a rumor of angels @tendedbytheh0ly - Tumblr Blog

[Dimension 20's Neverafter - Brennan Lee Mulligan]

Thinking about Annie Dillard’s “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives” and Joan Didion’s “Every day is all there is.”

Thinking about Mary Oliver’s "Each of us is given only so many mornings to do it — to look around and love” and Ilya Kaminsky’s “Is it foolish to speak of little joys that occur in the middle of tragedy? It is our humanity. Whatever we have left of it. We must not deny it to ourselves.”

apocryphics

Annie Dillard

gothredy

violettesiren

I once lived by so many horses, so many goats and unendangered bison. Eagles, bald eagles! Really! Right there by the river in the dead tree. I lived there too, right by the river, by the minor league field. I had the neighbor man sharpen the blades on the push mower. There wasn’t so much electric. We didn’t plow the streets. I don’t know how else to say it. My life was very small and beautiful. I was young though I didn’t know it. I was happy when the lilacs filled the alleyways in June. I got drunk, I got loved so many ways. I carried a knife. The brakes weren’t good but good enough. I traded needles, I cut stalks, I planted garlic, I taught school, I put a check in the mail with a stamp on it. I fell off my bike. I wore a bandana like a bandit for the smoke. When I danced, I spun around. I paid a buck to shake the dice. There were dogs everywhere. There were cattle. Coyotes. Owls. Bats. Sage. I used to live right beneath the stars. Right there, between the hills. There’s no other way to say it. I was so animal, I wrote poems, I was so young. I thought it would always be this way. I can still smell it. I can hear the crickets. And the coal train, how it howled like a song.

Ecstatic Past by Alicia Mountain