quiet thoughts on a quiet evening

Closing the weekend at home and listening to simple breezes and a new generation of crickets just beginning to sing summer's songs in the fresh grass... much on my mind. Some semblance of the peace that passes understanding creeps slowly across my thoughts, admittedly, as I silently keep watch over the darkened house that has watched me grow these past 15 years or so... A day not without its tearfalls and emerald eyeshine that can only come with the redness of grief, but a day... another day to be thankful for and appreciate in whatever mystery it managed to unfold. I come now to seek the wisdom of poets that seem as real as friends on these dark evenings alone, words I cling to for answers, comfort, solace, insight... strange how the thoughts of strangers are ultimately the kindest and most gentle springs of hope amidst the strange tragedies of life. Home without that trusted lifeboat of a library that anchors my life in my own flat, I rely on the resources of my computer files, lovingly accumulated throughout the years and painstakingly organized... It seems as if I hope to find some sort of emotional Holy Grail locked away in the sonnets and quatrains of the Masters and truthfully I should better resolve to seek my own enlightenment, but alas tonight I haven't the energy. In my younger days I kept journals of my joys and sorrows, determined in my naivety to capture each glorious moment in black ink and blank sketchbooks, as if permanence could be secured by immortalizing memories in spiral-bound records. Several of those old sketchbooks litter my shelves, gathering dust perhaps or just waiting in lonely repose for me to renew interest in my own past... Perhaps that wasn't such a terrible habit... if nothing else to hear from your own thoughts those innumerable aspects of life for which you are grateful seem a small comfort.

At any rate, words secured from poets far and near...

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 you

here 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 apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

- e e cummings

____________________

Nothing is Lost

Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.

- Noel Coward

_____________________________

(... and my old favorite)

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

- Li-Young Lee