- my work is loving the world.
- whenever i get home — whenever — somebody loves me there.
- wherever else i live — in music, in words, in the fires of the heart, i abide just as deeply in this nameless, indivisible place.
- when i am among the trees [...] they give off such hints of gladness, i would almost say that they save me, and daily.
- i too have taken myself into this summer lake, where the leaves of the trees almost touch, where the peace comes in the generosity of water, and i have reached out into the loveliness and i have floated on my flat back to think out a poem or two, not by any means fluid but, dear god, as you have made me, my only quickness.
- when we pray to love god perfectly, surely we do not mean only.
- from the complications of loving you i think there is no end or return. no answer, no coming out of it. which is the only way to love, isn't it?
- in spring there's hope, in fall the exquisite, necessary diminishing, in winter i am as sleepy as any beast in this leafy cave, but in summer there is everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts, the hospitality of the lord and my inadequate answers as i row my beautiful, temporary body through this water-lily world.
- all day i think thanks for this world, for the rocks and the tips of the waves, for the tupelos and the fading roses. for the wind.
- it's close to hopeless, for what i want to say the red-bird has said it already, and better, in a thousand trees. the white bear, lifting one enormous paw, has said it better.
- i had such a longing for virtue, for company, i wanted christ to be as close as the cross i wear.
- instead i prayed, oh lord, let me be something useful and unpretentious. even the chimney swift sings. even the cobblestones have a task to do, and do it well.
- lord, let me be a flower, even a tare; or a sparrow. or the smallest bright stone in a ring worn by someone brave and kind, whose name i will never know.
- lord, when i sleep i feel you near.
- when i wake, and you are already wiping the stars away, i rise quickly, hoping to be like your wild child; the rose, the honey-maker the honey-vine; a bird shouting its joy as it floats through the gift you have given us: another day.
- if you want to talk about this come to visit. i live in the house near the corner, which i have named Gratitude.
- the flowers i wanted to bring to you, wild and wet from the pale dunes and still smelling of the summer night, [...] would have been so handsome in your hands — so happy — i dare to say it — in your hands —
- yesterday i watched a mother choose exquisite ear-ornaments for someone beloved, in the spring of her life; they were for her for sure, but also it seemed a promise, a love-message, a commitment to all girls, and boys too, so beautiful and hopeful in this hard world and young.
- someone i loved once gave me a box full of darkness. it took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.
- i would be good — oh, i would be upright and good. to what purpose? hope of heaven? not that. but to enter the other kingdom: grace, and imagination, and the multiple sympathies: to be as a leaf, a rose, a dolphin, a wave rising slowly then briskly out of the darkness to touch the limpid air, to be god's mind's servant, loving with the body's sweet mouth — its kisses, its words — everything.
- every morning i want to kneel down on the golden cloth of the sand and say some kind of musical thanks for the world that is happening again — another day — from the shawl of wind coming out of the west to the firm green flesh of the melon lately sliced open and eaten, its chill and ample body flavored with mercy.
- i want to be worthy of — what? glory? yes, unimaginable glory.
- i know what everyone wants is a miracle. this wasn't a miracle. unless, of course, kindness — as now and again some rare person has suggested — is a miracle. and surely it is.
feb 12 2023 ∞
sep 30 2023 +