I was looking for a course, a way
and meaning in my life
and thought the answer could be found
in all that wise men wrote.
And they are surely not to blame
if I ended up no wiser.
That mystery so clear, so deep,
is not to be found in books.
It was in your eyes, shining, blue,
that I first saw it once.
Eternity opened a tiny crack,
And earth and heaven sang.
~ Olav H. Hauge
(The Magic of Fjords)
Like Rain it sounded till it curved
And then we knew ’twas Wind —
It walked as wet as any Wave
But swept as dry as Sand —
When it had pushed itself away
To some remotest Plain
A coming as of Hosts was heard
That was indeed the Rain —
It filled the Wells, it pleased the Pools
It warbled in the Road —
It pulled the spigot from the Hills
And let the Floods abroad —
It loosened acres, lifted seas
The sites of Centres stirred
Then like Elijah rode away
Opon a Wheel of Cloud —
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1245)
We got 1.75″ of rain on Tuesday! Our drought status has moved from severe down to moderate.
Oh! the Summer Night
Has a smile of light,
And she sits on a sapphire throne.
~ Barry Cornwall
(The Nights)
~ summer solstice ~
The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.
~ Henry Van Dyke
(Fisherman’s Luck & Some Other Uncertain Things)
~ spring equinox ~
All forests are one. … They are all echoes of the first forest that gave birth to Mystery when the world began.
~ Charles de Lint
(Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine, Spring 1990)
The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of a traveler who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gates should shut and the keys be lost.
~ J. R. R. Tolkien
(J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth)
It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.
~ John Burroughs
(Winter Sunshine)
~ winter solstice ~
I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable lines between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves — we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny.
~ Mary Oliver
(Upstream: Selected Essays)
No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.
~ Edvard Munch
(www.edvardmunch.org)
Daybreak; glowing, a sun rises
through the blue stem of the sea
shoots to the top, unfolds
And the sea’s petals tremble.
~ Stein Mehren
(Dawn Breeze)