"I STILL HAVE EVERYTHING"

small bowl, feather, shell

one of my new photographs seemed to call for Naomi Shihab Nye's poems. here are two:

I STILL HAVE EVERYTHING YOU GAVE ME

"It is dusty on the edges.

Slightly rotten.

I guard it without thinking.

Focus on it once a year
when I shake it out in the wind.

I do not ache.

I would not trade."


and


HIDDEN


"If you place a fern
under a stone
the next day it will be
nearly invisible
as if the stone has
swallowed it.

If you tuck the name of a loved one
under your tongue too long
without speaking it
it becomes blood
sigh
the little sucked-in breath of air
hiding everywhere
beneath your words.

No one sees
the fuel that feeds you."

NATURE HAS ITS WAY WITH US

THREE TIMES MY LIFE HAS OPENED

Three times my life has opened.

Once, into darkness and rain.

Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and starts

to remember each time it enters the act of love.

Once, to the fire that holds all.

These three were not different.

You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.

But outside my window all day a maple has stepped from her leaves

like a woman in love with winter, dropping the colored silks.

Neither are we different in what we know.

There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of light 

stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,

or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.

from THE LIVES OF THE HEART by

JANE HIRSHFIELD

the luminosity of spring~~~ awakens the mind

 

 

 

'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.'

`mevlana jelaluddin rumi`