Poem a Day

Matches among other things that were not allowed
never would be
lying high in a cool blue box
that opened in other hands and there they all were
bodies clean and smooth blue heads white crowns
white sandpaper on the sides of the box scoring
fire after fire gone before

I could hear the scratch and flare
when they were over
and catch the smell of the striking
I knew what the match would feel like
lighting
when I was very young

a fire engine came and parked
in the shadow of the big poplar tree
of Fourth Street one night
keeping its engine running
pumping oxygen to the old woman
in the basement
when she died the red lights went on burning

-W.S. Merwin

Dreams come a size too big so that we can grow into them.

-Josie Bisset

Be happy!
Let all the number of the stars give light to thy fair way!

-William Shakespeare

By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but nature more.

-Lord Byron

Your silence will not protect you.

-Audre Lorde

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it’s you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

-Pablo Neruda

The Alchemist

I burned my life, that I might find
A passion wholly of the mind,
Thought divorced from eye and bone,
Ecstasy come to breath alone.
I broke my life, to seek relief
From the flawed light of love and grief.

With mounting beat the utter fire
Charred existence and desire.
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.
I had found unmysterious flesh ––
Not the mind’s avid substance –– still
Passionate beyond the will.

-Louise Bogan

Words are the voice of the heart.

-Confucius

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

-Vincent Van Gogh

Not all who wander are lost.

-J.R.R. Tolkien