“My soul was like a summer evening, after a heavy fall of rain, when the drops are yet glistening on the trees in the last rays of the downgoing sun, and the wind of the twilight has begun to blow.” ~ George MacDonald, from Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

“Green Landscape” (1952)
by Keith Vaughan

 

                   

Two for Tuesday: The Unknown

Just a note: I’ve gone through my blogrolls and deleted those that are no longer active and added a few new ones. Enjoy.

“Fern Woods” (1913, oil on board)
by George Bellows

I’m Going to Start Living Like a Mystic

Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater
and walking across the park in a dusky snowfall.

The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field,
each a station in a pilgrimage—silent, pondering.

Blue flakes of light falling across their bodies
are the ciphers of a secret, an occultation.

I will examine their leaves as pages in a text
and consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter.

I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel
and stare into a blank pond for the figure of Sophia.

I shall begin scouring the sky for signs
as if my whole future were constellated upon it.

I will walk home alone with the deep alone,
a disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries.

~ Edward Hirsch

                    

 

“Le Pavilion de Flore in the Spring” (1907, oil on canvas)
by Edward Hopper

What I Know

What I know for sure is less and less:
that a hot bath won’t cure loneliness.

That bacon is the best bad thing to chew
and what you love may kill you.

The odd connection between perfection
and foolishness, like the pelican
diving for his fish.

How silly sex is.
How, having it, we glimpse
our holiness.

What I know is less and less.
What I want is more and more:

you against me—
your ferocious tenderness—

love like a star,
once small and far,
now huge, now near.

~ Lee Robinson

Music by Explosions in the Sky, “Inside it All Feels the Same”