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?