Tag: May Sarton

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
With a rough sensitivity about
Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,
Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.
And so I watched my mother’s hands grow scarred,
She who could heal the wounded plant or friend
With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;
I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,
But now her truth is given me to live,
As I learn for myself we must be hard
To move among the tender with an open hand,
And to stay sensitive up to the end
Pay with some toughness for a gentle world.

— May Sarton, “An Observation” in “A Private Mythology: Poems.” (W.W. Norton & Co. in 1996)

Notes: Poem via Exhaled-Spirals. Photo via Pexels by Karolina Grabowska.

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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One thing is certain, and I have always known it — the joys of my life have nothing to do with age. They do not change. Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence,

— May Sarton, from At Seventy: A Journal

Notes:

  1. DK photo @ 6:13 am, January 10, 2024, Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. 51° F in January! More photos from yesterday morning’s walk here.
  2. 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.

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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“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:

  • Photo: (via Your Eyes Blaze Out) Poem: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels
  • 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.”

 

Saturday Morning

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Stand still,

stand still, and

stop the sun.

~ May Sarton, from “Now I Become Myself” in Halfway to Silence: Poems 

Photo: Louis Caya with Shiba Inu

Lightly Child, Lightly.

Live & Learn19 Comments

I wonder whether it is possible … to change oneself radically. Can I learn to control resentment and hostility, the ambivalence, born somewhere far below the conscious level? … There is nothing to be done but go ahead with life moment by moment and hour by hour—-put out birdseed, tidy the rooms, try to create order and peace around me even if I cannot achieve it inside me. Now at 10:30 there is such radiant light outside that the house feels dark. I look through the hall into the cozy room, all in darkness, right through to the window at the end, and a transparent sheaf of golden and green leaves. And here in my study the sunlight is that autumn white, so clear, it calls for an inward act to match it … clarify, clarify.

~ May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

Notes:

  • Photo: Laura Makabresku with “birds” (via Mennyfox55)
  • 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.”
  • Related posts: May Sarton