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Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— BY THEODORE ROETHKE
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Gerard Van der Leun
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The look on that kids face as dad passes the tree. Dad will appreciate the hell out of that video in about 30 years or so. Lucky dawg. We didn’t get a video camera til the kid was about 12, in 1991. Fucker cost more’n a grand. Still have it somewhere, I think.
I miss my dad! is good news, I know I’ll be with him again someday! Happy Fathers Day, REW
Dirk
Just one reason why fathers are needed. I am truly sorry for those that don’t have one.
Thanks for everything, Dad. How is it possible that, you will have been gone physically 34 years, come this August. Yet, you live on in my memories and how you taught me to conduct myself as a man. You’re still the greatest man I’ve ever known, and I’m positive you’ll go unchallenged for that title. I was so incredibly blessed.
It took five years to find all the peach pits my father hid around the house Each time resulted in rueful smiles and occasional tears.
Remembering how sharp and smart my dad was when I was young,
& how dumb and stupid he became when I hit my teens,
& how amazed I was at his acumen when I hit my twenties,
& how now, sixty years later, life lessons learned from him
still put me in good stead.
Weekly if not daily I still have a question pop in my head and say, Dad would know the answer. Same with my oldest brother and Mom as well. I do miss them and did not know how good I had it till Dad was gone. May God bless all fathers each and every day and welcome them into His kingdom when that day comes.
Part of the continuing downward spiral of “disadvantaged” families is the lack of fathers therein.
Sheer,unbridled joy in that little guy’s face. Dad knew his sprout would love it,just as he did.
Dads envision things that Moms just don’t. Even better,they act upon them.
Thank You,Lord,for men who care about their children. Even if they are’nt.