Breakage

Breakage”
by Mary Oliver

I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the
moisture gone.
It’s like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

Time

Michelle's Heart Songs

Some days, I see time as a great stretch of fabric with the stars all speckled over it and the planets scattered across it. They are plump with the seas and volcanoes and all of the people, who are stitched together by hope and gravity.

There is an old woman who darns time whenever it frays. She takes her needle and thread and makes it neat again. That’s where the saying “a stitch in time saves nine” comes from, because if she happens to miss the chance to fix it straight away, it has this awful habit of unraveling rather quickly.

A lot of things cause time to fray. Not paying attention to beautiful things is one of them. So if you’re watching a glorious sunset and thinking about porridge, or worse, stocks and shares, time might start to get raggedy. Anything dramatic makes it a little wild as…

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And dream of sheep

one time

One Time
by William Stafford
When evening had flowed between houses
and paused on the school ground, I met
Hilary’s blind little sister following
the gray smooth railing still warm from the sun
with her hand; and she stood by the edge
holding her face upward waiting
while the last light found her cheek
and her hair, and then on over the trees.
You could hear the great sprinkler arm
of water find and then leave the pavement,
and pigeons telling each other their dreams
or the dreams they would have. We were
deep in the well of shadow by then, and I
held out my hand, saying, “Tina, it’s me—
Hilary says I should tell you it’s dark,
and, oh, Tina, it is. Together now—”
And I reached, our hands touched,
and we found our way home.

remembering leonard cohen