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
the natural world, where every moment is full of the passion to keep moving. Inside every mind thereâs a hermitâs cave full of light, full of snow, full of concentration.
Iâve knelt there, and so have you, hanging on to what you love,
the natural world, where every moment is full of the passion to keep moving. Inside every mind there’s a hermit’s cave full of light, full of snow, full of concentration.
I’ve knelt there, and so have you, hanging on to what you love,
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Dec 25, 2019 - 8:43am
The Christmas Story by Robin Richstone
We know by heart these stories of a cold world, unwelcoming inn, the murderous tyrant, Mary on a donkey, escape, how cruel, how long ago, how far from what we mean to sing, O Come, O Come, to the weary, the terrified, Mary's heart beating fast, her grip on the baby, the strains of it fill the shops, the streets, flow down rivers, cross seas, cross borders, the refugee mother kneels to change her infant in an open field, the shepherds gone, the angels quiet, her safety now completely up to us.
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Dec 2, 2019 - 11:48am
On My Own (excerpt)
...
The teachers were soft-spoken women smelling like washed babies and the students fierce as lost dogs, but they all hushed in wonder when I named the 400 angels of death, the planets sighted and unsighted, the moment at which creation would turn to burned feathers and blow every which way in the winds of shock. I sat down and the room grew quiet and warm. My eyes asked me to close them. I did, and so I discovered the beauty of sleep and that to get ahead I need only say I was there, and everything would open as the darkness in my silent head opened onto seascapes at the other end of the world, waves breaking into mountains of froth, the sand running back to become salt savor of the infinite. Mrs. Tarbox woke me for lunch—a tiny container of milk and chocolate cookies in the shape of Michigan.
Of course I went home at 3:30, with the bells ringing behind me and four stars in my notebook and drinking companions on each arm. If you had been there in your yellow harness and bright hat directing traffic you would never have noticed me—my clothes shabby and my eyes bright—; to you I'd have been just an ordinary kid. Sure, now you know, it's obvious, what with the light of the Lord streaming through the nine windows of my soul and the music of rain following in my wake and the ordinary air on fire every blessed day I waken the world.
was seriously thoughtful (it's quite possible that i'm floating in metaphorical ether and insulated from what is) 
