“Before you go”
Before you go,
I will tell you what was here.
First, and endless love.
Second, silent
and spoken communication.
Third, any possession worth working for.
Fourth, imagination and a song.
Now you can choose to stay,
or you can go.
“It is early”
Of course, it is early.
You will hear other voices
sing other songs.
You will choose one.
You will come to know
the depth of the shadows
in the grasses.
You will see friends
grow and wither,
and dreams and sorrows
slip away.
Will you forget these songs?
Will they vanish in the beauty
with which they cannot compete,
the white mountain, the red rose,
the resolute eyes of a lover?
Or will they remain,
and remind you of the glow
your eyes had once,
and the magic they inspired
in the heart of another?
I can understand why people don’t think they’re part of nature, when the wind, rain, sun and snow seem to do what they do without trying, while humans struggle to do what they do. On the other hand, humans don’t struggle to struggle, they struggle without trying.
Hey, said Blurtso, is that spring I smell? They say that on the first day of spring a donkey can see his tail if he pokes his head out the barn… or maybe it’s when he can see the shadow of his nose… or when his left ear starts twitching…. I’m bound to find a sign if I go for a walk…
Oh…
“He didn’t notice when she came in because he wasn’t there, but when he was he clearly noticed, but pretended not to notice, that she was clearly there. He pretended not notice, so that no one else would notice, that he had clearly noticed that she was clearly there. But she had clearly noticed that he had clearly noticed, and she was clearly there.”
“Here comes another grey morning,
a not-so-good morning after all…
She says, ‘Well what am I to do today,
with too much time and so much sorrow…’
The clouds with their heads on the ground,
she’s gonna have to come down…
She said, ‘Move me, move me, I’m locked up inside,’
but I didn’t understand her, though God knows I tried…
She said, ‘Make me angry, or just make me cry,
but no more grey morning, I think I’d rather die.’”
“In an instant”
Easily,
in an instant,
you could have not been born.
You could have had nothing.
You could have lost
the sun, the sky,
the slow moon ascending,
and the harmony
and flicker of leaves.
You could have lost
the rain’s splash
exciting the soil,
the blue beyond,
and the light
and absence of light.
You could have lost everything.
And I could have lost the same,
never knowing the cure
for thirst in a world without you.
“A song”
I know you are threadbare and worn
with the weary strike of iron
ringing the notes in your name,
And even the tireless minstrel
is tired of his own insistence
on solitude’s graceless strain.
Yet it had been enough,
and the mournful sounds a song,
Had we but moved without motion
in motion through the dawn.
I read the strangest story in my in my literature class, said Harlan. What was it about? said Blurtso. It was about an aquarium of axolotls, said Harlan. What’s an axolotl? said Blurtso. An axolotl is an ancient, tadpole-like creature. What happened in the story? said Blurtso. Nothing, said Harlan, the axolotls just sat around on the bottom of the aquarium looking through the glass. What a great story, said Blurtso.
