i dont want to be demure or respectable

"Maybe the fire in my lashes is a reflection of that. Why do I have so many thoughts, they are driving me crazy. Why am I always going anywhere, instead of somewhere? Listen to me or not, it hardly matters. I’m not trying to be wise, that would be foolish. I’m just chattering"

no matter what

"No matter what the world claims, its wisdom always growing, so it’s said, some things don’t alter with time: the first kiss is a good example, and the flighty sweetness of rhyme. No matter what the world preaches spring unfolds in its appointed time, the violets open and the roses, snow in its hour builds its shining curves, there’s the laughter of children at play, and the wholesome sweetness of rhyme. No matter what the world does, some things don’t alter with time. The first kiss, the first death. the sorrowful sweetness of rhyme.

if i wanted a boat

"What kind of life is it always to plan and do, to promise and finish, to wish for the near and the safe? Yes, by the heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want a boat I couldn’t steer."

good morning

"3 - Stay young, always, in the theater of your mind.

4 - Bless the notebook that I always carry in my pocket. And the pen. Bless the words with which I try to say what I see, think, or feel. With gratitude for the grace of the earth. The expected and the exception, both. For all the hours I have been given to be in this world.

5 - The multiplicity of forms! The hummingbird, the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the otter, the dragonfly, the water lily! And on and on. It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.

6 - Slowly the morning climbs toward the day. As for the poem, not this poem but any poem, do you feel its sting? Do you feel its hope, its entrance to a community? Do you feel its hand in your hand?

7 - But perhaps you’re still sleeping. I could wake you with a touch or a kiss. But so could I shake the petals from the wild rose which blossoms so silently and perfectly, and I do not"

good morning

"Idleness can be a form of dying, I did know that."

blueberries

"What they don’t have is the field. The field they belonged to and through the years I began to feel I belonged to. Well, there’s life, and then there’s later. Maybe it’s myself that I miss."

little crazy love song

"I don’t want eventual, I want soon. It’s 5 a.m. It’s noon. It’s dusk falling to dark. I listen to music. I eat up a few wild poems while time creeps along as though it’s got all day. This is what I have. The dull hangover of waiting, the blush of my heart on the damp grass, the flower-faced moon. A gull broods on the shore where a moment ago there were two. Softly my right hand fondles my left hand as though it were you."

i woke

"I woke and crept like a cat on silent feet about my own house— to look at you while you were sleeping, your hair sprayed on the pillow, your eyes closed, your body safe and solitary, and my doors shut for your safety and your comfort. I did this thinking I was intruding, yet wanting to see the most beautiful thing that has ever been in my house.

the mangroves

"Admiring is easy, but affinity, that does take some time. So many and so leggy and all of them rising as if attempting to escape this world which, don’t they know it, can’t be done. “Are you trying to fly or what?” I ask, and they answer back, “We are what we are, you are what you are, love us if you can.”

such silence

"Sometimes there’s only a hint, a possibility. What’s magical, sometimes, has deeper roots than reason. I hope everyone knows that. I sat on the bench, waiting for something. An angel, perhaps. Or dancers with the legs of goats. No, I didn’t see either. But only, I think, because I didn’t stay long enough"

franz marc's blue horses

"I would rather die than try to explain to the blue horses what war is. They would either faint in horror, or simply find it impossible to believe. I do not know how to thank you, Franz Marc. Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually. Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us. Now all four horses have come closer, are bending their faces toward me as if they have secrets to tell. I don’t expect them to speak, and they don’t. If being so beautiful isn’t enough, what could they possibly say?"

on meditating, sort of

"So I just lie like that, while distance and time reveal their true attitudes: they never heard of me, and never will, or ever need to. Of course I wake up finally thinking, how wonderful to be who I am, made out of earth and water, my own thoughts, my own fingerprints— all that glorious, temporary stuff"

to be human is to sing your own song

"Everything I can think of that my parents thought or did I don’t think and I don’t do. I opened windows, they shut them. I pulled open the curtains, they shut them. If you get my drift. Of course there were some similarities—they wanted to be happy and they weren’t. I wanted to be Shelley and I wasn’t. I don’t mean I didn’t have to avoid imitation, the gloom was pretty heavy. But then, for me, there was the forest, where they didn’t exist. And the fields. Where I learned about birds and other sweet tidbits of existence. The song sparrow, for example. In the song sparrow’s nest the nestlings, those who would sing eventually, must listen carefully to the father bird as he sings and make their own song in imitation of his. I don’t know if any other bird does this (in nature’s way has to do this). But I know a child doesn’t have to. Doesn’t have to. Doesn’t have to. And I didn’t"

loneliness

"I too have known loneliness. I too have known what it is to feel misunderstood, rejected, and suddenly not at all beautiful. Oh, mother earth, your comfort is great, your arms never withhold. It has saved my life to know this. Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning. Oh, motions of tenderness!"

im feeling fabulous, possibly too much so. but i love it

"Another voice is saying, The pond never looked this blue before. Another voice says, There couldn’t be a more splendid world, and here I am existing in it. I think, just for the joy of it, I’ll fly. I believe I could"