anthology
poems and quotes that speak to my soul
I Worried
by Mary Oliver
I worried a lot. Will the anthology grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And I gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to find peace with exactly who and what I am. To take pride in my thoughts, my appearance, my talents, my flaws and to stop this incessant worrying that I can't be loved as I am.
- Anaïs Nin
Refusal to Mourn
by Andrea Cohen
In lieu of
flowers, send
him back
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Elizabeth Appell
The Patience of Ordinary Things
by Pat Schneider
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?
But once in a while the odd thing happens,
Once in a while the dream comes true,
And the whole pattern of life is altered,
Once in a while the moon turns blue.
- W.H. Auden
Wish
by W.S. Merwin
Please one more
kiss in the kitchen
before we turn the lights off
I may think of you softly from time to time. But I'll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again.
- Arthur Miller
When I Tell My Husband I Miss the Sun, He Knows
by Paige Lewis
what I really mean. He paints my name
across the floral bedsheet and ties the bottom corners
to my ankles. Then he paints another
for himself. We walk into town and play the shadow game,
saying Oh! I'm sorry for stepping on your
shadow! and Please be careful! My shadow is caught in the wheels
of your shopping cart. It's all very polite.
Our shadows get dirty just like anyone's, so we take
them to the Laundromat—the one with
the 1996 Olympics themed pinball machine—
and watch our shadows warm
against each other. We bring the shadow game home
and (this is my favorite part) when we
stretch our shadows across the bed, we get so tangled
my husband grips his own wrist,
certain it's my wrist, and kisses it.
When I'm caught between a rock and a hard place, let me be water. Let me be water. Let me be water.
- John Roedel
Late Fragment
by Raymond Carver
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
Love him. Let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?
- James Baldwin
It Ends or It Doesn't
by Caitlyn Siehl
It ends or it doesn't.
That's what you say. That's
how you get through it.
The tunnel, the night,
the pain, the love.
It ends or it doesn't.
If the sun never comes up,
you find a way to live
without it.
If they don't come back
you sleep in the middle of the bed,
learn how to make enough coffee
for yourself alone.
Adapt. Adjust.
It ends or it doesn't.
It ends or it doesn't.
We do not perish.
...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.
- Hanya Yanagihara
The Orange
by Wendy Cope
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange -
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave -
They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It's new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I'm glad I exist.
It's spring, you're young, you're lovely, you have a right to be happy. Come back into the world.
- Shirley Jackson
won't you celebrate with me
by Lucille Clifton
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.
- Anne Lamott
The plum you're going to eat next summer
by Gayle Brandeis
The plum you're going to eat next summer
doesn't exist yet; its potential lives
inside a tree you'll never see
in an orchard you'll never see, will be touched
by a certain number of water droplets
before it reaches you, by certain angles
of light, by a finite amount of bugs
and dust motes and hands
you'll never know. The plum you are
going to eat next summer will gather
sugar, gather mass, will harden
at its center so it can soften toward
your mouth. The plum
you're going to eat next
summer doesn't know
you exist. The plum you are
going to eat next summer
is growing just for you.
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
- Albert Camus
How's that House that Raised You?
by Lev St. Valentine
There's a method to growing rhubarb called "forcing"
where it's raised in total darkness and tended to in brief intervals
of candlelight. The plant thrives only because it's looking
for an absent sun, and extends so fast you can hear the growing pains.
Forcing can weaken the crop but if done correctly can yield
a sweeter, more desirable result. Not everything needs to be
an allegory. All the same, I am aware that there are things
that have happened in my formative years that I have no words
to describe and that only God's eyes have seen.
You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don't know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don't need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.
- Becky Chambers
every time i ever said i want to die
by Andrea Gibson
A difficult life is not less
worth living than a gentle one.
Joy is simply easier to carry
than sorrow. And your heart
could lift a city from how long
you've spent holding what's been
nearly impossible to hold.
This world needs those
who know how to do that.
Those who could find a tunnel
that has no light at the end of it,
and hold it up like a telescope
to know the darkness
also contains truths that could
bring the light to its knees.
Grief astronomer, adjust the lens,
look close, tell us what you see.
Well, every day is all there is.
- Joan Didion
I climb into my bathtub the same way I fell in love with you
by Maria Giesbrecht
first dipping my toes in and then everything else, all at once. Which is to say I know nothing
of slowness, which is just admitting nothing feels right until I'm fully submerged—ever!
I climb into my bathtub the same way I'll keep loving you. Until my skin is wrinkled.
She buried her ears into the calm of his heartbeat, and in a matter of seconds: fell terribly in love with the way her loneliness fell softly and suddenly, asleep, in his chest.
- Christopher Poindexter
The sun is perfect and you woke this morning
by Warsan Shire
The sun is perfect and you woke this morning.
You have enough language in your mouth to be understood.
You have a name, and someone wants to call it.
Five fingers on your hand and someone wants to hold it.
If we just start there,
every beautiful thing that has and will ever exist is possible.
If we start there, everything, for a moment, is right in the world.
And that's how you go on. You lay laughter over the dark parts. The more dark parts, the more you have to laugh. With defiance, with abandon, with hysteria, anyway you can.
- Laini Taylor
Island
by Langston Hughes
Wave of sorrow,
Do not drown me now:
I see the island
Still ahead somehow.
I see the island
And its sands are fair:
Wave of sorrow,
Take me there.
Yes, there is a place where someone loves you both before and after they learn what you are.
- Neil Hilborn
