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Post by dvg on Mar 12, 2020 11:55:18 GMT -5
Gardens are also good places to sulk. You pass beds of spiky voodoo lilies and trip over the roots of a sweet gum tree, in search of medieval plants whose leaves, when they drop off turn into birds if they fall on land, and colored carp if they plop into water.
Suddenly the archetypal human desire for peace with every other species wells up in you. The lion and the lamb cuddling up. The snake and the snail, kissing. Even the prick of the thistle, queen of the weeds, revives your secret belief in perpetual spring, your faith that for every hurt there is a leaf to cure it.
- Amy Gerstler
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Post by dvg on Apr 27, 2020 16:54:13 GMT -5
We dare not touch the sugar, And we must not touch the pie, We're afraid to eat the syrup, Can you guess the reason why? The bread must be inspected, And we overlook 'em then; It just seems we've got to eat 'em. Yes the ants are back again. They are crawlin' in the cellar, Everywhere on ev'ry shelf; They are trackin' through the butter, Every feller fer herself, In the fruit upon the table, In the stuff down on the floor; Yes the busy ants are movin', Never saw the like before. We have killed 'em by the thousands Yet a million more came on, Couldn't tell fer all our trouble That a single one was gone. Scalded, peppered, mashed and burned 'em, Yet they seem to have the call; And I guess we're bound to eat 'em, Bound to eat 'em after all.
-Ed Blair dvg
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Post by dvg on Jun 16, 2020 14:45:45 GMT -5
The panther wind Leaps out of the night, The snake of lightning Is twisting and white, The lion of thunder Roars-and we Sit still and content Under a tree - We have met fate together And love and pain, Why should we fear The wrath of the rain!
- Sara Teasdale
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Post by dvg on Aug 25, 2020 1:37:32 GMT -5
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.
-T.S. Elliot
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Post by dvg on Sept 19, 2020 20:15:25 GMT -5
The whiskey stink of rot has settled in the garden, and a burst of fruit flies rises when I touch the dying tomato plants.
Still, the claws of tiny yellow blossoms flail in the air as I pull the vines up by the roots and toss them in the compost.
It feels cruel. Something in me isn’t ready to let go of summer so easily. To destroy what I’ve carefully cultivated all these months. Those pale flowers might still have time to fruit.
My great-grandmother sang with the girls of her village as they pulled the flax. Songs so old and so tied to the season that the very sound seemed to turn the weather.
-Karina Borowicz
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Post by dvg on Oct 16, 2020 11:18:24 GMT -5
Bolt and bar the shutter, For the foul winds blow: Our minds are at their best this night, And I seem to know That everything outside us is Mad as the mist and snow.
- William Butler Yeats dvg
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Post by dvg on Oct 20, 2020 11:29:01 GMT -5
What’s madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. That place among the rocks—is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences! A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon, And in broad day the midnight come again! A man goes far to find out what he is— Death of the self in a long, tearless night, All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
- Theodore Roethke
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Post by gj on Nov 5, 2020 20:46:23 GMT -5
Came across this and thought it would be worth sharing. It's a little long, so I just put the link below instead of putting the whole thing in the post. The Sundew - Swinburne
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Post by dvg on Nov 6, 2020 10:04:11 GMT -5
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Post by dvg on Jun 10, 2021 12:14:44 GMT -5
Weeds don't need planting in well-drained soil; they don't ask for fertilizer or bits of rag to scare away the birds. They come without invitation; and they don't take the hint when you want them to go. Weeds are nobody's guests: More like squatters.
-Norman Nicholson
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Post by dvg on Jul 7, 2021 11:17:26 GMT -5
Say instead it was an evening in head-high bracken with its smell of dark and medicine. Thinking green of the infecting fern
where you may crouch and not be known, lodging your feet for good amid the stalks. A bower is a dwelling place or once it was
a cage for pent-up singing birds. Look down to see the warp and weft of root. All the world is in these clutches.
Look up to clock the fern’s drab underneath blotched with spores you mustn’t breathe. Breathe in deep. There’s nowhere else to live.
~Katherine Towers
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Post by dvg on Aug 11, 2021 12:33:07 GMT -5
Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart,
Suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose looming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,
and once again I am blessed, choosing
again what I chose before.
~ Wendell Berry
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Post by dvg on Aug 19, 2021 12:34:42 GMT -5
I sit staring out of my window
my thoughts melancholy
wondering how God
whom I so lately praise
for giving me such beautiful trees
after so many years
of careful caring
could destroy them
in one day
with twenty inches of wet snow
that will be gone tomorrow
and my heart tells me
God was right
I did not love them
nearly enough
~Sandy Mactaggart dvg
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Post by dvg on Sept 1, 2021 18:43:22 GMT -5
Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, Ceaseless, insistent.
The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples, The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence Under a moon waning and worn, broken, Tired with summer …
~Sara Teasdale dvg
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Post by dvg on Sept 24, 2021 8:55:16 GMT -5
The morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry's cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf, The field a scarlet gown. Lest I should be old-fashioned, I'll put a trinket on.
~Emily Dickenson
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