dancing alone

[pmduo]

Hope’ is the thing with feathers— That perches in the soul— And sings the tune without the words— And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard— And sore must be the storm— That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land— And on the strangest Sea— Yet, never, in Extremity, It asked a crumb—of Me.

~Emily Dickinson

[pmduo]

Continual Conversation With A Silent Man

By Wallace Stevens

The old brown hen and the old blue sky,

Between the two we live and die—

The broken cartwheel on the hill.

As if, in the presence of the sea,

We dried our nets and mended sail

And talked of never-ending things,

Of the never-ending storm of will,

One will and many wills, and the wind,

Of many meanings in the leaves,

Brought down to one below the eaves,

Link, of that tempest, to the farm,

The chain of the turquoise hen and sky

And the wheel that broke as the cart went by.

It is not a voice that is under the eaves.

It is not speech, the sound we hear

In this conversation, but the sound

Of things and their motion: the other man,

A turquoise monster moving round.

[pmduo]

Life yields only to the conqueror. Never accept what can be gained by giving in. You will be living off stolen goods, and your muscles will atrophy. ~Dag Hammarskjold

[pmduo]

The Second Coming

by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[unknownorgan]

Louise gluck

[mournfulroses]

Mary Oliver, from a poem titled "The Crows," featured in New & Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

[thecathack]

textile cat & archer

[vsthepomegranate]

The Goddess, 2016, 3” x 3”, Hand Stitch

by Irem Yazici, 

[pmduo]

Tonight all the hells of young grief have opened up again; the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare reality, the wallowed-in tears. For in grief nothing “stays put.” One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

~C.S. Lewis

[pmduo]

Johnny Cash on building in downtown Sacramento.

[pmduo]

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads. — Erica Jong

[pmduo]

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. — Calvin Coolidge

[pmduo]

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

~ Andre Gide

[pmduo]

If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together, there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart, I’ll always be with you. ~Winnie the Pooh

[pmduo]

And fire and ice within me fight

Beneath the suffocating night.

~A.E. Housman

[pmduo]

Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.

~Stephen King

[pmduo]

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.

~John Steinbeck