Lightly Child, Lightly.

~ Live & Learn
May the poems be
the little snail’s trail. Everywhere I go,
every inch: quiet record of the foot’s silver prayer.

I lived once.
Thank you.
It was here.

~ Aracelis Girmay, “Ars Poetica,” Kingdom Animalia

Notes:

  • Photo:  Julie Renée Jones Rewrites Memory In ‘Umbra.’ Since 2001, photographer Julie Renée Jones has been capturing places somewhere in between reality and figments of imagination (via ignant).
  • Poem: via lifeinpoetry
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
  • Related posts: May Sarton

 

7 thoughts on “Lightly Child, Lightly.”

  2. Thanks for introducing me to this amazing poet! The following poem of hers captures my mood today.

    Elegy
    BY ARACELIS GIRMAY
    What to do with this knowledge
    that our living is not guaranteed?
    Perhaps one day you touch the young branch
    of something beautiful. & it grows & grows
    despite your birthdays & the death certificate,
    & it one day shades the heads of something beautiful
    or makes itself useful to the nest. Walk out
    of your house, then, believing in this.
    Nothing else matters.

    All above us is the touching
    of strangers & parrots,
    some of them human,
    some of them not human.

    Listen to me. I am telling you
    a true thing. This is the only kingdom.
    The kingdom of touching;
    the touches of the disappearing, things.

    Aracelis Girmay, “Elegy” from Kingdom Animalia. Copyright © 2011 by Aracelis Girmay.

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  4. I keep thinking of this image. I am sure she is mesmerized by the reflection of light play on the wall, even though her head is slightly looking downward andshe isn’t reaching forward to trace the pattern, letting the light kiss her bare arm… when I take away the snail (insert child) and think of these words “I lived once.Thank you. It was here” I think of her being so lost, lonely, invisible and sent to the cornor.. makes me want to hold her, sing to her, then brush her hair and then tie a pretty pastel ribbon in her hair and tell her to go outside and play in the sun…

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