for some, life can never be refused.

more courageous, more curious, or more greedy for life, no part of it can they bear to lose. aware of its richness, its variety, they cannot close the eyes, plug the ears, or block the heart. in that moment of anesthesia some vision might flash never to be seen again.

unbolt the door; fling out the windows; spread wide the arms. let it come; let it flow; let it blaze. let it pour through every vein. let it flood the heart, immerse the body and soul. this is the moment.

it will pass — oh, too soon, it will pass.

listen to it; watch it; feel it — it will pass and nothing will ever be the same again.

(anne morrow lindbergh, dearly beloved)

there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled

a space

and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest times

we will know it

we will know it
more than
ever

there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled
and

we will wait
and
wait

in that space.

(charles bukowski, no help for that)

the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
don’t go back to sleep.

you must ask for what you really want.
don’t go back to sleep.

people are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.

the door is round and open.
don’t go back to sleep.

[rumi (through barks)]

it’s the Longing that ultimately undoes you.

when it finds you, it gnaws at your bones and tugs at your chest. it fills you up inside and makes you dream dreams and it drowns you.

the Longing keeps you in bed, clutching at your sheets while the world goes on outside. it smells like old leaves and cigarette smoke, mixed with the scent of far-off places you will hear of, but never see. it’s the gloss on a lover’s lips the moment you realize you will never kiss those lips again. it is the bittersweet, unrequited love of creation and it will break your heart again and again and again.

if you know the Longing the way i do, then these words are redundant. we understand each other perfectly, you and i.

(matthew sturges, house of mystery)

life will break you.

nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning.

you have to love. you have to feel. it is the reason you are here on earth.

you are here to risk your heart.

you are here to be swallowed up.

and when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness.

tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

(louise erdrich, the painted drum)

Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

(mary oliver)

love after love

the time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. eat.
you will love again the stranger who was your self.
give wine. give bread. give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
sit. feast on your life.

(derek walcott)

in an instant, the image of the shuttle was replaced with plumes of smoke and falling debris. the classroom went silent.

in those first moments, i don’t think anyone understood what was happening. i kept waiting for the parachutes. they never came.

i remember walking home from the bus stop later that day and looking up at the sky. as a child who wanted to be an astronaut and a teacher, that day changed my life. i followed the aftermath with intense interest — the recovery, the tributes, the funerals, the investigation. i needed to know how, and perhaps more importantly to a child of ten, WHY this happened.

i don’t know that the answers really ever came. lost somewhere in the talk of sub-freezing temperatures, and o-rings and miscommunications were the dreams of a child. i was touched by tragedy that day, and for perhaps the first time in my life, i was truly afraid. and so i wept for the loss of those seven astronauts, and for the lesson plans that would never be carried out in space, and for the youth of our nation, who, like me, would have to grow up with a little less magic in their world.

today, as i have every january 28th, i pause to remember.

oh! i have slipped the surly bonds of earth
and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
you have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
high in the sunlit silence. hov’ring there,
i’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
my eager craft through footless halls of air….

up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
i’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
where never lark nor even eagle flew—
and, while with silent lifting mind i’ve trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand, and touched the face of god.

(j.g. magee, jr)

she is not waiting. not quite.

it is more that the years mean nothing to her any more, that the dreams and the street cannot touch her.

she remains on the edges of time, implacable, unhurt, beyond, and one day you will open your eyes and see her, and after that, the dark.

it is not a reaping. instead, she will pluck you, gently, like a feather, or a flower for her hair.

(n. gaiman)

some say the world will end in fire,
some say in ice.
from what i’ve tasted of desire
i hold with those who favor fire.
but if it had to perish twice,
i think i know enough of hate
to say that for destruction ice
is also great,
and would suffice.

(robert frost)