Ray LaMontagne- Empty (BBC FOUR Session)

:: there's a lot of things I don't understand

requiem for a house friend of many years.

gecko on window of 53rd floor, originally uploaded by deirdren.

at the night window,
waiting for the gecko's dance.
how i miss her smile.

le bon mot du jour: present

"Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory."

- Betty White

how to live a debt-free life. lesson one.

and this is for the woman who
i encountered on my soul's way today

whose heart so bankrupt
so hard, so dry, and withered
from feeding a no longer secret poison

unleashed her hatred in a manner
incredibly abusive and unkind

i chose you,
after observing
you berate and demean my coworker
i wanted you to know

there is a love to embrace a heart like yours

and when it angered you that
having exhausted your venom
i could look you in the eye unblinking
and see you,

see you, i
unflinching,
could see your heart
you, then, seeing my sorrow

which was like that of a parent who knows
her child's wilfullness unrelenting
will inevitably bring suffering

when, at your volume,
my voice grew softer and even
slow with deliberate gentleness
when then you had no other recourse
but to mimic my quiet
now
nearly at a whisper,
just to feel as though you were still in control
when your hatred did not shift
my love
i heard you

your dagger eyes
made it abundantly clear
when they said to me,
"so? i am a woman who doesn't repent"
i met your gaze with the silence of
one who can only open her heart
because

if, in its opening
my heart can still feel remorse at
having a hand in any other's suffering
then, i can wholly own
all of my joy
all of my sorrow
without ever asking anyone else
especially you
to pay

- the sleepypianist

the one that sings.

Stream, originally uploaded by mira_foto.

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

- Wendell Berry

mending the fabric of the world

beginners
Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

“From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea --“


But we have only begun
To love the earth.

We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?
-- so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?
-- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision

how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.

Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet--
there is too much broken
that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.


- denise levertov

open heart.

he told me once
he forgot himself & his
heart opened up like a
door with a loose latch
& everything fell out &
he tried for days to put
it all back in the proper
order, but finally he
gave up & left it there
in a pile & loved
everything equally.


open heart.

from Going Somewhere Soon
by brian andreas