“I feel older, younger, both at once.” ~ Joyce Sutphen, from “Older, Younger, Both”

This isn’t the poem that I had wanted, but I cannot for the life of me remember the title of the other one in which the speaker is looking on at an elderly couple, obviously still comfortable in their togetherness. But you cannot go wrong with Wendell Berry.

They Sit Together on the Porch

They sit together on the porch, the dark

Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.

Their supper done with, they have washed and dried

The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,

Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.

She sits with her hands folded in her lap,

At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,

And when they speak at last it is to say

What each one knows the other knows. They have

One mind between them, now, that finally

For all its knowing will not exactly know

Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding

Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.

~ Wendell Berry

                   

Music by Bob Dylan, “Tomorrow is a Long Time” (Video is from “The Walking Dead,” our newest television addiction; zombies, go figure)

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“My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage.” ~ Alice Hoffman, from Practical Magic

I have always loved this particular painting by Alexander, and I thought that it was the perfect complement to this word:

“Repose” (1895, oil on canvas)
John White Alexander

                   

                   

Music by Ray LaMontagne, “Empty”

                  

Let Everything Happen

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

 

“The world has an infinite beauty, but not, always, for us.” ~ Charles Wright, from “Scar Tissue II”

“Blue Cornflowers and Orange Tree” (nd)
by Pol Ledent

                   

“Who knows the heart of another’s heart?
Our lives are the length of a struck match,
And our days are sure to end in a dark confusion.” ~ Charles Wright, from “Buffalo Yoga”

Reblogged from Other-wordly and A Poet Reflects:

                     

Music by Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner, “Big Red Machine”

                    

October

The leaves fall from my fingers
Cornflowers scattered across the field like stars,
like smoke stars,
By the train tracks, the leaves in a drift

Under the slow clouds
and the nine steps to heaven,
The light falling in great sheets through the trees,
Sheets almost tangible.

The transfiguration will start like this, I think,
breathless,
Quick blade through the trees,
Something with red colors falling away from my hands,

The air beginning to go cold …
And when it does
I’ll rise from this tired body, a blood-knot of light,
Ready to take the darkness in.

—Or for the wind to come
And carry me, bone by bone, through the sky,
Its wafer a burn on my tongue,
its wine deep forgetfulness.

~ Charles Wright