Mind Wind

.................. Silence is resting, nestling in every leaf of every tree, in every root and branch. Silence is the flower sprouting upon the branch. ....................... Excerpt: "Silence" ~ Elaine Maria Upton

The storm wind covers the sky Whirling the fleecy snow drifts Now it howls like a wolf, Now it is crying, like a lost child. Let us drink, dearest friend To my poor wasted youth. Let us drink from grief - Where's the glass? Our hearts at least will be lightened. ~ Alexander Pushkin

Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna or on any river for that matter to be perfectly honest. Not in July or any month have I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure-- of fishing on the Susquehanna. I am more likely to be found in a quiet room like this one-- a painting of a woman on the wall, a bowl of tangerines on the table-- trying to manufacture the sensation of fishing on the Susquehanna. There is little doubt that others have been fishing on the Susquehanna, rowing upstream in a wooden boat, sliding the oars under the water then raising them to drip in the light. But the nearest I have ever come to fishing on the Susquehanna was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia when I balanced a little egg of time in front of a painting in which that river curled around a bend under a blue cloud-ruffled sky, dense trees along the banks, and a fellow with a red bandanna sitting in a small, green flat-bottom boat holding the thin whip of a pole. That is something I am unlikely ever to do, I remember saying to myself and the person next to me. Then I blinked and moved on to other American scenes of haystacks, water whitening over rocks, even one of a brown hare who seemed so wired with alertness I imagined him springing right out of the frame. "Fishing on Susquehanna in July" ~ Billy Collins

More and more I have come to admire resilience. Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side, it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true. But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs -- all this resinous, unretractable earth. "Optimism" ~ Jane Hirshfield

Today I saw the dragon fly Come from the wells where he did lie. An inner impulse rent the veil Of his old husk: from head to tail Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. He dried his wings: like gauze they grew; Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew A living flash of light he flew. ~ Tennyson

"Fairest of the months! Ripe summer's queen The hey-day of the year With robes that gleam with sunny sheen Sweet August doth appear." ~ R. Combe Miller

How often does the bright moon come? With Wine, I ask of the blue sky. In the heavily palaces, I wish to return there, riding the wind, but fear that in the high places of jade halls and eaves, I cannot fend off the cold. Rising to dance with my clear shadow, scarcely possible that I among men, turn around the red lacquered pavilions, dip below the silken-curtained windows, shine on the sleepless. There ought not be regrets, but why so often are you full at times of parting? Men have sorrow and joy and farewell and union. The moon has clouds and clear skies, waxing and waning. Perfection is rare since days of old, so wish only that the years be long, to share beauty even across a thousand miles. ~ Su Shih

Steering my little boat towards a misty islet, I watch the sun decend while my sorrows grow; In the vast night the sky hangs lower than the tree tops, But in the blue lake the moon is coming close “Night on the great river” ~ Meng Hao-jan

’Tis morning; and the sun with ruddy orb Ascending, fires the horizon: while the clouds That crowd away before the driving wind, More ardent as the disk emerges more, Resemble most some city in a blaze, Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale, And tinging all with his own rosy hue, From ev’ry herb and ev’ry spiry blade Stretches a length of shadow o’er the field. Mine, spindling into longitude immense, In spite of gravity, and sage remark That I myself am but a fleeting shade, Provokes me to a smile............. ........................................ Except: "Winter morning walk" ~ William Cowper

I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds - a split second’s enough for them to start being something else. Their trademark: they don’t repeat a single shape, shade, pose, arrangement. Unburdened by memory of any kind, they float easily over the facts. What on earth could they bear witness to? They scatter whenever something happens. Compared to clouds, life rests on solid ground, practically permanent, almost eternal. ~Wislawa Szymborska

The silence of the morning, See the night slur into dawn, Hear the slowI shall foot it Down the roadway in the dusk, Where shapes of hunger wander And the fugitives of pain go by. I shall foot it In great winds arise Where tall trees flank the way And shoulder toward the sky. The broken boulders by the road Shall not commemorate my ruin. Regret shall be the gravel under foot. I shall watch for Slim birds swift of wing That go where wind and ranks of thunder Drive the wild processionals of rain. The dust of the traveled road Shall touch my hands and face. "THE ROAD AND THE END " ~ Carl Sandburg

I felt both pleasure and a shiver as we undressed on the slippery bank and then plunged into the wild river. I waded in; she entered as a diver. Watching her pale flanks slice the dark I felt both pleasure and a shiver. Was this a source of the lake we sought, giver of itself to that vast, blue expanse? We’d learn by plunging into the wild river and letting the current take us wherever it willed. I had that yielding to thank for how I felt both pleasure and a shiver. But what she felt and saw I’ll never know: separate bodies taking the same risk by plunging together into the wild river. Later, past the rapids, we paused to consider if chance or destiny had brought us here; whether it was more than pleasure and a shiver we’d found by plunging into the wild river. ~ Gregory Orr

When I walk Into my kitchen today I am not alone. Whether we know it Or not, none of us is. We bring father And mother and kitchen Tables and every meal We have ever eaten. Food is never just food. It’s also a way of Getting at something else: Who we are, who We have been, and Who we want to be. ~ Molly Wizenberg

The beauty of manhole covers--what of that? Like medals struck by a great savage khan, Like Mayan calendar stones, unliftable, indecipherable, Not like the old electrum, chased and scored, Mottoed and sculptured to a turn, But notched and whelked and pocked and smashed With the great company names (Gentle Bethlehem, smiling United States). This rustproof artifact of my street, Long after roads are melted away will lie Sidewise in the grave of the iron-old world, Bitten at the edges, Strong with its cryptic American, Its dated beauty. ~ Karl Shapiro

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation. He went flying down the river in his boat With his video camera to his eye, making A moving picture of the moving river Upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly Towards the end of his vacation. He showed His vacation to his camera, which pictured it, Preserving it forever: the river, the trees, The sky, the light, the bow of this rushing boat Behind which he stood with his camera Preserving his vacation even as he was having it So that after he had had it he would still Have it. It would be there. With a flick Of a switch, there it would be. Be he Would not be in it. He would never be in it. “The Vacation” ~ Wendell Berry

But please walk softly as you do. Frogs dwell here and crickets too. Ain't no ceiling, only blue. Jays dwell here and sunbeams too. Floors are flowers - take a few Ferns grow here and daisies too. Swoosh, whoosh - too-whit, too-woo Bats dwell here and hoot owls too. Ha-ha-ha, hee-hee, hoo-hoooo, Gnomes dwell here and goblins too. And my child, I thought you knew I dwell here… and so do you "Enter this Deserted House" ~ Sheldon A Silverstein

Another year gone, leaving everywhere its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves, the uneaten fruits crumbling damply in the shadows, unmattering back from the particular island of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere except underfoot, moldering in that black subterranean castle of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds and the wanderings of water. This I try to remember when time's measure painfully chafes, for instance when autumn flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing to stay - how everything lives, shifting from one bright vision to another, forever in these momentary pastures. "Fall Song" ~ Mary Oliver