JOY's POEMS

Serve G*d With Joy

In passion, I paint my poetry with prayers and photos.

Ivdu Et HaShem B'Simcha

Joy Krauthammer ©

All photos, images, collages, art by Joy Krauthammer ©

unless Joy is in non-remote photo.

Purple Lupine

Purple Lupine and Bee

Anticipating

I wait until late winter

for Lupine to bloom.

2.16.2015

Haiku

Inspired early

a single blossom bloomed.

I’m in love with spring.

2.18.2016

Haiku

I Awake the Dawn

''I will awake the dawn...’' - King David (Shulchan Aruch)

“Sheyeha Hu Meorer HaShachar”

— הוא מעורר השחר שיהא

I Awake the Dawn

Early each morning before dawn, joyously

I again begin my day in wonder, like a child,

at the edge of the cliff, closest to the horizon and the rising sun.

For an hour today, from 5:30am,

with camera in my hands,

I am blown over again and again

by the powerful gusts of wind cleaning the sky

and distant mountains,

and I smile

in the radiance of G*d’s colorful surprises.

May your day be bright.

Love and blesSings,

Joy Krauthammer © 11.18.2014

Sunrise Sunstar

Garden of Joy

11.17.2014

Sunrise Sunstar

Garden of Joy

Sunrise

Garden of Joy

Radiant Strength of Shechina

Psalms of My Soul
ספירת העומר

Gevurah sh b'Malchut

Sephirat HaOmer day 44

6 weeks and 2 days of the Omer

Radiant Strength of Shechina

From where does my strength come
That I "Serve G*d With Joy"? - Psalm 100:2

In my garden
each morning for my prayers,
I face East toward Jerusalem.
I feel the Indwelling Presence,
the strength of the Holy One
infuse me with the Glory of Gifts.

In the darkness,
waiting for sun to rise,
my heart expands
in joy receiving arrival
of colors aligned
amongst clouds
and mountains
and seen through trees,
of the rising sun.

The swift hummingbird sits
quietly observing
atop the fig tree,
and nearby,
Ms. Mockingbird sings
also on an uppermost branch,
and radiance
appears to our world
with a starburst
of transcendent brilliance.
I am already full,
full as Malchut.

- Joy Krauthammer

Mockingbird & Hummingbird

Hummingbird

Sunrise

Sunburst

more of G*d's Glory:

http://joys-favorite-fotos.blogspot.com/2012/05/clouds-of-glory.html

Sephirat HaOmer Day 44

Sunrise After Light Rain

Baruch Hashem, we had sprinkles last night.

Bright red sunrise light

long narrow stretch

appears on the eastern horizon

above the San Gabriel and Verdugo Mountains.

Red flash quickly lightens in east

and bright red travels

all the way along horizon

to the Santa Monica Mountains

in the south.

“O G*d, You are my G*d; at early dawn will I seek You. My soul thirsts for You;

my flesh longs for You, in a dry and weary land without water." (Psalm 63:2)

Hummingbird on Fig Tree

Hummingbird on Fig Tree

- Joy Krauthammer

This morning of Jan. 17th, it is the 20th anniversary

of the deadly Northridge Earthquake.

That morning I was in my Northridge home.

Today a terrible wild fire takes 22 homes,
and 1,700 Angeles National Forest community acres,

and the sunrise color is strangely red.

Today is my husband's, z'l, yahrzeit, Jan. 17, 17 Tevet,
but today is 16 Shvat.

He died 8 years ago.

It is a morning filled with darkness.

I don't want to photograph the morning.
~

I hear a Hummingbird
and look up to the top of the Mama Fig tree,

this week of Tu B'Shvat, Birthday of the Trees,

and see the tiny iridescent-colored bird
sitting on a freshly pruned barren branch,
and I smile.

For a fleeting dawn moment

a second Hummer joins the first.

There is light.

I photograph.

