Change

“We change when the pain of remaining the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.”

Once upon a time

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

~ Nicole Krauss

Rise Early

Rise early
when morning darkness
still enwraps the trees.
Walk into the forest
with only your attentive heart.
Gaze toward the east,
take a deep breath, and wait.

After a short while you will see God
carrying a lantern through the forest,
bits of light bobbing up and down,
in and out, higher and higher,
the light climbs, spilling over
into the spaces between the leaves
and on into the world
beyond the forest.

Then the beautiful darkness
hands you over to the light.
It slips away reverently
into the bark of tree trunks,
into the black earth,
into all those other countries
that wait for its return.

Lift your face to the daystar now.
Experience the coming of dawn.
Bathed in morning light, pray
that the lantern of your life
move gently this day
into all those places
where light is needed.

~Macrina Wiederkehr

Night Rain

Burrowed deep in my bed
I hear the rain fall
weightily in the garden,
sweep the roof with galloping gusts,
indifferent to my plights.

I fall asleep with poems
dropping from the sky,
caught beyond my eyelids
by nocturnal leafy arms.

All night long they murmur.
In the morning I awake
with poetry on my lips.

~Antoinette Voute Roeder

511

If you were coming in the Fall,
I’d brush the summer by
With half a smile, and half a spurn
As Housewives do, a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I’d wind the months in balls –
And put them each in separate Drawers,
For fear the nunmbers fuse –

If only Centuries, delayed,
I’d count them on my Hand,
Subtracting, till my fingers dropped
Into Van Dieman’s Land.

If certain, when this life was out –
That yours and mine, should be
I’d toss it yonder, like a Rind,
And take Eternity –

But, now, uncertain of the length
Of this, that is between,
It goads me, like the Goblin Bee –
That will not state -its sting.

~Emily Dickinson

Impersonation

“Would you not like to try all sorts of lives? One is so very small – but that is the satisfaction of writing – one can impersonate so many people.”

~Katherine Mansfield

Most Favorites: V

          I wandered lonely as a cloud
          That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
          When all at once I saw a crowd,
          A host, of golden daffodils;
          Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
          Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

          Continuous as the stars that shine
          And twinkle on the milky way,
          They stretched in never-ending line
          Along the margin of a bay:                                  
          Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
          Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

          The waves beside them danced; but they
          Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
          A poet could not but be gay,
          In such a jocund company:
          I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
          What wealth the show to me had brought:

          For oft, when on my couch I lie
          In vacant or in pensive mood,                               
          They flash upon that inward eye
          Which is the bliss of solitude;
          And then my heart with pleasure fills,
          And dances with the daffodils.
                                                             

~William Wordsworth, 1804

For his painting of a word picture so vivid I feel I could join him on his country walk,
For comparing himself to a cloud that can change form and function as it wanders,
But mostly for his recognition that while he enjoyed the initial gift of such a beautiful scene
it was in remembering the encounter the he realized how much he had been graced by the experience.

What are the places or moments that surprise you with joy when you recall them suddenly in vacant or in pensive mood?

For the love of words (and Emily)

447

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

~Emily Dickinson

Spark

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire exists…it is real…it is possible…it is yours.” 
~ Ayn Rand

Most Favorites: IV

She walks in beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
but tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

~George Gordon, Lord Byron