'Well then, I'll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.'

the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
'What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?'

~Antonio Machado
Translation: Robert Bly 2/2

But don’t give in, insist on arguments and act this way, watchful and consistent, every single time, and the day will arrive when from a destroyer it will become one of your best workers — perhaps the cleverest of all that are building at your life.”

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet
2/2

We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.
2/3

I was thinking of a flowery meadow at the end of a road,
and I found myself in the slough.
I was thinking of the greatness of what was human,
and I found myself in the divine.

~Juan Ramon Jimenez
Translation: Robert Bly
2/2 #poetry

you are enough
your work is enough
you are needed
your work is sacred
you are here
and i am grateful
.
~adrienne maree brown. "radical gratitude spell to cast upon meeting a stranger, comrade or friend working for social and/or environmental justice and liberation."
Pic: M.C. Escher "Liberation"
3/3

i want you to know
i honor the choices you made in solitude
and i honor the work you have done to belong
i honor your commitment to that which is larger than yourself
and your journey
to love the particular container of life
that is you
.
2/3

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

~ Billy Collins

Hafiz, who can you tell in this world
That when a dog runs up to you
wagging its ecstatic tail,
you bend down and whisper in its ear
"Beloved, I am so glad that you are happy to see me,
Beloved, I am so glad, so very glad, that you have come."

~ Ladinsky, inspired by Hafiz
2/2 #poetry

- I need you to breathe.-

Don’t tell me to calm
when there are so many reasons
to be angry, so much cause for despair!

- I didn’t say to be calm, said the wind,-
- I said to breathe.-

- We’re going to need a lot of air -
- to make this hurricane together.-

~ Lynn Unger

2/2

… And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

~ Howard Zinn
3/3

…the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places –and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. …
2/3

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

~Mary Oliver
3/3

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude –
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing
2/3