Commonplace Book

Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that's not the right question. The question is:

Are we living a life that is worth the harm?

Someday we will find what we are looking for.

Or maybe not.

Maybe we will find something even greater than that.

I do not know if we are real. But we are alive. We are tangible, feeling, and whole.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

I took a deep breath
and listened to the old
brag of my heart:
I am, I am, I am.

You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses, we must plant more roses.

The worst thing in the world can happen, but the next day the sun will come up. And you will eat your toast. And you will drink your tea.

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you down like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

I need solitude. I need space. I need air. I need the empty fields round me; and my legs pounding along roads; and sleep; and animal existence.

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream

Even if you are not where you planned to be,

It is enough to know that you are no longer where you used to be.