Within a day’s glow a thousand moments tempt the mind…

I never knew what time could do 
Until I let my dreams come through,
Reminding me that day or night 
The stars are never out of sight.

What is there to say to those that glaze mankind? 

Well, I am the eagle:
To fly so high the darkness is below. 
One who can see the heart of the sun. 
One who can see what duty has won:
When the self will loft the mind and, hence, 
the mind will wire the body in some mimic’d poise,  
futurity spills upon us to test the courages.

Yet we all know this, as we know what hardens steel or vigors the child to solitary tasks, so seldom said, these murmurs of the heart we build each day. Here’s to recognizing amidst the blinding dark infinity the sweet triumph of every step we carve from this froth of earth. Here’s to discovery amongst our paths, to worthy dreams to lure us lovingly to fuller powers. May we be of sharp wit and diligence of will, and every flame succumb as ally, and every flood seek our buoyancy. 

To live with life a friend

and all the earth its winking crew 

and all the heavens supervise.

To live an ethical life in an ethical land, 

not put upon by guile nor sticks of rage, 

not ruled by the weakest of the weak  
hidden in the grandstand of corruption. 

Along the way from plankton to pulsar, 
joy which gives a heart beyond itself 

and joy which lends this heart to friends.

Now that’s living!

Oh won’t you come with me
Where the Wood River flows
We’ll watch it meander slowly
As the sky turns from red to dark

And as that sun goes down
We’ll throw our arms around
Each other and tell the dreams
That are deep in the heart

http://www.conniekaldor.com/about/wood-river/

When I hear them call
in the morning, before
I am quite awake,
my bed is already traveling
the daily rainbow,
the arc toward evening;
and the birds, leading
their own discreet lives
of hunger and watchfulness,
are with me all the way,
always a little ahead of me
in the long-practiced manner
of unobtrusive guides.

By the time I arrive at evening,
they have just settled down to rest;
already invisible, they are turning
into the dreamwork of trees;
and all of us together —
myself and the purple finches,
the rusty blackbirds,
the ruby cardinals,
and the white-throated sparrows
with their liquid voices —
ride the dark curve of the earth
toward daylight, which they announce
from their high lookouts
before dawn has quite broken for me.

–Lisel Mueller, “Why I Need the Birds”

Repel to deny to learn too little so often as is each short infinity through beauty.

Delight in each prolific rendering of beauty as if the Earth a brew of tea and beauty its steaming wisps. This an inalienable wonder proved in either dirt or star and every blend between, our character sculpted in the clay of rapture, our heart’s regard for hope.

Beauty they say caresses the tender, arouses the dormant, excites the innocent, tempers the strong, guides the wise, comforts the good, binds the wicked, so why then do we so often ignore and abuse beauty?

If I walk slowly on soft earth amidst a native meadow, tongued by light, by wisps of breeze, touched across my chest and shoulder with warming sun, drawn by the incessant celebration of leaved branch, the spiked grasses, and the willing exposition of the flowers, will I not know of beauty and therefore be caressed, aroused, excited, tempered, guided, bound and comforted? May I not then add this taste of beauty to myself? To see and then be blind, to touch and then be empty, to join and then be apart, is to find and then to lose our precious human birthright. We are to rise each day and in our civilian duty declare no other purpose than the exploration of beauty.

We are smothered in the revelation of beauty, as awakening to each day within these stars must surely be. We are charged to take our birthright rather than be pelted with dusts of contempt, of incoherent denial, of jealous resentment, of darker splendored substitutions fashioned from culture and politic, and war. We are to strive in the breadth of our human mind to know the more intolerable splendor of beauty. We are beauty as ourselves, the essence of sweet seconded by reason. 

“I decided it is better to scream… Silence is the real crime against humanity.”

Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope

‘I have often thought, that one day, under a special dispensation, I should have received the secret of life.’ http://www.barelyimaginedbeings.com/2013/01/early-morning.html

I saw myself fall
Though a tumbling inferno
As if hell was where a boy
Shoveled clouds of sawdust
Into the wide mouth of doubt.

