I can't sleep…
And the heart, unscrolled,
is comforted by such small things:
a cup of green tea rescues us, grows deep and large, a lake.”
—Jane Hirschfield, from “Recalling a Sung Dynasty Landscape” in Of Gravity and Angels
Notes: Poem – thank you Beth at Alive on All Channels. Photo: Green tea with mint by Kookoo sabzi.
You are
a minute
of quiet
in a loud
shouting
world.
– Gabriel Gadfly, For This
Notes:
In day’s first hours
consciousness can grasp the world
as the hand grips a sun-warmed stone.
~ Tomas Tranströmer, from “Prelude,“ The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems
Notes: Photo – Howard Schatz (via Nini Poppins). Poem: the distance between two doors
#13
Light on the walls of old houses,
June.
Passerby, open your eyes.
— Adam Zagajewski, excerpt from “En Route” from Eternal Enemies.
Notes:
Art, attention, gratitude and grace. A quiet healing, ordinary joy. I know these things in my own body. For several years now, my head has felt loose on my shoulders, and I too have felt oddly permeable, no longer so tightly wound. Little shards of self fly off into the wind, and frankly, I am glad to see them go.
In the same way as one pulls the petals from a daisy, she loves me, she loves me not, so too one can pluck one letter at a time from familiar words, revealing the core beneath. Verandah Porche (who invented the term “pluck words”) is especially fond of examples like “slaughter” and “laughter” where the missing letter not only transforms the meaning of the word, but alters its sound as well.
My own favorites center on a little cluster of words that seem, like koans, to conceal a deeper meaning. It is as if one bit into a juicy peach to find its wizened stone, or broke apart an egg to show its golden yolk. For example, when where is plucked, it reveals the answer here; less is the hidden wisdom crouching inside bless; your gives way to the more generous-hearted our; and the small domestic hearth expands into the cosmic earth. Most miraculous of all, perhaps, eyes open into an all-confirming yes. Continue reading “No longer so tightly wound. Little shards of self fly off into the wind.”