Author: Veronica A. Shoftstall

Standing still. Perfectly.
As you rush by. Unseeing.
Caught up in plans for the day.
That make you feel important.

I sit like a cat. Watchful.
The sound of the door closing.
Dust particles dance as the air displaces.
I am alone. Again.

That feeling rushes up.
Despair. Is it? Screaming.
For attachment. For recognition.
For someone to tell me I am alive.
For anything but this.

Standing still.

–

Lavender sky with a moon
full to bursting
Beckons another night alone
But you are there, just over the horizon and I know that you are home.
Oh how I wish that the moon would take me, over the hill
To where you lie.

Stars twinkle brightly, they pop into darkness
I whisper a wish to the brightest among them and send it off into the
clouds.

Oh how I wish that I could see you, just a glimpse before I go
But the wind dances by me and the sleeping world deepens and I wait for the
Morning to come.

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out in the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

–Naomi Shihab Nye

Daylight comes around and your eyes they are grey. Hold back that sunshine we don’t want it today.
With you in my arms so trapped we lay. Prison or sancturary who’s to say?

All the fools in the world are here trapped in this dream.
Don’t call me a liar. Don’t call me your friend.
Just go on your way. Nothing here to defend.

I am tired of frivolous society, in which silence is forever the most natural and the best manners. I would fain walk on the deep waters, but my companions will only walk on shallows and puddles. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

Saw this on Frederick’s site and wanted to archive it. Just lovely.

The sun retreats
And leaves twilight on these fractures
Precious raw stones
Umber, ochre, lavender, apricot, bistre
Sorrow is beauty too, inclusions

You’re hard, callous and you suit this place
The night falls in obsidian
We sit heavy and weighted
A fire shadowboxing, veiled eyes
Only the moon heard
I can’t remember any of it now
I just remember that something cracked, caved in
The gashes as deep as the canyon

You always gave me rocks instead of flowers.
Jade, labradorite, amethyst, core samples even
Flowers die, you said. Rocks mean I love you forever.

That day we set out, I looked back at Vegas glittering in the desert
looked and looked until it was gone.