I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.
🍂
Daisy Sims Hilditch Autumnal Afternoon in St James's Park
October 18, St. Luke’s Little Summer
Edward Thomas - 'October'
by Philip Larkin
The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said; The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again And we grow old? No, they die too, Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
“Taking the hands of someone you love, You see they are delicate cages… Tiny birds are singing In the secluded prairies And in the deep valleys of the hand.”
— Robert Bly, “Taking the Hands”
“But this is human life: the war, the deeds, The disappointment, the anxiety, Imagination’s struggles, far and nigh, All human; bearing in themselves this good, That they are still the air, the subtle food, To make us feel existence …”
— John Keats, from “Endymion”
It is not the moon, I tell you. It is these flowers lighting the yard.
-Louise Glück
« True gardeners cannot bear a glove Between the sure touch and the tender root, Must let their hands grow knotted as they move With a rough sensitivity about Under the earth, between the rock and shoot, Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit. And so I watched my mother's hands grow scarred, She who could heal the wounded plant or friend With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love; I minded once to see her beauty gnarled, But now her truth is given me to live, As I learn for myself we must be hard To move among the tender with an open hand, And to stay sensitive up to the end Pay with some toughness for a gentle world. »
— May Sarton, "An Observation"
forsythia by Barbara Crooker
JMSMITH, Holy Week is the Twist in God’s Great Tale
It’s World Poetry Day
"And the Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.”
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(art: Jo Grundy)
