I will not die an unlived life

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I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days

To allow my living to open me

To make me less afraid, more accessible.

To loosen my heart

Until it becomes

A wing, a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance

To live so that which came to me as seed

Goes to the next as blossom

And that which came to me as blossom

Goes on as fruit.


–Dawna Markova

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for your Sunday

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below is a great track performed on this occasion
but omitted from the video

Prabhujee Dayaa Karo,
Maname Aana Baso.
Tuma Bina Laage soonaa,
Khaali Ghatame Prema Bharo.
Tantra Mantra Poojaa Nahi Jaanu,
Mai To Kevala Tumako Hi Maanu.
Sare Jaga Me Dhundaa Tumako,
Aba To Aakara Baahan Dharo. 

Divine being, have mercy on me.
Come, reside in my heart.
Without you, I feel an emptiness.
Fill up my hollow entity with love.
I don’t know the rituals, chants, and prayers.
I just know that I believe in you.
I searched the whole world for you.
Now, please come, take my hand and lead me.

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from One Hundred Years of Solitude

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A person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.


—Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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fablesofthereconstruction
largerloves 
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remember me

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buffleheadcabin
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Hawk Roosting

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I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes close.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.
 

—Ted Hughes 

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the dead (animated poetry)

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The dead are always looking down on us, they say.
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a long afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.


–Billy Collins

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For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not Enough:

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I pick up the skirt,
I pick up the sparkling beads
in black,
this thing that moved once
around flesh,
and I call God a liar,
I say anything that moved
like that
or knew
my name
could never die
in the common verity of dying,
and I pick
up her lovely
dress,
all her loveliness gone,
and I speak to all the gods,
Jewish gods, Christ-gods,
chips of blinking things,
idols, pills, bread,
fathoms, risks,
knowledgeable surrender,
rats in the gravy of two gone quite mad
without a chance,
hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,
I lean upon this,
I lean on all of this
and I know
her dress upon my arm
but
they will not
give her back to me.


–Charles Bukowski

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not to worry

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The wise Prophet has said that no one who dies and dismounts from the steed of the body feels grief on account of departure and death, but only for missed opportunities and having failed in good works.

Truly everyone who dies wishes that their arrival at their destination might have come sooner: the wicked, in order that their wickedness might have been less; and the devoted, in order that they might have reached home more quickly.


–Rumi

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listen, touch, let go

 

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wild iris

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 At the end of my suffering  
 there was a door.

 Hear me out: that which you call death
 I remember.

 Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
 Then nothing. The weak sun
 flickered over the dry surface.

 It is terrible to survive
 as consciousness
 buried in the dark earth.

 Then it was over: that which you fear, being
 a soul and unable
 to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
 bending a little.  And what I took to be
 birds darting in low shrubs.

 You who do not remember
 passage from the other world
 I tell you I could speak again: whatever
 returns from oblivion returns
 to find a voice:

 from the center of my life came
 a great fountain, deep blue
 shadows on azure sea water.


–Louise Glück

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not to worry

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I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way. 
Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.


–Rumi

 

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