In Praise of Mortality

Posted by Maverick ~ on December 8, 2015
Posted in: Nature, Poetry. Tagged: , , , , .

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Sonnets to Orpheus
Part Two, XIII
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened,
like winter, which even now is passing.
For beneath the winter is a winter so endless
that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.

Be forever dead in Eurydice, and climb back singing.
Climb praising as you return to connection.
Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient,
be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings.

Be. And, at the same time, know what it is not to be.
That emptiness inside you allows you to vibrate
in resonance with your world. Use it for once.

To all that has run its course, and to the vast unsayable
numbers of beings abounding in Nature,
add yourself gladly, and cancel the cost.

Translated and edited by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

The Rose

Posted by Maverick ~ on December 2, 2015
Posted in: Flowers, Music, Photography, Poetry. Tagged: , , .

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By Amanda McBroom

Some say love, it is a river
That drowns the tender reed
Some say love, it is a razor
That leaves your soul to bleed

Some say love, it is a hunger
An endless aching need
I say love, it is a flower
And you, its only seed

It’s the heart afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance
It’s the dream afraid of waking
That never takes the chance

It’s the one who won’t be taken
Who cannot seem to give
And the soul, afraid of dyin’
That never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long
That you think that love is only
For the lucky and the strong

Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed that with the sun’s love
In the spring becomes the rose

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A Dream Girl

Posted by Maverick ~ on November 30, 2015
Posted in: Flowers, Photography, Poetry. Tagged: , , , , .

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A Dream Girl
by Carl Sandburg

You will come one day in a waver of love,
Tender as dew, impetuous as rain,
The tan of the sun will be on your skin,
The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech,
You will pose with a hill-flower grace.

You will come, with your slim, expressive arms,
A poise of the head no sculptor has caught
And nuances spoken with shoulder and neck,
Your face in pass-and-repass of moods
As many as skies in delicate change
Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun.

Yet,
You may not come, O girl of a dream,
We may but pass as the world goes by
And take from a look of eyes into eyes,
A film of hope and a memoried day.