Showing posts with label Advice to Myself. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advice to Myself. Show all posts

Monday, May 25, 2009

Monday Hodgepodge of Poems I Love


I awoke to another cloudy day and more beautiful red Roses blooming---yesterday's thunder and clouds produced no rain, so I'm soon off to water my gardens.

The poems below were on my mind when I woke up today and are among my favorites of all time---a few I have memorized. Most came from my book, "A Poem A Day", edited by Karen McCosker and Nicholas Albery. It's a fabulous, eclectic anthology that I bought many years ago and have totally worn out from reading! I also picked up my portable Emerson and paged through and share here a few quotes I had underlined.

I wish you Blessings, Peace and Inspiration Today and Every Day! ~*~Marion

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"There is a difference between one and another hour of life, in their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Portable Emerson", page 228, 'The Over-Soul'


"St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Portable Emerson", page 209, 'Circles'

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New Every Morning

Every day is a fresh beginning,
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.
And, spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.

Susan Coolidge


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Come To The Edge

Come to the edge.

We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!

COME TO THE EDGE!

And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.

~Christopher Logue


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The Falcon To The Falconer
By: Jonathan Steffen


Unleash me from your hand
And I will lance the light for you
I'll cut a swordblade on the wind
And pennant it with flight for you
To signal I am yours
If you will free me to be true to you

Unleash me from your hand
And I will mock the sky for you
I'll pull the anger from the air
And make the breezes sigh for you
To show that I am yours
If you will free me to be true to you

Unleash me from your hand
And I will jewel it bright for you
I'll hunt the treasures of the wind
And pluck them into sight for you
To show that I am yours
If you will free me to be true to you

O, cast me from your hand
That I may show my love for you
And throw me to the wind
That I may know my need for you
All darkness on your hand
I'm hooded, pinned, and held by you

O, give me back my wings
That they may bring me back to you


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All Things Pass
By Timothy Leary, homage to Lao Tzu


All things pass
A sunrise does not last all morning
All things pass

A cloudburst does not last all day
All things pass
Nor a sunset all night

But Earth... sky... thunder...
wind... fire... lake...
mountain... water...
These always change

And if these do not last
Do man’s visions last?
Do man’s illusions ?

During the [meditation] session
Take things as they come
All things pass

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Advice to Myself
By Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

~From: "Original Fire: New and Selected Poems", page 149