—Yusef Komunyakaa

i.e. Man is only wholly Man when he is playing

if beauty were then beauty be and not one of us lament, so ugly is as ugly does and not one of us content

My Get-Up-And-Go Has Got Up and Went by Anonymous

Old age is golden, or so I’ve heard said, 
But sometimes I wonder, as I crawl into bed, 
With my ears in a drawer, my teeth in a cup, 
My eyes on the table until I wake up. 
As sleep dims my vision, I say to myself: 
Is there anything else I should lay on the shelf? 
But, though nations are warring, and Congress is vexed, 
We’ll still stick around to see what happens next! 

How do I know my youth is all spent? 
My get-up-and-go has got up and went! 
But, in spite of it all, I’m able to grin 
And think of the places my getup has been!

When I was young, my slippers were red; 
I could kick up my heels right over my head. 
When I was older my slippers were blue, 
But still I could dance the whole night through. 
Now I am older, my slippers are black. 
I huff to the store and puff my way back. 
But never you laugh; I don’t mind at all: 
I’d rather be huffing than not puff at all! 

How do I know my youth is all spent? 
My get-up-and-go has got up and went! 
But, in spite of it all, I’m able to grin 
And think of the places my getup has been!

I get up each morning and dust off my wits, 
Open the paper, and read the Obits. 
If I’m not there, I know I’m not dead, 
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed! 

How do I know my youth is all spent? 
My get-up-and-go has got up and went! 
But, in spite of it all, I’m able to grin 
And think of the places my getup has been!

What I stole for love added up.
It added up to nothing.  To the air perfumed
by an absent woman.  To a box

filled with crushed chalk.  God save me
from the stars, once and for all—
I have had enough.  Let me love anything

but that: let me go free and dream
of green oceans and the surf
that batters some other world to sleeplessness.

It is enough to whisper only
this.  To speak to the flame in your breast
and hear nothing else.  Once

I believed I could possess
what touched you: the worn sweater,
or the song on the radio

that meant nothing and all in that instant.
Against your door I pressed
my ear, and heard nothing, the whisper

of water, maybe, a breath of cool air—
the gossip of your absence—
and nothing in me could knock or wait,

and all around me the night
spread like water through a rag,
and I let my hands drop whatever they held.

—Paul Guest, Popular Romance

“I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you.

“Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through.

“Tell me what the word ‘home’ means to you and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mothers name just by the way you describe your bed room when you were 8. See, I wanna know the first time you felt the weight of hate and if that day still trembles beneath your bones.

“Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain? See, I wanna know what you think of your first name. And if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mothers joy when she spoke it for the very first time.

“I want you tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind.

“Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel.

“Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin? Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea? And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me, how would you explain the miracle of my life to me?

“And for all the times you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself, have the prayers you’ve asked come true? And if they didn’t did you feel denied? And if you felt denied, denied by whom?

“I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling good. I wanna know what you see in the mirror on a day a day you’re feeling bad. I wanna know the first person who ever taught you your beauty could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass.

“If you ever reach enlightenment, will you remember how to laugh?

“Have you ever been a song? See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living. I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving.

“And if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes. I wanna know if you bleed sometimes through other people’s wounds.

“And if you dream sometimes that this life is just a balloon that if you wanted to you could pop—but you never would because you’d never want it to stop.” ―Andrea Gibson

SNOW —Randy Newman

Snow fills the fields we used to know,
And the little hut where we would go
Seems far below in the snow.

Gone … it’s all over, and you’re gone,
But the memory is ours alone.
Our dreams lay there in the snow.

Sometimes the wind blows through the trees,
And I think I hear you calling me,
But all I see is snow, everywhere I go.

As the cold winter sun sinks low,
I walk alone through the snow …
I walk alone through the snow.

I will wade out
               till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers

I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
                               Alive
                                           with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
                          in the sleeping curves of my body

Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery
with chasteness of sea-girls
                               Will i complete the mystery
                                            of my flesh
I will rise
               After a thousand years
lipping
flowers
                And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

— e. e. cummings

In Blackwater Woods

 Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
 
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
 
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
 
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
 
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
 
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
 
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
 
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
 
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
 
~ Mary Oliver ~