“When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination,
the whole world opens up to you.” — Susan Sarandon
Flowers
*We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden*
Joni Mitchell
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen
or even touched - they must be felt with the heart. -- Helen Keller
“Pleasure is wild and sweet. She likes purple flowers. She loves the sun and the wind and the night sky. She carries a silver bowl full of liquid moonlight. She has a cat named Midnight with stars on his paws. Many people mistrust Pleasure, and even more misunderstand her. For a long time I could barely stand to be in …the same room with her…”
…………………………………………………….. ― J. Ruth Gendler, The Book of Qualities
To M —
by Edgar Allen Poe
O! I care not that my earthly lot
Hath little of Earth in it,
That years of love have been forgot
In the fever of a minute:
I heed not that the desolate
Are happier, sweet, than I,
But that you meddle with my fate
Who am a passer by.
It is not that my founts of bliss
Are gushing- strange! with tears-
Or that the thrill of a single kiss
Hath palsied many years-
‘Tis not that the flowers of twenty springs
Which have wither’d as they rose
Lie dead on my heart-strings
With the weight of an age of snows.
Not that the grass- O! may it thrive!
On my grave is growing or grown-
But that, while I am dead yet alive
I cannot be, lady, alone.
The bride to be lost her head while waiting…
…for her Steampunk pilot’s return…
…and he was bugged…
…at the snail’s pace of time.
What I Am Telling You
by Marina Gipps
Do you understand that moat of whiteness?
Where we said our I do’s lifted in a cloud of never.
Where blanched sheets covered our desires
of desktop plumes and smoked cigarettes.
Do you understand that moat of whiteness?
The one where I said what I would not have said.
Clouded it seems everyday as if changing.
For I am no more than a forgotten, rotten root.
Standing here beside what should have been-waiting.
Do you understand that moat of whiteness?
If I ask again tomorrow I won’t expect an answer.
Shan’t ask-yet shall continue to write until
that Oppressor stops hounding me with messages.
Do you understand that moat of whiteness?
Sometimes I see it through a window-willowing off.
Even hear its vague whisper in the tedium of darkness.
It tells me naughty might be nice-so it asks again,
Do you understand that moat of whiteness?
Why the birds kill you with their song in the early dawn.
Why the sun should never come up-so you may sleep.
Why the moon is forever a nuisance for the least serene.
Do you truly understand that moat of whiteness?
The Morning Comes Before the Sun
by Susan Coolidge
Slow buds the pink dawn like a rose
From out night’s gray and cloudy sheath;
Softly and still it grows and grows,
Petal by petal, leaf by leaf;
Each sleep-imprisoned creature breaks
Its dreamy fetters, one by one,
And love awakes, and labor wakes,–
The morning comes before the sun.
What is this message from the light
So fairer far than light can be?
Youth stands a-tiptoe, eager, bright,
In haste the risen sun to see;
Ah! check thy lunging, restless heart,
Count the charmed moments as they run,
It is life’s best and fairest part,
This morning hour before the sun.
When once thy day shall burst to flower,
When once the sun shall climb the sky,
And busy hour by busy hour,
The urgent noontide draws anigh;
When the long shadows creep abreast,
To dim the happy task half done,
Thou wilt recall this pause of rest,
This morning hush before the sun.
To each, one dawning and one dew,
One fresh young hour is given by fate,
One rose flush on the early blue.
Be not impatient then, but wait!
Clasp the sweet peace on earth and sky,
By midnight angels woven and spun;
Better than day its prophecy,–
The morning comes before the sun.
““If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable,
those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
Maverick Mist 