Starting here, what do you want to remember? How sunlight creeps along a shining floor? What scent of old wood hovers, what softened sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now? Are you waiting for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this new glimpse that you found; carry into evening all that you want from this day. This interval you spent reading or hearing this, keep it for life––
What can anyone give you greater than now, starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
As once the winged energy of delight carried you over childhood's dark abysses, now beyond your own life build the great arch of unimagined bridges.
Wonders happen if we can succeed in passing through the harshest danger; but only in a bright and purely granted achievement can we realize the wonder.
To work with Things in the indescribable relationship is not too hard for us; the pattern grows more intricate and subtle, and being swept along is not enough.
Take your practiced powers and stretch them out until they span the chasm between two contradictionsâ¦For the god wants to know himself in you.
And when my Joy was born, I held it in my arms and stood on the house-top shouting, âCome ye, my neighbours, come and see, for Joy this day is born unto me. Come and behold this gladsome thing that laugheth in the sun.â
But none of my neighbours came to look upon my Joy, and great was my astonishment.
And every day for seven moons I proclaimed my Joy from the house-topâand yet no one heeded me. And my Joy and I were alone, unsought and unvisited.
Then my Joy grew pale and weary because no other heart but mine held its loveliness and no other lips kissed its lips.
Then my Joy died of isolation.
And now I only remember my dead Joy in remembering my dead Sorrow. But memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and then is heard no more.
I'm a very old dog, much older than most dogs. I can't give out my wisdom because I bark loudly and virtually no one understands this barking except a few other dogs of my particular species. I don't bark at cars. They're beneath contempt. I bark at the rising sun when it rises red out of a forest fire. I bark at thunder out of pure envy, the mighty noise this sky dog makes. I growl at myself when I sleep too much and don't run to the far field in the morning where i saw the bear bigger than me and ran home. I don't bark at the night. I love its black music. I sleep under the porch, inside during winter. Once I had a girlfriend for the day. I have puppies but I don't know where.
What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath— the most sacred of times? Cease from travel. Cease from buying and selling. Give up, just for now, on trying to make the world different than it is. Sing. Pray. Touch only those to whom you commit your life. Center down.
And when your body has become still, reach out with your heart. Know that we are connected in ways that are terrifying and beautiful. (You could hardly deny it now.) Know that our lives are in one another’s hands. (Surely, that has come clear.) Do not reach out your hands. Reach out your heart. Reach out your words. Reach out all the tendrils of compassion that move, invisibly, where we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love– for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, so long as we all shall live.
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Feb 10, 2020 - 6:51am
Sake by Elizabeth Spires
A squat bottle, two cups, and us toasting an anniversary although we know the wind may blow away these walls of paper, wood, and rock; and if they fall, we'll rise and quickly improvise a journey down time's cold silvery musical stream, slipping on dripping stepping-stones, drenched to the bone until, shades of our former selves, we give up the ghost, our ghastly smiles belying the cold finality of lying through centuries side by side, cheated by time. What is a marriage? A promise, a vow never to forsake the other, and love a little realm of light and shadow. But here, while the sake's warm. Drink again. For your sake. Mine.
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Jan 20, 2020 - 7:41pm
Antigone wrote:
Think of Others
while preparing your breakfast, think of others don’t forget the aliment of the doves and while you are going to war, think of others don’t forget those seeking peace and as you pay your water bill, think of others those who drink the clouds and while you are returning home, your home, think of others don’t forget the people of the tents and as you sleep and count the stars, think of others those who don’t have a space to sleep and as you liberate yourself with metaphors, think of others those who have lost their rights to speak and while you are thinking of others far away, think of yourself and say: I wish I was a candle in the dark
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Jan 20, 2020 - 7:16pm
Antigone wrote:
Clapp's Pond by Mary Oliver ... How sometimes everything closes up, a painted fan, landscapes and moments flowing together until the sense of distance - - - say, between Clapp's Pond and me - - - vanishes, edges slide together like the feathers of a wing, everything touches everything. ... *
Three miles through the woods Clapp's Pond sprawls stone gray among oaks and pines, the late winter fields
where a pheasant blazes up lifting his yellow legs under bronze feathers, opening bronze wings;
and one doe, dimpling the ground as she touches its dampness sharply, flares out of the brush and gallops away.
*
By evening: rain. It pours down from the black clouds, lashes over the roof. The last acorns spray over the porch; I toss one, then two more logs on the fire.
*
How sometimes everything closes up, a painted fan, landscapes and moments flowing together until the sense of distance - - - say, between Clapp's Pond and me - - - vanishes, edges slide together like the feathers of a wing, everything touches everything.
*
Later, lying half-asleep under the blankets, I watch while the doe, glittering with rain, steps under the wet slabs of the pines, stretches her long neck down to drink
was seriously thoughtful (it's quite possible that i'm floating in metaphorical ether and insulated from what is)