Category: Poetry

Lightly Child, Lightly.

Live & Learn18 Comments

Every leaf that falls
never stops falling. I once
thought that leaves were leaves.
Now I think they are feeling,
in search of a place—
someone’s hair, a park bench, a
finger. Isn’t that
like us, going from place to
place, looking to be alive?

— Victoria Chang, “Passage” in The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang, published by Copper Canyon Press, 2022. (via Read a Little Poetry)

Notes:

  • Video: InnoRecords (via Pexels)
  • 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.

Sunday Morning

Live & Learn10 Comments

Softest of mornings, hello.
And what will you do today, I wonder,
to my heart?

— Mary Oliver, from “Softest of Mornings” in “A Thousand Mornings: Poems” (Penguin Books, 2012)

Notes:

  • Photo from this morning’s walk at Cove Island Park. Other photos from this morning here.
  • Full poem from Jules of Nature here.

Even fanatics cannot change that.

Live & Learn24 Comments

Why? Because people need songs like they need bread and water. People need poetry, beauty, love! So long as the sun rises and rivers flow, there will always be weddings and celebrations and music. Even fanatics cannot change that.

— Elif Shafak, “There Are Rivers in the Sky: A Novel” (Knopf, August 20, 2024)

Notes:

Exactly the scene at 2:42 a.m.

Live & Learn33 Comments

Come outside, you laugh. You are
standing on the lawn holding
a bag of shit and the dog leash. You say
look, look at the moon. And I do.

— M. Soledad Caballero, from “When You Go Out to Walk the Dog” in “I Was a Bell“

Notes:

  • Poem Source: Read A Little Poetry
  • DK Photo: Waning Crescent Moon. 40% illumination. 62° F. 2:42 am. August 27, 2024. Darien, CT

Hello, sun in my face

Live & Learn41 Comments

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

— Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early

Sunrise photos from this morning. 6:20 to 6:40 am. August 24, 2024. Cove Island Park. More pictures from this morning: Twilight here. Sunrise here.