I can't sleep…
Rain falls
on our tin roof; sharp taps of reality,
start and stop. I breathe myself back
into my body.
— Deborah A. Miranda, from “Almost Midnight,” in Split This Rock
Notes:
“I can tell you that solitude
Is not all exaltation, inner space
Where the soul breathes and work can be done.
Solitude exposes the nerve,
Raises up ghosts.
The past, never at rest, flows through it.”
— May Sarton, from “Gestalt at Sixty: Part 1″, in A Durable Fire: Poems
Notes:
The secret
Of this journey is to let the wind
Blow its dust all over your body,
To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly
– James Wright, from “The Journey,” Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose
Notes:
And change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn,
and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.
~ John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday (1954)
Notes:
I have become aware: nature breathes, smells, listens, feels in all its parts; it adds to itself, couples itself, falls to pieces, and finds itself. I see myself evaporate and breathe forth more and more strongly; the oscillations of my astral light become swifter, sharper, simpler.
– Egon Schiele, from a diary entry written c. September 1911
Notes: