Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?
By Mary Oliver
(1935 - )


Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives --
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?


Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?


Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!


No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!


Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?


Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.


And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?


Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!


To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!


To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!


To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened


in the night


To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!


Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?


While the soul, after all, is only a window,


and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.


Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe


I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.


For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!


A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.


Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?


And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.


That was then, which hasn't ended yet.


Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.


I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

Listen to what your version of the sock puppet monkeys are urging you to do

What influences do you really, really need to say goodbye to? The next six months will provide you with ample motivation and opportunity to finally bid those farewells. What long-term cycle really, really needs to be drawn to a close, no more hemming and hawing, all loose ends tied up and all mixed signals clarified? Again, the time between now and the middle of June will bring you the necessary inspiration to make it happen. But it'll take deep thought and sustained work and an expanded sense of humor, so get started soon.

One of my favorite landscape painters makes a livable wage from selling her art. She has had many gallery showings and has garnered much critical acclaim. That's the good news. The bad news is that she feels obligated to keep churning out more landscape paintings -- even when her muse nudges her to take a detour into, say, abstract expressionism or surrealistic portraits. Galleries don't want anything from her except the stuff that has made her semi-famous. "Sometimes I fantasize about creating a series of 'Sock Puppet Monkeys Playing Poker,'" she told me. If she were an Aries, I'd advise her to do what I think you should do in 2010: Listen to what your version of the sock puppet monkeys are urging you to do. 

~ Rob Brezsny

the universe is trying to tell me something out there superearth covered in 40 mile deep oceans boiling ~ lush life more than this we hope to see with the naked telescope a holiday on the rocks out there someone just like us except more creative maybe a little kooky keep us on our toes perhaps they see with eyes on stalks and speak by slapping faces

cathedral galaxies my mind wanders to dodge reality a life stunted bad habits making decisions changing course to maintain the same orbit but newton's laws give way at high enough speeds liquid freezes or floats away you know what to do do what you know do it punk

~ me

after midnight step into blue what is the mission ?  Norway saw a spiral sign in the sky ~ things fell apart pretty quickly after that what was lost was never found again ~ light bends near the sun all color is light's disruption ~ if there is free will then why am i this way ?  nothing numbs the feel the spiral the refraction buoyancy sinks big waves busted odyssey lucid calm so fleeting

~ me

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

By Wallace Stevens

(1879 - 1955)

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections,

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam

Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

Walks around the feet

Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

there are worlds out there that have fallen into their sun or been set free into nothingness ~ a year may be three days ~ mars is covered in carbon dioxide ice ~ dust devils can be seen from space ~ gullies ripples streaks endless silence ~ nearby earth tugs a wobbly sun ~ 5 second films what happens in a compressed instant ~ each thought falls further back into orbit ~ a full moon fades away and comes back ~ i dont know anything my mind a sieve coated in midori i dont know anything crave something will slip through your fingers an LHC symphony a street fight a situationist riot so tired so mad so

 ~ me