~ ~ ~

Enjoy my devotion of

FIGs: Photos and Poems

http://joys-poems.blogspot.com/2013/02/manna-from-heaven.html

http://joys-poems.blogspot.com/2013/02/figs.html

http://joys-poems.blogspot.com/2013/02/fig-tree-at-sinai.html

http://joys-poems.blogspot.com/2013/12/fig-tree-gives-again.html

http://joys-poems.blogspot.com/2014/01/hummingbird-on-fig-tree.html

http://joys-garden.blogspot.com/2013/02/fig-tree-collages.html

http://joys-poems.blogspot.com/2013/08/haiku-fig-etiquette.html

http://joys-joyousjoy.blogspot.com/2012/08/gds-fig-tree-parshat-ki-tavo-moses.html

http://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/626326/jewish/Manna-From-Heaven.htm

© Joy Krauthammer

Utopia

UTOPIA

- Joy Krauthammer

In the Sixties

it was a Happening

when I was arrested –

along with my peace-loving friends

Suzanne Slut, Marvelous Mike, Sweet Sue,

Terrific Tobin, Larry and Ron

– for trespassing
from our row boats

onto little Peter's Island

in the middle

of the Schuylkill River, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

I told the cops that I had NO ID on me

and that my name was

Gentle Joy from Utopia.

A bit beligerant

being booked at police station

charged with trespassing

because "ducks were mating in breeding season"

and visitors

(from New York and California

on a very rainy late winter's day)

were not allowed on the little island

in the middle of the River

by Strawberry Mansion Bridge.

We friends ignored the bullhorn warnings

the river police on their boats used
chasing us

as they blasted us

and dragged us away from our boats

and the little island

in the middle of the River

in the Sixties.

I was from Utopia.

10.29.2018
https://joys-poems.blogspot.com/2014/01/utopia.html

The scary stormy car trip with flat tire from Queens College (QC), NY to Philadelphia was one filled with compassion as my mother, z"l, had just died, and dear NY friends and one from California, spent the cold rainy winter's day with me. Tobin drove us in his '56 Chevy to our friends Sue and Ron, both in Phily graduate schools.

My gentle Sixties friends of ill repute all went onto graduate schools and fine helping professions and were probably never again arrested for trespassing on islands with mating ducks.

If this River scene had been a Love-in at NY's Central Park Lake, I would have showered the batoned cops with some flowers in my hair, as I danced with the Hari Krishnas. It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.

It was the Sixties and I braved the Sit-ins, blocking the QC President's office. I was from Utopia.

I counseled Draft Dodgers. It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.

I performed Guerilla Street Theatre, and I studied with La Mama Troupe. I was from Utopia.

I marched! It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.

I hung out with SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.
Peacefully at night I hung out alone in the Queens College ceramics basement studio on campus in deep Oneness meditation with my clay, that led to my full scholarship to graduate school and my teaching adults at a Manhattan art school, Cooper Square. It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.
Beyond the Sixties and still from Utopia, I opened an art school for the City of Los Angeles and also taught children how to express themselves and create in clay.

Utopia Parkway was a short hitchhike ride away from QC; Utopia for them.

Herstory remembered for "Utopia" theme.

JOY note sent back, shared from Tobin to illustrate Utopia poem

"Phily 3/69

It was fun mating together on Peter's Island, playing under Strawberry Mansion Bridge.

You, me, Mike, Larry, Ron, Sue and Suzanne.

Flat tires y all,

Gentle Joy from Utopia

Tobin Unger, Larry Skolnick, Sue Maturlo

Peter's Island, Schuylkill River, Philadelphia, PA

near Strawberry Mansion Bridge

3.1969

MIA (missing in action) in another boat

Joy, Ronnie Strauss, Mike Saks, Suzanne Roth

Photo awesomely sent to me by awesome college friend Tobin 11.1.2018 who has kept river photo that I gave to him in 1969, over 49 1/2 years.

(Yes, even in the sixties I was sharing my photos.)

https://libwww.freelibrary.org/digital/item/31946

https://readyallrow.org/navigating-the-schuylkill-river-philadelphia-pa/

About Me

Serve G*d With Joy

Purple Lupine

I Awake the Dawn

Radiant Strength of Shechina

Sunrise After Light Rain

Hummingbird on Fig Tree

Utopia

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