living fully with incompleteness

Do you see? The frail bones of dill are just the beginnings of proper baskets. The warp is there, but there is no weft. Yet, impossibly, snow accumulates in these baskets that are incomplete as perfectly as if they had weft and woven sides. I can't see the arms of snowflakes locking together, but I know they are doing it. I want us just like this, filling in and up even if all we have is just the skeleton of wholeness. We do not need everything to be in place in order to live fully.

focus

“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”

— Ansel Adams

each way free

Upon Julia's Clothes

  by Robert Herrick [1591-1674]

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows

That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see

That brave vibration each way free,

Oh, how that glittering taketh me!

lines for winter

Lines for Winter

   by Mark Strand

   for Ros Krauss


Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Is it prickly, or soft?

You won't know without touching.

Let's live the New Year as fully as we can!

a miracle

Miracle Fair
by Wisława Szymborska

The commonplace miracle:
that so many common miracles take place.

The usual miracle:
invisible dogs barking 
in the dead of night.

One of many miracles:
a small and airy cloud
is able to upstage the massive moon.

Several miracles in one:
an alder is reflected in the water
and is reversed from left to right
and grows from crown to root
and never hits bottom
though the water isn't deep.

A run-of-the-mill miracle:
winds mild to moderate
turning gusty in storms.

A miracle in the first place:
cows will be cows.

Next but not least:
just this cherry orchard
from just this cherry pit.

A miracle minus top hat and tails:
fluttering white doves.

A miracle (what else can you call it):
the sun rose today at three fourteen a.m.
and will set tonight at one past eight.

A miracle that's lost on us:
the hand actually has fewer than six fingers
but still it's got more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:
the inescapable earth.

An extra miracle, extra and ordinary:
the unthinkable
can be thought.

the soul's beauty

"As to what good qualities there may be in our souls, or Who dwells within them, or how precious they are -- those are things which we seldom consider and so we trouble little about carefully preserving the soul's beauty. All our interest is centred in the rough setting of the diamond, and in the outer wall of the castle — that is to say, in these bodies of ours."

— Teresa of Avila,  Interior Castle 

stand at the window

“O stand, stand at the window

As the tears scald and start;

You shall love your crooked neighbour

With your crooked heart.”

— W.H. Auden, from "As I Walked Out one Evening"

listen to the whole wonderful

if sad poem read here

invincible summer

"In the depth of winter,

I finally learned that within me 

there lay an invincible summer."

— Albert Camus

out of the lace

The Only Portrait of Emily Dickinson 
by Irene McKinney


The straight neck held up out of the lace
is bound with a black velvet band.
She holds her mouth the way she chooses,
The full underlip constrained by a small muscle.

She doesn't blink or look aside,
although her left eye is considering
a slant. She would smile
if she had time, but right now

there is composure to be invented.
She stares at the photographer.
The black crepe settles. Emerging
from the sleeve, a shapely hand

holds out a white, translucent blossom.
"They always say things which embarrass
my dog," she tells the photographer.
She is amused, but not as much as he'd like.


photo: grape-leaf anemone

the colors of kale in December

"I think it pisses God off if you walk past
the color purple in a field somewhere
and don't notice it."

— Alice Walker, The Color Purple

peas in a pod

"Lives are snowflakes — unique

in detail, forming patterns we have seen before,

but as like one another as peas in a pod

(and have you ever looked at peas in a pod?

I mean, really looked at them?

There's not a chance you would mistake one

for another, after a minute's close inspection."

— Neil Gaiman, American Gods

turning in the wind

. . . The colors of their tails

Were like the leaves themselves

Turning in the wind,

In the twilight wind. . . ."

— Wallace Stevens

from the poem "Domination of Black"

Read the whole poem here

ruin me

"Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again."

"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now.

What do you want to do? Ruin me?"

"Yes. I want to ruin you."

"Good," I said, "That's what I want, too."

— Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

I move gently

" . . . The wind changes round, and I stir

Within another's life. Whose life?

Who is dead? Whose presence is living?

When may I fall strangely to earth,

Who am nailed to this branch by a spirit?

Can two bodies make up a third?

To sing, must I feel the world's light?

My green, graceful bones fill the air

With sleeping birds. Alone, alone

And with them I move gently.

I move at the heart of the world.

— James L. Dickey, read the whole poem

"In the Tree House at Night" here

foreground and background

"My foregrounds are imaginary,

my backgrounds are real."

— Gustave Flaubert

return to a meadow

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,

that is not mine, but a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,

an eternal pasture folded in all thought

so that there is a hall therein

that is a made place, created by light

wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am

I say are likenesses of the First Beloved

whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.

She it is Queen Under the Hill

whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words

that is a field folded.

It is only a dream of the grass blowing

east against the source of the sun

in an hour before the sun's going down

whose secret we see in a children's game

a ring a round of roses told.

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow

as if it were a given property of the mind

that certain bounds hold against chaos,

that is a place of first permission,

everlasting omen of what is.

— Robert Duncan

Sometimes, When the Light

Sometimes, when the light strikes at odd angles,
and pulls you back into childhood

and you are passing a crumbling mansion
completely hidden behind old willows

or an empty convent guarded by hemlocks
and giant firs standing hip to hip,

you know again that behind that wall,
under the uncut hair of the willows

something secret is going on,
so marvelous and dangerous

that if you crawled through and saw,
you would die, or be happy forever.

— Lisel Mueller

not alone

"It's often just enough to be with someone.

I don't need to touch them. Not even talk.

A feeling passes between you both. You're not alone."

— Marilyn Monroe

chaos

There may be chaos still around the world,

This little world that in my thinking lies;

For mine own bosom is the paradise

Where all my life's fair visions are unfurled.

Within my nature's shell I slumber curled,

Unmindful of the changing outer skies,

Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies,

Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled.

I heed them not, or if the subtle night

Haunt me with deities I never saw,

I soon my eyelid's drowsy curtain draw

To hide their myriad faces from my sight.

They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe

A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw.

— George Santayana