“Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances.”

24 June 2008


Bright Idea #42: Read Poetry.
"What good does it do to lie all day in the sun loving what is easy?" Two years. another brilliant day on the water life together in a canoe and how differently we see things but here we are in the same place at the same time in the same canoe hello my name is your wife lets have a rest some cheese and biscuit some fresh water the water lilies rise up from among enormous leaping bottom feeders little turtles regarding us like old women on their front porches blue herons red winged black birds butter yellow wild iris one ruby dog rose cattail two years in the same canoe that flew off the back of a pick up patched up holds its own wandering way down the stream across from where the First People said Let This Be Our Home and thats what we say to each other, you will be my home country my little sod cabin in the misty glade where the sweet chimney smoke rises in a line calling for fine weather. the new cat eats dog food in front of the dogs and the dogs look away. cats always make me think of Atlantis the first space colony the twelve magicks connect with BFF about love responsibility strength trust and see you soon. half wild cat in odd proportions got a call from an old friend the other weird sister was leaving and would i say goodbye but there wasnt much to say i was there when they werent and then they came to fill the space i went back to my hedge and my eddies but old friend ill come and say hello sit in the yard and consider how time has been kind. two years. the kind of people that live lifetimes in hours and histories in days. the time line would be this river shoreless unfurling the surprise of sunken cypress and golden lotus and the times we move forward together in a beautiful line.
"And if the question were asked: What is more real, the mundane or the sublime? most would hesitate before they gave an answer. On the one side, details: say, the aftermath of a breakfast, dirty chipped plates in the sink, their rims encrusted with egg yolk. Against this, the unnameable: small aching heart with boasts, what can you know? Outside the cage of everything we ever heard or saw, beyond, outside, above, there lies the real, hiding as long as we shall live, there stretch and trail the millions of names of God burning across the eons. When all through this our end will come before we even know the names of us.

For many the egg yolk prevails." -L.M.

"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well." -V.V.G.

"The perfection of the Absolute where all Becoming stops and pure Being, immutable, timeless, unchanging, hangs forever like a ripe peach upon the bough." -E.A.

"...and the whole incident was incredibly frazzling and angst-rod and filled almost a whole mead notebook and is here recounted in only its barest psycho-skeletal outline." -D.F.W.

"At the top of the mountain, we are all snow leopards." -H.S.T.

"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live." -D.T.
"Cometh a voice: My children, hear; From the crowded street and the close-packed mart I call you back with my message clear, back to my lap and my loving heart. Long have ye left me, journeying on by range and river and grassy plain, to the teeming towns where the rest have gone - come back, come back to my arms again. So shall ye lose the foolish needs that gnaw your souls; and my touch shall serve to heal the fretted nerve. Treading the turf that ye once loved well, instead of the stones of the city's street, ye shall hear nor din nor drunken yell, but the wind that croons in the ripening wheat. I that am old have seen long since ruin of palaces made with hands for the soldier-king and the priest and prince whose cities crumble in desert sands. But still the furrow in many a clime yields softly under the ploughman's feet; still there is seeding and harvest time, and the wind still croons in the ripening wheat. The works of man are but little worth; for a time they stand, for a space endure; but turn once more to your mother - Earth, my gifts are gracious, my works are sure. Instead of the strife and pain I give you peace, with its blessing sweet. Come back, come back to my arms again, for the wind still croons in the ripening wheat."
-John Sandes, The Earth-Mother (excerpt, 1918)