Loss and Gain - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

When I compare

What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride.

I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen short or been turned aside.

But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide. 

Flowers by Wendy Cope

 

Some men never think of it.

You did. You’d come along

And say you’d nearly brought me flowers

But something had gone wrong.

The shop was closed. Or you had doubts –
The sort that minds like ours
Dream up incessantly. You thought
I might not want your flowers.

It made me smile and hug you then.
Now I can only smile.
But, look, the flowers you nearly brought
Have lasted all this while.

They Are Not Long - Ernest Dowson

Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam.

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,

Love and desire and hate;

I think they have no portion in us after

We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses,

Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes

Within a dream.

Some Kiss We Want - Rumi

There is some kiss we want with 

our whole lives, the touch of 

spirit on the body. Seawater

begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately

it needs some wild darling! At

night, I open the window and ask

the moon to come and press its

face against mine. Breathe into

me. Close the language- door and

open the love window. The moon

won't use the door, only the window.

Wild Geese - Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things

You are Earth by Aubrey Marcus

You are comprised of: 

84 minerals, 23 Elements, and 8 gallons of water 

spread across 38 trillion cells.

 

You have been built up from nothing 

by the spare parts of the Earth you have consumed, 

according to a set of instructions hidden in a double helix 

and small enough to be carried by (an egg) and a sperm. 

 

You are recycled butterflies, plants, rocks, streams, firewood, wolf fur, and shark teeth, 

broken down to their smallest parts 

and rebuilt into our planet’s most complex living thing.

 

You are not living on Earth. 

You are Earth.

 

Bleeker Street – Robert Dimler

Have
you ev-
er needed
a pair of dimes
to place a call at
night? At 2 a.m.,
on Bleeker Street,
beneath a
broken
light?