I can't sleep…
Bad things are going to happen…
No matter how many vitamins you take,
how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,
your hair and your memory…
Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
Oh taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth.
~ Ellen Bass, excerpt from Relax
Notes:
I said, I like my life. If I
have to give it back, if they
take it from me, let me
not feel I wasted any, let me
not feel…that I forgot
to give what I held in my hands,
that I forgot to do some little
piece of the work that wanted
to come through…
~ Marge Piercy, excerpt from “If They Come in the Night”, Circles on the Water: Selected Poems
Notes: Poem – Thank you Beth at Alive on all Channels, Photo: Adeline Spengler, The Jump Touch the Sky, 2013 (via newthom)
Day and night, gifts keep pelting down on us.
If we were aware of this, gratefulness would overwhelm us. But we go through life in a daze.
A power failure makes us aware of what a gift electricity is; a sprained ankle lets us appreciate walking as a gift, a sleepless night, sleep.
How much we are missing in life by noticing gifts only when we are suddenly deprived of them.
~ David Steindal-Rast, A Listening Heart from The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness
Notes: Photo – via Your Eyes Blaze Out
Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.
All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of — indolence, or action.
Be ignited, or be gone.
~ Mary Oliver, “What I Have Learned So Far” from New and Selected Poems Vol. 2
Sources:
It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could, you know. That’s why we wake
and look out – no guarantees
in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
~ William Stafford, “Yes,” The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems
Sources: