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

i lived for thousands of years...

I lived for thousands and
thousands of years
as a mineral. And then I died
and became a plant.
And I lived for thousands and
thousands of years
as a plant. And then I died
and became an animal.
And I lived for thousands and
thousands of years
as a mineral. And then I died
and became a human being.

Tell me, what have I ever
lost by dying?

Rumi
(translated by Coleman Barks)

joy is the condition of life...

Surely joy is the condition of life. Think of the young fry that leap in ponds, the myriads of insects ushered into being on a summer evening, the incessant note of the hyla with which the woods ring in the spring, the nonchalance of the butterfly carrying accident and change painted in a thousand hues upon its wings, or the brook minnow stoutly stemming the current, the luster of whose scales worn bright by the attrition is reflected upon the bank.


A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts.We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it.

Henry David Thoreau

thank you...

i thank you god for this amazing day
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything which is natural which
is infinite which is yes.

e.e. cummings

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky...

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was specter-grey
And winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.


The Darkling Thrush
by Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)

the grace of the world...

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

What should I reply?

Sometimes, when a bird cries out,
Or the wind sweeps through a tree,
Or a dog howls in a a far-off farm,
I hold still and listen a long time.

My world turns and goes back to the place
Where, a thousand forgotten years ago,
The bird and the blowing wind
Were like me, and were my brothers.

My soul turns into a tree,
And an animal, and a cloud bank.
Then changed and odd it comes home
And asks me questions. What should I reply?

Hermann Hesse

I become part of it..

The mountains, I become part of it...
The herbs, the fir tree, I become part of it.
The morning mists, the clouds, the gathering waters,
I become part of it.
The wilderness, the dew drops, the pollen,
I become part of it.

Navajo Chant

Henceforth forever...

Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace. The bud swells imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as though the short spring days were an eternity. All her operations seem separately, for the time, the single object for which all things tarry. Why then, should man hasten as if anything less than eternity were allotted for the least deed?

If the setting sun seems to hurry him to improve the day while it lasts, the chant of the crickets fails not to reassure him, even-measured as of old, teaching him to take his own time henceforth forever.

Henry David Thoreau
September 17, 1839