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

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

listening...

To listen is to lean in,

softly,

with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.

- Mark Nepo

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

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

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?

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