Close

is what we almost always are: close to happiness, close to another, close to leaving, close to tears, close to God, or close to losing faith: close to being happy, close to saying something we should or shouldn’t, close to success, and even, with a great sense of satisfaction, close to giving the whole thing up.

Our human essence lies not in arrival, but in being almost there, we are creatures who are on the way, our journey a series of impending anticipated arrivals. We live by unconsciously measuring the inverse distances of our proximity: an intimacy calibrated by the vulnerability we feel in giving up our sense of separation.

To go beyond our normal identities and become closer than close is to lose our usual protected sense of self in destabilizing joy, a form of arrival that only opens us to deeper forms of intimacy that blur our fixed, controlling, surface identity.

To consciously move closer is a courageous form of unilateral disarmament, a chancing of our arm and our love, a willingness to hazard our affections and an unconscious declaration that we might be equal to the unavoidable losses that the essential vulnerability of being close might bring….

--David Whyte (excerpt)

[Photo of celebrating a new home]

Notice and Thanks

The sun will not rise or set 

without my notice, and thanks.

--Winslow Homer

Empower Me

Empower me to be a bold participant, 

rather than a timid saint in waiting, 

in the difficult ordinariness of now; 

to exercise the authority of honesty, 

rather than to defer to power, or deceive to get it; 

to influence someone for justice, 

rather than impress anyone for gain and, 

by grace, to find treasures of joy, of friendship, 

of peace hidden in the fields 

of the daily you give me to plow.

--Ted Loder

[Photo of childhood friends and chosen family]

Sometimes

Sometimes when day after day we have cloudless blue skies,
warm temperatures, colorful trees and brilliant sun, when
it seems like all this will go on forever,

when I harvest vegetables from the garden all day,
then drink tea and doze in the late afternoon sun,
and in the evening one night make pickled beets
and green tomato chutney, the next red tomato chutney,
and the day after that pick the fruits of my arbor
and make grape jam,

when we walk in the woods every evening over fallen leaves,
through yellow light, when nights are cool, and days warm,

when I am so happy I am afraid I might explode or disappear
or somehow be taken away from all this,

at those times when I feel so happy, so good, so alive, so in love
with the world, with my own sensuous, beautiful life, suddenly

I think about all the suffering and pain in the world, the agony
and dying. I think about all those people being tortured, right now,
in my name. But I still feel happy and good, alive and in love with
the world and with my lucky, guilty, sensuous, beautiful life because,

I know in the next minute or tomorrow all this may be
taken from me, and therefore I've got to say, right now,
what I feel and know and see, I've got to say, right now,
how beautiful and sweet this world can be.

--David Budbill

[Photo from Wallingford, VT]

Autumn in the Fields of Language

Without wind the yellow leaves

hang slack. Maple, elm and oak

lift torches to the blue of heaven.

A scarlet burning bush ignites the air.

Evergreens comfort the eye,

relief from all that fire and gold.

When my last warm season's done

and time's come to leave this world

of words, bright fields of language

where I play and sing, let flame

in me some final brilliant work

like autumn leaves in changing lights.

--Jeanne Lohmann

[Photo from Wallingford, Vermont]

I Want to Apologize

i want to apologize to all the women

i have called pretty.

before i’ve called them intelligent or brave.

i am sorry i made it sound as though

something as simple as what you’re born with

is the most you have to be proud of

when your spirit has crushed mountains

from now on i will say things like, you are resilient

or, you are extraordinary.

not because i don’t think you’re pretty.

but because you are so much more than that

-rupi kaur

[Photo of three generations of extraordinary women]

Love Wants to Know How

Autumn comes with its riot of death,
its clarion bells of color,
drives the living green to ground
even as it thins the veil between worlds.
The visible and invisible walk now together
with arms outstretched over fields
where workers hasten to the harvest
none may divide against itself.

So: where are you in this?
How long do you loiter
between the said and unsaid,
the done and undone,
between the half and true rhyme
of a life answering a life?

Geese mark the sky with dark wedges,
call with harsh tongues
to what thrives at the margins
of all we so reluctantly receive.
Go now,
quickly and with great force,
toward what burns in your dreams
at the dying of the year.

Who can say?
Perhaps you reap the whirlwind,
perhaps the harvest—
but is it ever enough to not know
the bonds and bounds of what will one day
forsake you for the grave?

--Anonymous 

[Photo of Kent Pond, Killington, VT]