#mark nepo

[nobeerreviews]

…there are no wrong turns, only unexpected paths.

-- Mark Nepo

[blueegrief]

I was keeping my old wounds fresh as evidence for a trial that would never come...

—Mark Nepo

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Read A Little Poetry :: @readalittlepoem

“I am so sad and everything is beautiful.” — Mark Nepo

. . . This poem appeared in Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness by Mark Nepo, published by Sounds True, 2016. Shared here with deep gratitude.

[apoemaday]

Adrift

by Mark Nepo

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat. The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh of the next stranger. In the very center, under it all, what we have that no one can take away and all that we’ve lost face each other. It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured by a holiness that exists inside everything. I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

[maslimanny]

No bird can fly without opening its wings, and no one can love without exposing their hearts.

[julesofnature]

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat. The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh of the next stranger. In the very center, under it all, what we have that no one can take away and all that we’ve lost face each other. It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured by a holiness that exists inside everything. I am so sad and everything is beautiful. ~Adrift, by Mark Nepo

[infinitedonut]

"Your life is a work of art." - Mark Nepo

[wholenessblooming]

One inescapable and humbling challenge of loss is that grief requires us to make new maps. For when we lose something dear—a person or a way of life—the geography as we have known it has changed. And so, our old maps, no matter how dear, are no longer accurate, no longer of use. We have to make new maps for how to move forward. In its paradoxical way, grief forces us back into the world where we have to keep learning.

Mark Nepo, Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity