Saturday, July 14, 2012

Each of us carries
in our chest
a song
so old
we don't know
if we learned it
some night
between the murmurs
of fallen kisses.
Our lips
surprise us
when we utter
this song
that is singing
and crying at once.


Francisco X Alarcon

Friday, February 10, 2012

every artist dips his brush

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
Henry Ward Beecher

Saturday, February 4, 2012

listening...


To listen is to lean in,
softly,
with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.

- Mark Nepo

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

this little rose...

Nobody knows this little Rose
It might a pilgrim be
Did I not take it from the ways
And lift it up to thee.
Only a bee will miss it
Only a butterfly,
Hastening from far journey
On its breast to lie
Only a bird will wonder
Only a breeze will sigh
Ah Little Rose - how easy
For such as thee to die!

Emily Dickinson

Saturday, January 21, 2012

the mysterious...



The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

Albert Einstein

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

how many lives...

I will be gone from this life
altogether too soon
and altogether too long
shall I be gone.

How many lives
of the spider is the sparrow's
and how many lives of the sparrow
is a man's,
or of a man is the evening star
and evenstar to the grace
of this morning's first light?

And you would yet
leave this crossroad
even in mid-conversation?
What appointed council
calls you
even as the morning dew
quietly collects on the ripening mango?

Would you not stay
to taste the sweetness
that is sure to come?

Saturday, April 25, 2009

like a flash of lightning...


what is born will die
what has been gathered will be dispersed
what has been accumulated will be exhausted
what has been built up will be brought low

this existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds
to watch the birth and death of beings is like
watching the movements of a dance

a lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the dark of night
rushing by like a torrent down a steep mountainside

- from the Buddhist Sutras