Praying

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few 
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but a doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

- Mary Oliver

+++

these words have given me cause to pause this week, and i want to remember that stir in my soul.

Song for Autumn

In the deep fall
don't you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don't you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come -- six, a dozen -- to sleep 
inside their bodies? And don't you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially, 
the piled firewood shifts a little, 
longing to be on its way.

- Mary Oliver

The sun is perfect and you woke this morning. You have enough language in your mouth to be understood. You have a name, and someone wants to call it. Five fingers on your hand and someone wants to hold it. If we just start there, every beautiful thing that has and will ever exist is possible. If we start there, everything, for a moment, is right in the world.

- Warsan Shire

She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.

- J. D. Salinger

My first vacation I shall fly to France! Such warmth and love of life. Such color and idiosyncrasy. Everything is very small and beautiful and individual. What a joy to be away from eight-lane highways and mass markets, where streets are made for bicycles and young lovers, with flowers on the handlebars and around the traffic lights.

- Sylvia Plath, in a letter to her mother, 1955.

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

- Raymond Carver

And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there...squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled the stars down to our will.

- Ezra Pound

It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.

- J. R. R. Tolkien

Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. 

- Anne Lamott

something of a prayer for this season of thanks -- & for always.

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

- Wendell Berry

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. 

- George Eliot

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door.

- Albert Camus

---

yes yes yes to this. it always surprises me, the bouquets of ideas that bloom on subway cars, in elevators, in coffeeshops so lively and bustling i cannot hear my name -- but thoughts tumbling out, one by one, like a clown car, like a spilled jar of beans? those i can hear, big and loud.

It was November -- the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines. 

- L.M. Montgomery

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches—
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead—
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging—

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted—

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered 
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

- Mary Oliver

mysig (adj; Swedish): cozy; smiling from contentedness or comfort. 

That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay...That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. 

- Ray Bradbury

Anyone who thinks fallen leaves are dead has never watched them dancing on a windy day. 

- Shira Tamir

There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years. 

- Ray Bradbury

What is more gratifying than to lie next to your partner in your own bed mornings, thoughts just beginning to take shape, sharp-edged early light coming through the window and warming a patch of floor where your shoes are mixed with hers from the night before? What is more fulfilling than waking to your own satisfying life with someone treasured next to you? What more could we ask for and not be ashamed?

- Jonathan Carroll

It could happen any time, 
tornado,
earthquake,
Armageddon. It
could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation. 
It could you know. That's why 
we wake
and look out—no guarantees
in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon, 
like evening.

- William Stafford