father roger goes for a walk by Franz Wright
text ID: It's September 13th again, and the sun is shining.
This leafy largely vacant rectory is just a place for me to hang my head. It's the last day of somebody's childhood. And every day I'll try to do one thing I like, in memory of being happy.
Matthew Olzmann
Text ID: Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America
Tell me what it’s like to live without curiosity, without awe. To sail on clear water, rolling your eyes at the kelp reefs swaying beneath you, ignoring the flicker of mermaid scales in the mist, looking at the world and feeling only boredom. To stand on the precipice of some wild valley, the eagles circling, a herd of caribou booming below, and to yawn with indifference. To discover something primordial and holy. To have the smell of the earth welcome you to everywhere. To take it all in, and then, to reach for your knife.
hanif abdurraqib via his instagram stories
text ID: will answer, let’s say between 3 and 9, across a range of topics. What’s your favourite thing about being in love? well, for me, at my luckiest, love has been a transformation of architecture(s,) both internal and external. Which, for me, means that I most delight in the way sounds and shapes and colors of the world that I’ve always understood in a single way all begin to bend towards a new understanding, informed by or propelled by loving another person. When we say “this song now reminds me of ___” for example, what actually is being said is “you have moved into the world of this song, I have welcomed it, and it is a different song now.” And internally, I think being loved well provides opportunity for a sort of internal renovation. The city of yourself, built/arranged/maintained by you and for you still gets to be yours, but the very act of someone being curious about its roads & buildings & whatnot might make you wonder about the possibilities within it that you didn’t see before.
I think platonic love, romantic love, familial love, all of it is very lucky because it is actually not promised, to any of us. And there’s a whole lotta fucking people in the world, and the vast, vast majority of them will not only never love you, but also not know you exist. The better money is on the loneliness. And so, knowing this, opening oneself up to the possibility of that work of seeking, knowing that heartbreak is a possible outcome, is brave. And knowing THAT, a person finding another person who understands them in a full, wholly unique way feels miraculous to me, given the odds. So I guess the short answer is that my favorite thing is being in the midst of a miracle which acts against what the odds say.
Lisel Mueller, ‘There are Mornings,’ from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems
Text ID: Even now, when the plot
calls for me to turn to stone,
the sun intervenes. Some mornings
in summer, I step outside
and the sky opens
and pours itself into me
as if I were a saint
about to die. But the plot
calls for me to live, be ordinary,
say nothing to anyone.
Inside the house,
the mirrors burn when I pass.
Ollie Schminkey from Dead Dad Jokes
Text ID:
if death is a fish, i have no choice but to be the
newspaper,
to soak its blood while my father guts it
Jon Ware, I Am In Eskew
Text ID: Here’s my question. If the ghost wants nothing more than to be witnessed, why would it appear behind you, not in front of you? The only answer I can think of is this: it appears behind you because it already knows, to an absolute certainty, that you will have no choice but to look back.
Screenshot of a tweet from Fredward, Fredward (@Fredward3948576): I’m so glad that I have a public diary that showcases my cognitive decline
‘Do not ask your children to strive’ by William Martin
Text ID:
Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.
Yusef Komunyakaa
Text ID
Rock Me, Mercy
The river stones are listening because we have something to say. The trees lean closer today. The singing in the electrical woods has gone dumb. It looks like rain because it is too warm to snow. Guardian angels, wherever you're hiding, we know you can't be everywhere at once. Have you corralled all the pretty wild horses? The memory of ants asleep in daylilies, roses, holly, & larkspur. The magpies gaze at us, still waiting. River stones are listening. But all we can say now is, Mercy, please, rock me.
EMILY KENDAL FREY
Text ID
This Deepening Takes Place Again
Emily Kendal Frey
What if everything were revealed: where I was last night. You, etc. The rain is coming down like salad. My sister's hair reminds me of my sister so much I can't stop looking. Who am I to have arms? On the plane one short dream: a baby so small it wasn't even human, just a bouquet of light with wise cellular eyes. If losing me is the worst thing to happen, your life is still a good life.
Margaret Atwood, True Stories; from ‘Variation On the Word Sleep’
[text ID: I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary.
end ID.]
Rita Dove, from “November for Beginners“
[text ID: We sit down in the smell of the past and rise in a light that is already leaving. We ache in secret,
end ID.]
Jane Hirshfield, from After; “To Speech”
[text ID:
Fear, hunger, rage stammer beyond you: what lives in words is what words were needed to learn.
And so it is good we sometimes set you down and walk⏤
unthinking and peaceful, planning nothing⏤ by the cold, salt, unobedient, unlistening sea.
end ID.]
Jane Hirshfield, from Of Gravity & Angels; “Woman in Red Coat”
[text ID:
Some questions cannot be answered. They become familiar weights in the hand, round stones pulled from the pocket, unyielding and cool. Your fingers travel their surfaces, lose themselves finally in the braille of the durable world.
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