2021.10.18
Surf City Sunset over the Sound, July 2021.
2013.10.18
Untitled (Deep South #5) by Sally Mann (1998)
Untitled (Deep South #3) by Sally Mann (1998)
Untitled (Deep South #43) by Sally Mann (2001)
2012.09.18
Like The Water
Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.
We did not make it.
Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.
In its abundance
it survives our thirst.In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill,
and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us,
except we keep returning to its rich waters
thirsty.We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth of its joy.
2009.11.08
Three passions, simple but overwhelming have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suffering of humankind.
2009.11.04
I.
I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.I have no love
except it comes from Thee.Help me, please, to carry
this candle against the wind.– “A Sabbath Poem” by Wendell Berry
2009.10.07
For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.– excerpt from “The Ballad of the White Horse” by G.K. Chesterton
2009.08.03
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
2009.07.28
i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is youhere is the deepest secret nobody knows
here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars aparti carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
– e.e. cummings
2009.07.22
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.– Wendell Berry
2009.03.10
Fog by Ned Mansour (2008)
2009.02.25
“Blankets of Night” from Kenotic by Hammock (2005) [iTunes]
2009.02.24
In a Deserted Room
Window, colorful flowerbeds,
An organ plays herein.
Shadows dance on wallpapers,
Fantastically a mad succession.Ablaze the bushes wave
And a swarm of gnats sways.
Far away scythes mow in the acre
And an ancient water sings.Whose breath comes to caress me?
Swallows draw insane signs.
Quietly there in the boundlessness
The golden woodland flows out.Flames flicker in the flowerbeds.
Woozily the mad succession ecstacizes
On the yellowish wallpapers.
Someone looks in through the door.Incense smells sweet and like a pear
And glass and chest dusk.
Slowly the hot forehead
Bends toward white stars.– Georg Trakl (1913)
2009.02.19
Dreams
Here we are all, by day; by night we’re hurled
By dreams, each one, into a several world.– Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674)
2009.02.18
Peaceful Waters: Variation
peaceful waters of the air
under echo’s branchespeaceful waters of a pool
under a bough laden with starspeaceful waters of your mouth
under a forest of kisses– Frederico Garcia Lorca (1898 – 1936)
2009.02.08
March by Aaron Jasinski (2004)
2009.02.02
Scarred Tree (Deep South #1), by Sally Mann (1998)
2009.01.23
“The Change of Seasons” by Jesse Renaud
(Untitled)
There’s a communion wafer moon
Dissolving on the blue tongue of the skySometimes the whole world is nothing
So much
As an altar inviting us
To kneel– Linford Detweiler (2007)
2009.01.22
Evening Song
In the evening when we walk dark paths,
Our pale figures appear before us.If we thirst,
We drink the white water of the pond,
The sweetness of our sad childhood.Deceased, we rest under the elder bushes,
Watch the gray gulls.Spring’s clouds rise over the sinister city
That silences the nobler times of monks.When I took your slender hands
You quietly opened round eyes.
This is long ago.Yet when the dark harmony visits my soul,
You appear white in the friend’s autumn landscape.– Georg Trakl (1913)
2009.01.20
God’s Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.– Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)
2009.01.18
Five After by Hunter Chorey (2007)