Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Emily Dickinson
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
{because i just finished reading Watchmen
because i like poetry
because i feel very mortal of late
both thankful for the moments
that will slip away with the sand
and in mourning for those i’ve lost}
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
by Mary Oliver
i went for a walk today
underneath a blue sky
that wasn’t pixels
and discovered winters bite
is real and cold, not a herb
i was dubbed a queen
underneath a row of trees
that weren’t polygons
and remembered that glorious
is indescribable
i watched a dove
my ears went numb
fingers pink
and still i watched the dove
for my daughter who amazes me daily
A saturated meadow,
Sun-shaped and jewel-small,
A circle scarcely wider
Than the trees around were tall;
Where winds were quite excluded,
And the air was stifling sweet
With the breath of many flowers, –
A temple of the heat.
There we bowed us in the burning,
As the sun’s right worship is,
To pick where none could miss them
A thousand orchises;
For though the grass was scattered,
yet every second spear
Seemed tipped with wings of color,
That tinged the atmosphere.
We raised a simple prayer
Before we left the spot,
That in the general mowing
That place might be forgot;
Or if not all so favored,
Obtain such grace of hours,
that none should mow the grass there
While so confused with flowers.
~ Robert Frost
“ planted morning glory seeds along the back fence - can't wait to see the wall of green! 1 week ago
Robyn: "Save another mom some trouble? Mission accomplished! We are having a Jedi Training birthday party for my son. The one thing he keeps asking us to do is a scavenger hunt….how? we keep asking ourselves. This..." (read)
cecilia: "just omit the meat from your bean meals, like meatless chilli and spaghetti. we love lentils here, lentil soup, lentil curry over rice… I’ll put some more thought into this." (read)
Kalanna: "Amazing, eh?! I’m going to have to read up on what to do with them next. hehe But it is lovely to have a bouquet of lavender on my kitchen table in late November. They kept blooming!" (read)
