“I’m not here to grant you the extraordinary love you never had for yourself.
I’m here, on my own accord, to love you. So that when you stare into my
mirror eyes, you may see how extraordinary you are.” ― Kamand Kojouri
flowers
All posts tagged flowers
Peonies
By Mary Oliver
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open —
pools of lace,
white and pink —
and all day the black ants climb over them,
boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away
to their dark, underground cities —
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding
all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again —
beauty the brave, the exemplary,
blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,
with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?
Found
By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
I WANDERED lonely
Beneath the trees,
And sought for nothing,
But strolled at ease.
There in the shadows
A flower grew,
Like starlight beaming,
Like eyes so blue.
I sought to break it,
But heard it say:
“Shall I be broken
To fade away?”
I dug it out then
With roots and all,
And bore it home to
My garden small.
Again it’s planted
And finds repose;
And now as ever
It blooms and grows.
You find a flower half-buried in leaves,
And in your eye its very fate resides.
Loving beauty, you caress the bloom;
Soon enough, you’ll sweep petals from the floor.
Terrible to love the lovely so,
To count your own years, to say “I’m old,”
To see a flower half-buried in leaves
And come face to face with what you are.
– Hanshan
The heart unites whatever the mind separates, pushes on beyond the arena
of necessity and transmutes the struggle into love. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
“You think because you understand ‘one’ you must also understand ‘two’,
because one and one make two. But you must also understand ‘and’.”
― Rumi
Thus in each flower and simple bell,
That in our path untrodden lie,
Are sweet remembrancers who tell
How fast the winged moments fly.
Time will steal on with ceaseless pace,
Yet lose we not the fleeting hours,
Who still their fairy footsteps trace,
As light they dance among the flowers.
Charlotte Turner Smith (1749–1806)
Maverick Mist 