Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here.  Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.  Feast on your life.

Derek  Walcott

 

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Ghost in this House

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performed by Alison Krauss and Union Station

I don't pick up the mail
I don't pick up the phone
I don't answer the door
I'd just as soon be alone
I don't keep this place up
I just keep the lights down
I don't live in these rooms
I just rattle around



I'm just a ghost in this house
I'm just a shadow upon these walls
As quietly as a mouse I haunt these halls
I'm just a whisper of smoke
I'm all that's left of two hearts on fire
That once burned out of control
You took my body and soul
I'm just a ghost in this house


I don't care if it rains
I don't care if it's clear
I don't mind staying in
There's another ghost here
He sits down in your chair
And he shines with your light
And he lays down his head
On your pillow at night


I'm just a ghost in this house
I'm just a shadow upon these walls
I'm living proof of the damage
Heartbreak does
I'm just a whisper of smoke
I'm all that's left of two hearts on fire
That once burned out of control
And took my body and soul
I'm just a ghost in this house
Oh, I'm just a ghost in this house

Joanna Newsome - Bridges and Balloons

I wonder if Joanna Newsome realizes how special she is; she is the angel in our dreams with a harp and a voice few can appreciate. I wish I could put her in my shirt pocket and carry her around. I am always humming this song; keeps me peaceful.                               

Bridges and Balloons

We sailed away on a winter's day

With fate as malleable as clay

But ships are fallible, I say

And the nautical, like all things, fades

And I can recall our caravel

A little wicker beetle-shell

With four fine masts and lateen sails

Its bearings on cair paravel

Oh my love

Oh it was a funny little thing

To be the ones to've seen

The sight of bridges and balloons

Makes calm canaries irritable

And they caw and claw all afternoon

Centenaries and dirigibles

Brace and buoy the living room

A loom of metal, warp - woof - wimble

And a thimble's worth of milky moon

Can touch hearts larger than a thimble

Oh my love

Oh it was a funny little thing

To be the ones to've seen

Oh my love

Oh it was a funny little thing

It was a funny, funny little thing

To be the ones to've seen
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From "Milk-Eyed Mender" 

Joanna Newsome

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"The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

.

Síochánta Bailé

Peaceful Home
dwelling for song
a calm refuge
free from harm
a peaceful realm
a reunion place for shadow friends
a chair, a book, my hands
induce accretions
capitulations
MDJD

Love's Labour's Lost

Love's tongue proves dainty Baccus gross in taste. For valour, is not love a Hercules, still climbing trees in the Hesperides? Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical. As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair; And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.

Shakespeare

A Simple Note

A Simple Note's plaint
an elegy for all to know

A Simple Boy's wishes
for a sweet gentle escape
secretly hiding behind intractable drapes

A Simple Heart's sensation
Of grieving and shame
Are the offshoots of self imposed blame

A Simple Life passing
The end draws nigh
like water to grasp slips by

A Simple Memory's balm
gentle and warm
of stolen breaths

A Simple Life cycling
by way of timorous moments
vacant of a pledge

A Simple Man-Child
sleuthing for truth
From now existing to youth

A Simple Boy's words
simply written et facta est lux
will forevermore shine

A Simple Soul's adieu
A farewell to a crossed in love world

to leave to its own

A Simple Note's
words simply sweet
of torments he did not seek

A Simple Note's goodbye
Is Simply not

MDJD