unite..................

 

And all their logic would fill my head: As that I had no right to play With what was another man’s work for gain. My right might be love but theirs was need. And where the two exist in twain Theirs was the better right–agreed. But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future’s sakes.

-Robert Frost, as he concludes my favorite poem, Two Tramps In Mud Time

Might quicken me.................

 

Our shells clacked on the plates.
My tongue was a filling estuary,
My palate hung with starlight:
As I tasted the salty Pleiades
Orion dipped his foot into the water.

Alive and violated,
They lay on their bed of ice:
Bivalves: the split bulb
And philandering sigh of ocean
Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered.

We had driven to that coast
Through flowers and limestone
And there we were, toasting friendship,
Laying down a perfect memory
In the cool of thatch and crockery.

Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,
The Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome:
I saw damp panniers disgorge
The frond-lipped, brine-stung
Glut of privilege

And was angry that my trust could not repose
In the clear light, like poetry or freedom
Leaning in from sea. I ate the day
Deliberately, that its tang
Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.

-Seamus Heaney, "Oysters"

fun with the language..............

 

Somehow the word
allow is in the word
swallow and in swallow
two wholly different meanings:
one to take in through
the mouth and another
what we call the common
winged gnat hunter who
is, in all probability,
somewhere near us now.
Once, I thought
if I knew all the words
I would say the right thing
in the right way,
instead language became
more brutish: blink twice
for the bird, blink once
for tender annihilation. Who
knows what we are doing as
we go about our days lazily
choosing our languages. Some
days my life is held together
by definitions, some days
I read the word swallow
and all my feathers show.

-Ada Limon, the poem "Literary Theory" from Startlement: New and Selected Poems

Two excerpts from my favoritist poem..........

 

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

---------------------------

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

-Robert Frost, from Two Tramps in Mud Time

When drinking largely sobers us..............

 

A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,

In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts;

While from the bounded level of our mind

Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,

But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise

New distant scenes of endless science rise!

So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,

Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;

The eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;

But those attained, we tremble to survey

The growing labours of the lengthened way;

The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,

Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! -Alexander Pope

On non-forgetting...........

 

The lesson is this: the greatest part of humanity is always at risk of forgetting the best of its inheritance. Only a sustained and practiced art of memory prevents this from happening. And that is the responsibility we can’t fail to choose, if we want to keep the world from losing itself in forgetting. If we genuinely wish to see art in our own lifetimes that is really worthy of our history, then we can’t afford to pretend it isn’t immensely difficult—perhaps harder than ever—to make something truly new. But we cannot stop at anxiety. Only by going through anxiety, only by naming it, learning from it, and letting it pass into and out of us, can we survive the crushing pressure of our own traditions.

-Sam Jennings, from this essay on Harold Bloom and our literary inheritance

via

Checking in with........................

 

................................Matthew McConaughey:

If you cannot stop the lies, become less gullible.

With or without us the future is happening.  Tune in.

May our heart carry our feet.  Amen

Never give up your right to do the next right thing.  This is how we find our way home.

Life's a miraculous journey of false summits until the end.  Surrender to this fact.  And climb until then.

To pay attention

 
How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted 
trout lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the 
earth. I think serenity is not something you just find in 
the world, like a plum tree, holding up its white petals.

The violets, along the river, are opening their blue faces, 
like small dark lanterns.

The green mosses, being so many, are as good as brawny.

How important it is to walk along, not in haste but 
slowly, looking at everything and calling out

Yes! No! The

swan, for all his pomp, his robes of grass and petals, 
wants only to be allowed to live on the nameless pond. 
The catbrier is without fault. The water thrushes, down 
among the sloppy rocks, are going crazy with 

happiness.  Imagination is better than a sharp 

instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and 

proper work.

-Mary Oliver, Yes! No!

inclind...........................

 

Love to faults is always blind
Always is to joy inclind
Lawless wingd & unconfind
And breaks all chains from every mind

Deceit to secresy confind
Lawful cautious & refind
To every thing but interest blind
And forges fetters for the mind

-William Blake

younger....................

 

What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements,
     though with difficulty.

I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment
      somehow or another)

And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself.  Then forget it.  Then, love the world.

-Mary Oliver, To Begin With, The Sweet Grass

And all shall be well...............

 

If you came this way, Taking any route, starting from anywhere, At any time or at any season, It would always be the same: you would have to put off Sense and notion. You are not here to verify, Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity Or carry report. You are here to kneel . . .

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

-Henry Miller, as lifted from Little Gidding

Checking in with wee Robbie Burns........

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And auld lang syne!

     Chorus:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
     For auld lang syne.
     We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
     For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint stowp!
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

     Chorus

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
Sin’ auld lang syne.

     Chorus

We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin’ auld lang syne.

     Chorus

And there’s a hand, my trusty fere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.

     Chorus

blessed...................

 

We bless this year for all we learned,

For all we loved and lost

And for the quiet way it brought us

Nearer to our invisible destination.

-John O'Donohue

Let it be.....................

 

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in its breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from its nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, “Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be."

-Robert Frost, Acceptance

outshine................

 

In this life, in our mind, through our eyes, and on each day,

doubt is logical and reasonable.

Faith is not.

Faith does not rid doubt, rather it carries us through it.

May our faith outshine our doubt.

-Matthew McConaughey, Poems & Prayers

The peace........................

 

..................................of vulnerability.

Too present to imagine...................

 

Age saw two quiet children

Go loving by at twilight,

He knew not whether homeward,

On outward from the village,

Or (chimes were ringing) churchward.

He waited (they were strangers)

Till they were out of hearing

To bid them both be happy.

"Be happy, happy, happy,

And seize the day of pleasure."

The age-long theme is Age's.

'Twas age imposed on poems

Their gather-roses burden

To warn against the danger

That overtaken lovers

From being overflooded

With happiness should have it

And yet not know they have it.

But bid life seize the present?

It lives less in the present 

Then in the future always,

And less in both together

Than in the past.  The present

Is too much for the senses,

Too crowding, too confusing—

Too present to imagine.

-Robert Frost, Carpe Diem

Winter................

 

I walked abroad in a snowy day
I asked the soft snow with me to play
She playd & she melted in all her prime
And the winter called it a dreadful crime

-William Blake

obstinate notions................

 
He dwelt in himself
like a rook in an unroofed tower.

To get close I had to maintain
a climb up deserted ramparts
and not flinch, not raise an eye
to search for an eye on the watch
from his coign of seclusion.

Deliberately he would unclasp

his book of withholding

a page at a time, and it was nothing

arcane, just the old rules

we all had inscribed on our slates.

Each character blocked on the parchment secure

in its volume and measure.

Each maxim given its space.

Tell the truth.  Do not be afraid.

Durable, obstinate notions,

like quarrymen's hammers and wedges

proofed by intransigent service.

Like coping stones where you rest

in the balm of the wellspring.

How flimsy I felt climbing down

the unrailed stairs on the wall,

hearing the purpose and venture

in a wingflap above me.

-Seamus Heaney, The Master

beyond........................

 

How do I stave off the cynic's disease and still remain a hopeful skeptic? . . .

     Let's sing more that we might make sense, believe in more than the world can conclude, get more impressed with the wow instead of the how, let inspiration interrupt our appointments, dream our way to reality, serve some soul food to our hungry heads, put proof on the shelf for a season, and rhyme our way to reason.  Forget logic, certainty, owning, or making a start-up company of it; let's go beyond what we can merely imagine, and believe, in the poetry of life.

-Matthew McConaughey, Poems & Prayers