lift of water,
bracing
smooth—
a lubricant
to be part of
this synchrony,
able to lean
on others, ride
the breastbone
of a bird,
without wings or
even a feather.
~ Diane DeCillis, from “To Lean”
Notes: Poem – Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels). Photo: via Mennyfox55.
You must learn to stop being yourself. That’s where it begins, and everything else follows from that. You must let yourself evaporate. Let your muscles go limp, breathe until you feel your soul pouring out of you, and then shut your eyes. That’s how it’s done. The emptiness inside your body grows lighter than the air around you. Little by little, you begin to weigh less than nothing. You shut your eyes; you spread your arms; you let yourself evaporate. And then, little by little, you lift yourself off the ground.
Like so.
Notes: Quote – Thank you Whiskey River. Photo: Jacqueline Green, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Photo by Richard Calms. (via Mennyfox55)
There is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know. Who can say what it is that’s going on? But I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: “You’ve turned up in the right place at the right time. You’re doing fine. Don’t ever think that you’ve been forgotten.”
– Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC
Notes:
I wake from a dream,
reach towards day as it hatches,
its tiny beak presses against
the delicate shell of sky.
Today I might learn to fly.
~ Christine Valters Paintner, “Wings” in Dreaming of Stones: Poems
Notes:
Notes:
I discovered that in the early part of the morning a mist hovered in the hollows of the estate and the grass was wet with dew. There was a smell in the air of bonfires, the land already preparing for autumn…The morning welcomed me and I felt lighter, more confident, walking with my head up, ready for anything.
– Claire Fuller, Bitter Orange (Tin House Books, October 9, 2018)
Notes:
And only the enlightened can recall their former lives;
for the rest of us, the memories of past existences
are but glints of light, twinges of longing, passing shadows,
disturbingly familiar, that are gone before they can be grasped,
like the passage of that silver bird on Dhaulagiri.
~ Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
Notes:
Some moments become enchanting with the addition of words,
others are completely killed if you try to describe them.
It’s the difference between a tiny bird flittering above your open palm
and a closed fist crushing wings.
Notes:
It isn’t long after we arrive
that everyone starts pointing
and telling us where we need
to be and what we need to do
to get there. There’s no time
to really ask why. Soon, things
happen and we’re thrown off
course and now there’s all this
effort to win their approval. If
lucky, love will distract us more
than suffering. If blessed, we’re
broken of everyone’s plans and
regrets and thrown like a hooded
bird into a sea of light.
If trusting
the fall, we find our wings.
~ Mark Nepo, “Where We Need to Be” in The Way Under the Way: The Place of True Meeting
Notes: Photo: (via Your Eyes Blaze Out). Poem: Thank you Make Believe Boutique
