Poetry Thursday, solitude

Solitude has soft, silky hands, 
but with strong fingers 
it grasps the heart and 
makes it ache with sorrow.
~Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

borrowed from a friend

Poetry Thursday

Set in Stone
~Kevin Carey

A rosary that was my mother’s
tucked in the glove compartment of his car
and a copy of Exile on Main Street
with instructions to play track 6
when he hit some lonesome desert highway.
I love him so much my chest hurts,
thinking of him riding off into his own life,
me the weeping shadow left behind (for now).
I know I’ll see him again but it’s ceremony
we’re talking about after all—
one growing up and one growing older
both wild curses.
A train blows its horn
the light rising beyond the harbor,
a dog barks from a car window
and the nostalgia (always dangerous)
hits me like a left hook.
I’m trapped between the memory
and the moment,
the deal we make
if we make it this long,
the markers of a life,
the small worthwhile pieces
that rattle around in my pockets
waiting to be set somewhere in stone.

I think I owe you one ... Poetry Thursday

Staring into the Sun
~Jennifer Grotz

What had been treacherous the first time
had become second nature, releasing
the emergency brake, then rolling backwards
in little bursts, braking the whole way down
the long steep drive. Back then
we lived on the top of a hill.
  
I was leaving—the thing we both knew
and didn’t speak of all summer. While you
were at work, I built a brown skyline of boxes,
sealed them with a roll of tape
that made an incessant ripping sound.
We were cheerful at dinner and unusually kind.
At night we slept under a single sheet,
our bodies a furnace if curled together.

It was July. I could feel my pupils contract
when I went outside. Back then I thought only about
how you wouldn’t come with me.
Now I consider what it took for you to help me go.
On that last day. When I stood
in a wrinkled dress with aching arms.
When there was only your mouth at my ear
whispering to get in the truck, then wait
until I was calm enough to turn the key.

Only then did we know. How it felt
to have loved to the end, and then past the very end.

What did you do, left up there in the empty house?
I don’t know why. I
don’t know how we keep living
in a world that never explains why.

Quote Thursday - inspiration

There is a vitality, a life force, 

a quickening that is translated 

through you into action, 

and there is only one of you in all time, 

this expression is unique, and if you block it, 

it will never exist through any other medium; 

and be lost. 

The world will not have it. 

It is not your business to determine how good it is, 

not how it compares with other expression. 

It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, 

to keep the channel open. 

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. 

You have to keep open and aware 

directly to the urges that motivate you. 

Keep the channel open. 

No artist is pleased. 

There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. 

There is on a queer, divine dissatisfaction, 

a blessed unrest that keeps us marching 

and makes us more alive than the others. 

~Martha Graham

Poetry Thursday

Fall Leaves Fall

 ~Emily Brontë

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;

Lengthen night and shorten day;

Every leaf speaks bliss to me,

Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow

Blossom where the rose should grow;

I shall sing when night’s decay

Ushers in a drearier day.