Song

masked with bird, originally uploaded by Laura Burlton.

A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.

There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.

~ Seamus Heaney

may my heart always be open

wild world, originally uploaded by astrocruzan.

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

~ e.e. cummings

On Beauty

cross, originally uploaded by notlob86.

Love beauty; it is the shadow of God on the universe.
- Gabriela Mistral

The Motive For Metaphor

You like it under the trees in autumn,
Because everything is half dead.
The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves
And repeats words without meaning.

In the same way, you were happy in the spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon--

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were never quite yourself
And did not want nor have to be,

Desiring the exhilarations of changes:
The motive for metaphor, shrinking from
The weight of primary noon,
The A B C of being,

The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of red and blue, the hard sound--
Steel against intimation--the sharp flash,
The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.

~ Wallace Stevens

Outskirts

, originally uploaded by cymagen.

The song Carmelita by Warren Zevon takes me somewhere. It's one of those songs that makes me think of a recurring dream I had as a child about my birth parents. It was the kind of dream that kind of mixes into reality. You know that kind of dream that presents itself as a memory and you aren't sure if you dreamed it or if it really happened? It takes me to a place where tall golden weeds are bending in the breeze on a bright sunny day and my mother is trying, she is trying but it just isn't going to happen. There is a remnant of love in the air, life is just beginning. I feel at home listening, but thinking of her makes me sad. Maybe she listened to this kind of music when I was a baby.