♥

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Finding What You Didn’t Lose

When someone deeply listens to you

it is like holding out a dented cup

you've had since childhood

and watching it fill up with

cold, fresh water.

When it balances on top of the brim,

you are understood.

When it overflows and touches your skin,

you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you,

the room where you stay

starts a new life

and the place where you wrote

your first poem

begins to glow in your mind's eye.

It is as if gold has been discovered!

When someone deeply listens to you,

your bare feet are on the earth

and a beloved land that seemed distant

is now at home within you.
~ John Fox ~

Sunday, May 10, 2009

“Finally I am coming to the conclusion
that my highest ambition is to be what I already am.
That I will never fulfill my obligation
to surpass myself
unless I first accept myself,
and if I accept myself fully in the right way,
I will already have surpassed myself.”

Thomas Merton

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott