Open Anyway

 

When I have fears that what I share

will never touch this hurting world,

I turn to the wild violets growing again

from clumps of moss on the forest floor,

how they unfurl a few limp purple

petals that seem no match for spring

winds and rain, but still somehow trust

that mining bees and fritillaries will

find them and feed—the flowers open

anyway. I still remember standing in front

of that classroom full of expectant faces

in third grade for show and tell, gripping

the thin notebook page on which I’d

written my first poem. The words swirled

and swam until I closed my eyes and

recited them by heart. It was all I had

to give, and not nearly enough, I thought.

Applause thundered through the room.

—James Crews

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

 

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

--William Wordsworth

[Photo of daffodils planted in honor of my beloved friend, Nancy Seward].

Tired

 

I am so tired of waiting,
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two -
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.

--Langston Hughes

Peace Mountain

 

Climbing takes a thousand steps, then
another thousand, then beyond counting.

Sometimes someone placed the stone steps

here for you, carried them from the valley

and set them firm for your feet to find.

Sometimes no one made a path for you,

so you follow where the deer stepped,

pushing through. Descending into war

is easy—a few short syllables in anger

or fear, and the killing begins. It is a fire

that feeds itself, hungry for a nation,

a city, a child. It burns the hands of

those who make it. To climb Peace

Mountain takes a thousand steps,

then a thousand more, then beyond

counting. The trick is to begin.

--Kim Stafford 

[Photo of Kirkjufell Mountain in Iceland].

Tribute to Fred Rogers (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003)

 

Quotes from Fred McFeely Rogers:

1. “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers—so many caring people in this world.”
2. “You know, the toughest thing is to love somebody who has done something mean to you. Especially when that somebody has been yourself.”
3. “Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.“
4. “All of us, at some time or other, need help. Whether we’re giving or receiving help, each one of us has something valuable to bring to this world. That’s one of the things that connects us as neighbors—in our own way, each one of us is a giver and a receiver.”
5. “Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero.”
6. “As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has—or ever will have—something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.”
7. “Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime’s work, but it’s worth the effort.”
8. “Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life’s important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives.”
9. “How many times have you noticed that it’s the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning?”
10. “I don’t think anyone can grow unless he’s loved exactly as he is now, appreciated for what he is rather than what he will be.”
11. “I hope you’re proud of yourself for the times you’ve said ‘yes,’ when all it meant was extra work for you and was seemingly helpful only to someone else.”
12. “If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”
13. “In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.”
14. “It’s not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff.”
15. “It’s really easy to fall into the trap of believing that what we do is more important than what we are. Of course, it’s the opposite that’s true: What we are ultimately determines what we do!”
16. “Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.”
17. “Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.”
18. “Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we are not perfect. “
19. “Love and success, always in that order. It’s that simple AND that difficult.”
20. “Love is like infinity: You can’t have more or less infinity, and you can’t compare two things to see if they’re ‘equally infinite.’ Infinity just is, and that’s the way I think love is, too.”
21. “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”
22. “Mutual caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other’s achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain.”
23. “Often out of periods of losing come the greatest strivings toward a new winning streak.”
24. “Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.”
25. “Our society is much more interested in information than wonder, in noise rather than silence…And I feel that we need a lot more wonder and a lot more silence in our lives”
26. “Real strength has to do with helping others.”
27. “Some days, doing ‘the best we can’ may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect on any front—and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.”
28. “There’s a world of difference between insisting on someone’s doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it.”
29. “The connections we make in the course of a life—maybe that’s what heaven is.”
30. “The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self.”
31. “The kingdom of God is for the broken-hearted”
32. “The media shows the tiniest percentage of what people do. There are millions and millions of people doing wonderful things all over the world, and they’re generally not the ones being touted in the news.”
33. “The only thing evil can’t stand is forgiveness.”
34. “The thing I remember best about successful people I’ve met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they’re doing and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what they’re doing, and they love it in front of others.”
35. “The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile.”
36. “Try your best to make goodness attractive. That’s one of the toughest assignments you’ll ever be given.”
37. “There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.”
38. “There are times when explanations, no matter how reasonable, just don’t seem to help.”
39. “There is no normal life that is free of pain. It’s the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.”
40. “There’s a part of all of us that longs to know that even what’s weakest about us is still redeemable and can ultimately count for something good.”
41. “We all have different gifts, so we all have different ways of saying to the world who we are.”
42. “We get so wrapped up in numbers in our society. The most important thing is that we are able to be one-to-one, you and I with each other at the moment. If we can be present to the moment with the person that we happen to be with, that’s what’s important.”
43. “We speak with more than our mouths. We listen with more than our ears.”
44. “Whatever we choose to imagine can be as private as we want it to be. Nobody knows what you’re thinking or feeling unless you share it.”
45. “Who you are inside is what helps you make and do everything in life.”
46. “You can think about things and make believe. All you have to do is think and they’ll grow.”
47. “You can’t really love someone else unless you really love yourself first.”
48. “You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.”

Quotes collected by Geoffrey James and published in Inc.

Scenic Route

 

Someone was always leaving
and never coming back.

The wooden houses wait like old wives

along this road; they are everywhere,

abandoned, leaning, turning gray.

Someone always traded

the lonely beauty

of hemlock and stony lakeshore

for survival, packed up his life

and drove off to the city.

In the yards the apple trees

keep hanging on, but the fruit

grows smaller year by year.

When we come this way again

the trees will have gone wild,

the houses collapsed, not even worth

the human act of breaking in.

Fields will have taken over.

What we will recognize is the wind, the same fierce wind,

which has no history.

-- Lisel Mueller

Snow

 

Telephone poles relax their spines;
sidewalks go under. The nightly groans
of aging porches are put to sleep.
Mercy sponges the lips of stairs.

While we talk in the old concepts__
time that was, and things that are__
snow has leveled the stumps of the past
and the earth has a new language.

It is like the scene in which the girl
moves toward the hero
who has not yet said, "Come here."

Come here, then. Every ditch
has been exalted. We are covered with stars.
Feel how light they are, our lives.

--Lisel Mueller