Our time always shortening.
What we cherish always temporary. What we love
is, sooner or later, changed…
Giving thanks for what we are allowed
to think about it, grateful for it even as it wanes…
And occasionally the bright sound of broken glass.
All of it a blessing. The being there. Being alive then.
Like a giant bell ringing long after you can’t hear it.
~ Jack Gilbert, excerpt from “Burma” from Refusing Heaven
Notes: Poem via Mythology of Blue. Photo: Maximus Audacious of Bell
i like this – “and occasionally the bright sound of broken glass”
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Yes…
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Thanks for sharing!
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This one leaves me with mixed feelings, pal. I found the first few lines a real buzz kill, but do agree that we must always remain thankful…. Wishing you an easy, happy Sunday!
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Buzzkill, great word of time passing, aging, love lost. Agree. The passage did trigger the need for and beauty of light and dark for me:
I love people like Thomas Merton because half the time he’s in his hermitage. He’s chafing against it. He’s knocking against the walls. He’s longing to be out in the world, and he’s honest enough to say that, as you said, the electricity comes in the tension and that there’s no sense of light without a darkness and without a dark night of the soul. I once spent some time in Iceland in the middle of the summer when the sun doesn’t set for 90 days and nights, so it’s always light out. It was very disorienting. I had lost all sense of when to eat, when to sleep, when to dream. It was a tiny physical reminder that we need that cycle of light and dark.
~ Pico Iyer, The Urgency of Slowing Down. An Interview with Krista Tippett (Onbeing, November, 2018)
or this one which I love:
“mirrors on ceilings and closet doors
and a looking glass showing that other thing
my double with its dark core, rising
and taking its form, in light, of wings.”
~ Amanda Beth Peery, from Two Poems About Mirrors
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Two more great passages, pal…. thank you!
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must admit that my buzz is killed…for these states I remember to choose the deep silence of finding the real me…that goes beyond the nothingness to the everythingness.
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Yes.
We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence.”
Philip Pullman, in Philip Pullman by Laura La Bella (The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc, Dec 15, 2013)
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Reblogged this on Bright, shiny objects! and commented:
Forever one of the best bloggers on WordPress.com — David Kanigan!
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Awww. And you got me started. Thank you Todd.
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Ill walk back a little today and bang my bells. Actually, no!
I was telling Layla last night that there’s an invisible string ties to a precious gem at the top of her head and goes straight down the core of her being, all the way down to the core of Earty. To keep that string/strings in tune. She plays the guitar, so she understood.
Reading this now, I’m thinking along the string there are Bells too.
Like my father says, “What’s left ahead is way less than what’s behind.”
Ring your Bell my friend! And thank you for a really dose this morning ❤
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Beautiful Sawsan. Thank you.
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OMG, That was pre-coffee. How were you able to read it with all the spelling mistakes ?
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English not being your first language, I’m forgiving. 🙂
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Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
We are alive … ‘All of it a blessing. The being there. Being alive then.
Like a giant bell ringing long after you can’t hear it.’ Jack Gilbert, excerpt from “Burma” from Refusing Heaven.
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Yes!
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Ahhhh yes. I think the older you get the more you celebrate every morning, every day you wake up and look at the trees or high rise buildings or birds in the feeder. Since we don’t know what’s next, I believe in looking back only for the brief burst of love I feel for times I’ve had, and forward the rest of the time. Great story.
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Yes. Right there Claudia. Me too.
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Beautiful. Cherish every moment
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Yes.
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I agree with Jack Gilbert’s introspective words…and as life flows through me, I say each breath is a gift…
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