Enlighten Me

daughter sister wife mother advocate for social justice dreamer idealist refugee survivor scientist poet lyrical writer

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jorie Graham, from "[To] the Last [Be] Human", Runaway

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Here are Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery, looking not at all "downtown" (well, maybe Frank's argyll socks). Also, the text of a poem Frank wrote for John.

To John Ashbery

I can’t believe there’s not another world where we will sit and read new poems to each other high on a mountain in the wind. You can be Tu Fu, I’ll be Po Chü-i and the Monkey Lady’ll be in the moon, smiling at our ill-fitting heads as we watch snow settle on a twig. Or shall we be really gone? this is not the grass I saw in my youth! and if the moon, when it rises tonight, is empty —a bad sign, meaning “You go, like the blossoms.” Frank O'Hara

(Alfred Corn)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

František Kobliha (1877-1962), Kosmická Vize (Cosmic Vision), 1945-1946

+

I too pass from the night, I stay a while away, O night, but I return to you again, and love you.

Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you? I am not afraid—I have been well brought forward by you; I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so long, I know not how I came of you, and I know not where I go with you—but I know I came well, and shall go well.

~ Walt Whitman (1819–1892), The Sleepers, From 'Leaves of Grass', 1900

[bettinamadini]

'After the Rain' Acrylic on canvas

The beauty of nature and the incredible joy of flowers. They make me smile!

Follow me on instagram @bettinamadini

[undinesea]

It's late. I've come to find the flower which blossoms like a saint dying upside down. The rose won't do, nor the iris. I've come to find the moody one, the shy one, downcast, grave, and isolated. Now, blackness gathers in the grass, and I am on my hands and knees.

Li-Young Lee, "My Indigo," from Book of My Nights: Poems

[sakurabreeze]

"Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is united by it alone ... and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the eternal source." ~ Leo Tolstoy

[pmamtraveller]

Detail of Falling Cherry Blossoms, by Tatsumi Shimura, 1953, Japan.

[bluewillowmoon]

“There's nothing

left to hold onto. Never was. Though I felt it,

though I thought I could, though I believed

you were mine. Though I borrowed you. Though

we borrowed each other. Though we own nothing.”

— Catherine Esposito Prescott, from “Meditation on Blue,” from SUPERBLOOM (Gunpowder Press, 2026)

[bluewillowmoon]

“I love you; I don’t know how else to begin.

How we began, though, was almost as if it were already written. The details of how we arrived

at each other, to say I love you even as we fall asleep,

to let each other’s name be the first sound we utter every morning, can only be a gift of careful construction,

a design of an elsewhere where we were already together.

Saying nothing, you make me want to live more meaningfully.

The world is so wild, beautiful, and terrifying, and everywhere we turn, a new atrocity.

Then, I close my eyes and picture joy. Among things, there is this day. Among faces,

there is yours. And I am no longer afraid.

I watch you in your own, quiet moments, and I want this life. I want this life

to be longer. All I want is more time with you.

I love you. This is the only way I know how to end.”

— Emily Jungmin Yoon, “Vow,” Find Me as the Creature I Am: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024)

[bluewillowmoon]

“Is it possible to love so desperately that life is unbearable? I don't mean unrequited, I mean being in the love. In the midst of it and desperate. Because knowing it will end, because everything does. End.”

— Peter Heller, from The Dog Stars (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012)

[huong1952]

Moira Rachic - American Landscape Artist

Cranes over Dark Sky

moirarachic.com

[huong1952]

huong1952: Nightfall

cranes flying north, heart

aching, sun setting, love gone

missing, night falling

[nomorechoirs]

“July. All sensation absent. Only magic, internal magic, your sky-blue soul.”

— Velimir Khlebnikov, from Collected Poems & Writings of V. K.; “Visitations,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[chicparadise2]

[gacougnol]

Jonathan van der Knaap

Amity

[bluewillowmoon]

“And all the sorrows of one man’s life

gathered word by word

in the beak of a blue impertinent bird

that overmastered yet could cry

one note that reached the root of us.”

— Christian Wiman, from “Press Only in Case of Emergency,” The Dance: Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2026)

[ends-2-beginnings]

endmion1 - Korean Artist

From a distant space, out of reach, I seem

to hear you.

I become a plant, rooted here, blooming

for a single season only when you think of

me.

I hope you remember

my scent hidden in the wind.

I hope our story, scattered in time, rests in

your ears, if only for a moment.