The Sea Question

The sea asks 'How is your life now?'

It does so obliquely, changing colour.

It is never the same on any two visits.

It is never the same in any particular

Only in generalities: tide and such matters

Wave height and suction, pebbles that rattle.

It doesn't presume to wear a white coat

But it questions you like a psychologist

As you walk beside it on its long couch.

~Elizabeth Smither

September garden party

We sit with friends at the round glass table.
The talk is clever
everyone rises to it.
Bees come to the spiral pear peeling on your plate.
From my lap
or your hand
the spice of our morning’s privacy
comes drifting up.
Fall sun
passes through the wine.

~Jane Kenyon

that yellow flower on your lane

I complained
long and slightly loud
about how the neighbors
had the TV on all last night.
I could not sleep, I said.
It was too loud.
I tried to distract myself:
Focused on lovely things
like that yellow flower on your lane
that I don’t know the name of
or how my nephew’s nose wrinkles
when he reads.
But the real reason I complained
about the neighbor’s TV
was that
it got in the way
of my listening
to you breathe.

~Anonymous

Blossoms

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road

where we turned toward signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs,

from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin,

but the shade,

not only the sugar,

but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it,

then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background;

from joy to joy to joy,

from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom,

to sweet impossible blossom.

~Li-Young Lee

storms to season your journey

I wish you sunshine on your path and storms to season your journey. I wish you peace in the world in which you live... More I cannot wish you except perhaps love to make all the rest worthwhile.

~Robert A. Ward