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Then all the nations of birds lifted together the huge net of the shadows of this earth in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues, stitching and crossing it. They lifted up the shadows of long pines down trackless slopes, the shadows of glass-faced towers down evening streets, the shadow of a frail plant on a city sill— the net rising soundless as night, the birds’ cries soundless, until there was no longer dusk, or season, decline, or weather, only this passage of phantasmal light that not the narrowest shadow dared to sever. And men could not see, looking up, what the wild geese drew, what the ospreys trailed behind them in silvery ropes that flashed in the icy sunlight; they could not hear battalions of starlings waging peaceful cries, bearing the net higher, covering this world like the vines of an orchard, or a mother drawing the trembling gauze over the trembling eyes of a child fluttering to sleep; it was the light that you will see at evening on the side of a hill in yellow October, and no one hearing knew what change had brought into the raven’s cawing, the killdeer’s screech, the ember-circling chough such an immense, soundless, and high concern for the fields and cities where the birds belong, except it was their seasonal passing, Love, made seasonless, or, from the high privilege of their birth, something brighter than pity for the wingless ones below them who shared dark holes in windows and in houses, and higher they lifted the net with soundless voices above all change, betrayals of falling suns, and this season lasted one moment, like the pause between dusk and darkness, between fury and peace, but, for such as our earth is now, it lasted long.

“The Season of Phantasmal Peace” by Derek Walcott (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017)

I imagine there is a place of deep rest—not in the resting but after, when the body has forgotten the weight of fatigue or of its many betrayals—how unfair that once I thought it clever to blame my body for the wounds in me: the ankle bulbous and aching, the heaviness in the thigh, and the fat, the encroachment of flesh. It is hard to believe that there are those who do not know that it is possible to let things go, to then see the expansion of flesh—it is so easy, and that knowing is a pathology. What is unknown to me is the clear day of rest— I carry a brain of crushed paper, everything unfolds as if by magic, every spot of understanding is a miracle, I cannot take any credit for the revelations, they come and go as easily as the wind. You must know that this is a preamble to an epiphany I will record— the late-morning light of October, the damp soiled back yard, the verdant green lawn, the bright elegance of leaves strewn over it all, turning nonchalantly in the wind, and the Nebraska sky blue as a kind of watery ease, a comfort, it is all I can say, the kind one knows, even standing there waiting for the dog to squat; one that I will remember for years but will never have the language to speak of—one of those precious insignificances that we collect and hoard. The moment lasts ten breaths, and in that silence I imagine that I can see spirits, I can know myself, and I will not fear the betrayals of body and love and earth, and the machinations of self-made emperors and pontificates. It will be winter soon. I know my body is collecting water in its nether regions, the weight of the hibernating mammal, storing everything in drowsy, slow-moving preservation. I mean I am losing myself to the shelter we build to beat back sorrow and the weight of our fears. I have covered thousands of miles in a few days, and I feel my parts flaking off, a shedding of yellow pieces covering the turning earth, and I am helpless to this soft disappearing that some call sleep. I will stretch out and breathe.

Kwame Dawes “Before Winter”

#kwame dawes #before winter

fer1972

Embroidered Travel Scenes by Teresa Lim

queensummit

kinoaida

nereydes

Streets of Sana'a Yemen

chandlerbondurant

sickpage

nevver

Knock loud, I’m home - Kevin Faingnaert

purplebuddhaproject

wildflowerveins

i. girl in a pink dress with a swollen tongue. a hollowed out wasp nest. two dozen white swans. you wanted the truth so here’s the truth. you wanted my knuckles peeling so here’s the blood. welcome to sainthood. ii. we’re at a party in the middle of a river. all of the fish are belly up. the beer tastes like piss. you are laughing at something someone else says and i am giving myself gills. everyone is talking but no one is saying a word. in twenty minutes, the river will dry. in twenty minutes, you’ll take my hand and pull me to the grassy bank. in twenty minutes, my advil will kick in and i’ll be too drunk to remember the sound our clothes make drowning. iii. tell it to me straight. i once washed my hands in bleach. i once promised a dove it wouldn’t die. i once cut open a rabbit’s heart. i once heard my neighbor slap his wife. i once spent two months reading the same four words over and over. i once burnt an ant. tell it to me straight: i don’t want blossoms or ribbons of song or decades of dreams and dreams and dreams. iv. in the hospital, i didn’t read any books and no one saw me drink all the apple juice. remember 06′ in the poconos? i didn’t know how to ride a bike. there was a dirt hill, trees long as legs, a sack of wood chips. we played cards every day. there were a lot of things i don’t remember. a lot of things my body forgot before the rest of me did. a coyote with yellow eyes. a broken window. cigarettes in mouths that shouldn’t smoke. uncles with sour, slurred breath. there was a a boy who kissed a boy behind the pool fence. i didn’t say anything. not until now. mosquitos sucked welts onto our skin but we pretended they were hickies. you wanted love and love and more love. i just wanted to keep up. in the hospital, they played the same csi episode over and over. it was the lawyer who killed his wife. you never called. each time hurt like the first. v. but in the beginning, there was a wasp wing and a broken wrist and a story i needed to tell. in the beginning, there was a mouthful of water and no more tomorrows.

Yasmin Belkhyr, Song for All Those Marble Statues we Clawed Apart (via wildflowerveins)

#i #!

nevver

Family portrait, Inka and Niclas

juliamstarr

On horseback, I tell them to imagine me on horseback going back to Boston, an oversized wool overcoat on top of layers of things that make themselves warm against me, old tops of boxes of pictures of horses pressed flat to mesh and weave like cloth, I tell them it might take me a few months to get home because I like to stop when I travel, pull over so I can rest, and what about falling asleep on the horse, what about what I did not imagine, smokestack man slumped down snoring in the saddle, sliding over to the edge of the grace of horses, their mercy, forgiveness even for people who forget how the lines between territories are made of the flesh of ghosts who had no words for where land ends or where land begins or why there is a horse waiting for me to answer for the uncle who killed her.

Passing Through Indian Territory - Affa Michael Weaver

#afaa michael weaver #passing through indian territory #poetry