poem

by

UNnamed

To love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again. ~Ellen Bass

(Book: Mules of Love https://amzn.to/3wstyvV)

posted by Philo thoughts along with a great photo!

I really like the poem. And the sentiment. But I don’t love life, I don’t even like it. My take on it all is the exact opposite of the poem, as far as I know. Although I do love walks in the woods. With my dog. But my dog isn’t here anymore. She left me on March 13 of last year. I don’t think I posted about that but I might have. And then there’s the woods…no where near here and the drive doesn’t work. So. There you have it. And it’s only Tuesday.

by

Scribble

I drank a wine
of possibility with Rumi
And shivered:
How can I scribble
a poem of nothing
I’m not
just fix upon the world
a scribble
meant to be that poem
for I am
Winter and Water
in Time
that Poem is me

L.E. Hansen

I wrote a poem upon demand which struck me as odd, along with the rule of 44 words to be contained within. So many things off the beam on this which made it ravishing of course. And of and for and to the 10,000 things no less.

And so I did. Write it and yet not, more like a vomit of words, not mine.

by

Mouthful of Forevers

” I am not the first person you loved.
You are not the first person I looked at
with a mouthful of forevers. We
have both known loss like the sharp edges
of a knife. We have both lived with lips
more scar tissue than skin. Our love came
unannounced in the middle of the night.
Our love came when we’d given up
on asking love to come. I think
that has to be part
of its miracle.
This is how we heal.
I will kiss you like forgiveness. You
will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms
will bandage and we will press promises
between us like flowers in a book.
I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat
on your skin. I will write novels to the scar
of your nose. I will write a dictionary
of all the words I have used trying
to describe the way it feels to have finally,
finally found you.

And I will not be afraid
of your scars.

I know sometimes
it’s still hard to let me see you
in all your cracked perfection,
but please know:
whether it’s the days you burn
more brilliant than the sun
or the nights you collapse into my lap
your body broken into a thousand questions,
you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I will love you when you are a still day.
I will love you when you are a hurricane.”

Clementine von Radics – Mouthful of Forevers

Posted on Facebook by Ravenous Butterflies

by

Breathing

Posted by Il Salotto di Rossana

Il Salotto di Rossana · 11 hrs

Evgeiy Monahov Lady 2011

Declare peace with your breath.
Inhale men of arms and friction, exhale whole buildings and stormi red-winged blackbirds.
Inhale terrorists and exhale sleeping children and freshly mowed fields.
Inhale confusion and exhale maple trees.
Inhale how much has fallen and exhale friendships of a lifetime still intact.
Declare peace with your listening: when you hear sirens, pray out loud.
Remember what your tools are: flower seeds, dress pins, clean rivers.
Make some soup.
Make music, learn how to say thanks in three different languages.
Learn how to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as blueberries dancing,
imagine the pain as the exhale of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim to go the other way.
Declare peace.
The world has never appeared so new and precious.
Drink a cup of tea and cheer up.
Act like the armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.

~Mary Oliver

by

Grand Heron


Psyche’s Call with Donna May

DO NOT BE ASHAMED
by Wendell Berry

You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread 
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along, 
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
“I am not ashamed.” A heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.

Photo: “Grand Heron” by Ardea Herodias
Poem originally posted by Luis Alberto Urrea, 2012