Tag: Poetry

Lightly child, lightly.

Live & Learn9 Comments

rob-woodcox-lightly-fly

I’ve been here before,
dreaming myself backwards,
among grappling hooks of light.

~ Yusef Komunyakaa, opening lines to “Confluence” from Pleasure Dome

Notes:

  • Quote: Thank you Memory’s Landscape.
  • Photography: Thank you Rob Woodcox with When Autumn was Spirited Away
  • 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.”

 

It’s been a long day

Live & Learn3 Comments

The Storm by machihuahua

But most hearts say, I want, I want,
I want, I want. My heart
is more duplicitous,
though no twin as I once thought.
It says, I want, I don’t want, I
want, and then a pause.
It forces me to listen […]

It is a constant pestering
in my ears, a caught moth, limping drum,
a child’s fist beating
itself against the bedsprings:
I want, I don’t want.
How can one live with such a heart?

Long ago I gave up singing
to it, it will never be satisfied or lulled.
One night I will say to it:
Heart, be still,
and it will.

– Margaret Atwood, excerpts from The Woman Who Could Not Live With Her Faulty Heart from Selected Poems II: 1976 – 1986 

 

Notes:

Lightly child, lightly.

Live & Learn18 Comments
light,lightly,
Good memories that even now can heal.
Those mornings when I laddered to the loft,
made my straw manger beside the square bale door.
There on the straw-strewn floor,
a sundial of slanted light.
I’d reach my child’s palm into it,
hold sunspill like rain.

– Ron Rash, Above the Waterfall

Notes:

  • Quote: Thank you Memory’s Landscape. Photo: Thank you Your Eyes Blaze Out
  • 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.”

 

It’s been a long day

Live & Learn12 Comments

release

You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers.
You will have to live them out – perhaps a little at a time.’
And how long is that going to take?’
I don’t know. As long as you live, perhaps.’
That could be a long time.’
I will tell you a further mystery,’ he said. ‘It may take longer.”

~ Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow: A Novel

Notes:

Monday Morning: Let Me Rise Up

Live & Learn25 Comments

red ovenbird,

When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird

When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf.

~ Wendell Berry, “Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer” from The Mad Farmer Poems

Notes: