Friday, March 3, 2017

Lenten Reflections - a Poem a day - The Present by W.S. Merwin

From Poetry Daily

 
 
The Present

As they were leaving the garden
one of the angels bent down to them and whispered

I am to give you this
as you are leaving the garden

I do not know what it is
or what it is for
what you will do with it

you will not be able to keep it
but you will not be able

to keep anything
yet they both reached at once

for the present
and when their hands met

they laughed


By W. S. Merwin

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

All Life is One, and All is Change - Oscar Wilde Poem

We Are Made One with What We Touch and See
by
Oscar Wilde

Next
 
(Excerpted from "Panthea")
We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart’s blood each crimson sun is fair,
With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

With beat of systole and of diastole
One grand great life throbs through earth’s giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being roll
From nerve-less germ to man, for we are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. . . .

Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,
The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
At daybreak know a pleasure not less real
Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood
We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good. . . .

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
Or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair,
That we are nature’s heritors, and one
With every pulse of life that beats the air?
Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,
New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
Critics of nature, but the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be
Part of the mighty universal whole,
And through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World’s throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

Friday, February 3, 2017

Energy Drained

Boy, these last few months have not been easy ones. 2016 turned out to be so much work. Just nonstop responsibilities.

I am really struggling to keep up with my responsibilities as a parent and guide my children towards their own successful lives. My daughters' issues are really affecting me. I literally find that I do not have the physical or emotional space to have anything like my own life. I am constantly putting my own needs aside in favor of meeting the needs of others. It has been exhausting.

Friends would give the advice of not to do it. But it's not that simple. I cannot not do it or what needs to get done will not get done. Suffering will ensue.

I am very tired.