Source: Via New England Journal of Education (1878). Thank you Rob @ The Hammock Papers
Category: Life
Lightly child, lightly.
I wanted to think it was like a light bulb, life,
dangling in the chest, asking to be switched on.
But it’s not the light that’s even in question,
rather, what’s your brilliant, glaring wattage?
What do you dare to gleam out and reflect?
~ Ada Limón, “The Other Wish,” from Bright Dead Things
Notes:
- Photo: mennyfox55. Poem: via bostonpoetryslam
- 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.”
Tuesday Morning Wake-Up Call
Be Better
NY Times 11 Ways to Be a Better Person in 2017:
Second annual semi-serious list of self-improvement tips, gleaned from the Styles stories that resonated most with readers in 2017. Here’s how to be healthy, happy and a little bit Canadian in 2017.” (And if you’d like to go deeper, our 15 tips for 2016 still hold up.)”
Burning the Old Year
letters swallow themselves in seconds.
notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
so much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
i begin again with the smallest numbers.
quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things i didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
– Naomi Shihab Nye, “Burning the Old Year” from Words Under Words: Selected Poems
Notes:
- Sources: Poem: Visual Poetry. Photograph: via Hidden Sanctuary
- Related posts: Naomi Shihab Nye