, and I both love:

The Measure

The strong warm hand, the broad and steady shoulder,

The face you love grown dearer, kinder, older,

The comrade-glance, the peace, the burden-sharing,

The well-loved voice, the touch, the tender caring . . .

O, you who have this, guard it well and treasure it,

For only when you’ve lost it can you measure it!

 

Stars

The stars maintain eternal espionage

Above the earth, light centuries away.

To them our globe seems but a brief mirage

Created in experimental play.

In cosmic calm, indifferent, they beam

On good and evil, tears and wars and scars;

Earth–are you but a transitory dream

Envisioned by the cool and timeless stars?

 

Note from KMM: Let’s all do what we can to ensure that life on earth is not transitory.  Protect Mother Earth. Fight climate change. Conserve. Recycle. Follow the lead of California and go solar.

And for more poetry and prose from my grandmother, my mother, and me, find The Path.

It’s at: https://www.amazon.com/Path-Tears-Laughter-Through-Generations/dp/1986129969/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1525836609&sr=1-1&keywords=barbara+malley+the+path

 

The Path: Tears and Laughter through the Generations

By Kathie Malley-Morrison

The Path: Tears and Laughter Through the Generations By Barbara Malley and Kathie Malley-Morrison 2018

I have exciting news!  My mom and I have written a three-generation memoir, The aPath: Tears and Laughter through the Generations, which has just been published by Amazon. Here is what the announcement on Amazon.com has to say about it:

     The Path is a journey through the creative careers of three women writers from one family. Widowed at age 44 in the middle of the Great Depression, with three kids to raise, Ernestine Cobern Beyer’s goal of enhancing her meager income by selling her poems led to her career as one of the most popular children’s poets of the 20th century. Her daughter Barbara caught the writing bug and created rollicking stories of family foibles, personal misadventures, and boating and flying mishaps— which have entertained thousands of readers of her magazine articles, memoir (Take My Ex-Husband, Please—But Not Too Far) and her blog, Tears and Laughter at 90.blogspot.com.

Granddaughter Kathie has written largely on more serious issueswar and peacebut has also published stories on her blog, engagingpeace.com

Their memoir is amply illustrated with photos, sketches, and paintings to add color to their poetry and prose.

About the Authors

     Barbara Malley excels at making lemonade out of lemons. Is the horse on the loose and the goat in the lilacs? Is her younger son the greatest debater since Abraham Lincoln? Her rollicking tales invite laughter. Her heartaches—the loss of a daughter in an auto accident and the loss of a son to ALS—provoke sadness and empathy in any reader’s heart.  

     After decades of publishing scholarly books and articles for academic audiences, Barbara’s daughter Kathie Malley-Morrison is writing for a more general community, a community that cares about friends and family, a community that favors nonviolence over violence, a community that enjoys a good laugh but also a good cry. She reaches some of these people through her blog, engagingpeace.com, but hopes to reach more through this three-generational memoir, written with her mom in honor of all the family and friends who embrace her now and have gone before.