To Begin With, the Sweet Grass 1. Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat of the sweet grass? Will the owl bite off its own wings? Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or forget to sing? Will the rivers run upstream? Behold, I say—behold the reliability… Continue reading Mary Oliver
He would say, “How funny it will all seem, all you’ve gone through, when I’m not here anymore, when you no longer feel my arms around your shoulders, nor my heart beneath you, nor this mouth on your eyes, because I will have to go away some day, far away…” And in that instant I… Continue reading Arthur Rimbaud
Remind me again—together we trace our strange journey, find each other, come on laughing. Some time we’ll cross where life ends. We’ll both look back as far as forever, that first day. I’ll touch you—a new world then. Stars will move a different way. We’ll both end. We’ll both begin. Remind me again. – William… Continue reading William Stafford
I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past. ― Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Three: 1925-1930. (Mariner Books; First edition, September 14, 1981)
I’m waiting for the pain to set like a sun. — Nate Pritts, from “The Hills Have Justice,” Right Now More Than Ever: Poems (H_ NGM_ N BOOKS, 2013)
Actuality is when the lighthouse is dark between flashes: it is the instant between the ticks of the watch…the pause when nothing is happening. It is the void between events. Yet the instant of actuality is all we ever can know directly. — George Kubler, The Shape of Time. (Yale University Press; Seventh Printing edition,… Continue reading George Kubler
Ever notice?– in the sod of the body an earthly dream is at work, and every time you live through the whisperings of a vitreous winter’s idle trees or the caresses of summer’s bayonets, you feel love swell into a river and flood the breathing terrains of your land, and the seed sown earlier springs… Continue reading Zoltán Böszörményi
There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out the Heavens, yet everything had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumberable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tullips with wings. ― Edgar Allan Poe, from “The Island of the Fay,” The Fall… Continue reading Edgar Allan Poe
I sway with the swaying waist of the beast. I dance with a black star. — Adonis, from ‘Season of Tears’, Selected Poems (trans. Khaled Mattawa) Yale University Press; First Edition edition (October 19, 2010)
It was a joy! Words weren’t dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you. ― Charles Bukowski, , Ham on Rye: A Novel. (Ecco; Reprint edition July 29, 2014) Originally… Continue reading Charles Bukowski
The Vale of Soul-Making 