Lessons You Learn

For every petal you pluck from a daisy,
    You're granted one measure of love.
For every rainbow you find with two ends,
    I wish you two stars from above.
For every tear you brush from a cheek,
    I promise you kindness will follow.
Wherever you walk, under rainbows or stars,
    Over daisies, or down lonely hollows,
        For every child you play with and talk to,
            I grant you one heart full of laughter.
For every smile you place on a face,
    I promise you peace ever after.
If you think "I" am giving you these priceless gifts, look close at yourself and your deeds.
The gifts you earned were the lessons you learned while answering other folks's needs.

-- Marlene Gerba "Lessons You Learned"

On The Mountain: a conversation

The Birds Have Vanished into the Sky

The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

you ask
why I perch
on a jade green mountain?
I laugh
but say nothing
my heart free
like a peach blossom
in a flowing stream
going by
in the depths
in another World
not among men.

-- Li Po'

 

The Slingshot

A shut-in feeling
invested deep in a mind,
loses out life
and leaves it behind.

No one shows worry
no one shows care,
people surround you
but aren't really there.

Blackness and emptiness
are your only friends.
the walls are closing in
but nothing defends.

Life has led you
and left you alone,
for life is a slingshot
and you are the stone.

-- Kelly-Michener "The Slingshot"

Blue Girls

Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sward
Under the towers of your seminary,
Go listen to your teachers old and contrary
Without believing a word.
 
Tie the white fillets then about your hair
And think no more of what will come to pass
Than bluebirds that go walking on the grass
And chattering on the air.
 
Practise your beauty, blue girls, before it fail;
And I will cry with my loud lips and publish
Beauty which all our powers shall never establish,
It is so frail.
 
For I could tell you a story which is true;
I know a lady with a terrible tongue,
Blear eyes fallen from blue,
All her perfections tarnished—yet it is not long
Since she was lovelier than any of you.

-- John Crowe Ransom

See Ripples (Genesis, A Trick of The Tail)

Flaming June (Sir Frederic Leighton)
A gift I received from Jackie