Musings of a Poet

Our time is hungry in spirit. In some unnoticed way we have managed to inflict severe surgery on ourselves. We have separated soul from experience, become utterly taken up with the outside world and allowed the interior life to shrink.

Like a stream disappears underground, there remains on the surface only the slightest trickle. When we devote no time to the inner life, we lose the habit of soul. We become accustomed to keeping things at surface level.

The deeper questions about who we are and what we are here for visit us less and less. If we allow time for soul, we will come to sense its dark and luminous depth. If we fail to acquaint ourselves with soul, we will remain strangers in our own lives.

~ John O'Donohue

"There are many wonderful things that will never be done if you do not do them."

~ Charles D. Gill

"If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete."

~ Jack Kornfield

"Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart."

~ Zig Ziglar

. . . Beauty Is Whatever Gives Joy.

~ Hugh Nibley

"A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light."

~ Leonardo da Vinci

"He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Kevin and the Chickadee

~ Marilyn (Mia) Cartmill

Kevin stands perfectly still,

arms outstretched,

palms cupped

holding sunflower seeds.

Late snow falls in big wet flakes on his hat,

Swirling around like a shaken snow globe.

He waits for a chickadee to perch on his hand.

Mother said it would happen if he were still enough.

And he is still . . . and quiet,

like no other boy of twelve.

No bird comes but Kevin waits;

a statue cast in silence,

weighted down with heavy boots

and forebodings in February’s deep snow.

A chickadee lights on the heel of his pure right hand

and he’s transfixed like the legendary St. Kevin,

caught in hand with a nesting bird.

But this bird leaves nothing.

It takes a single seed and flies away.

By now, Kevin has lost himself in the globe of his own silence;

A statue in the falling snow –

standing perfectly still

until Hell freezes over or the Fourth of July parade,

or his mother’s voice calls him in from the cold.

"We will be known FOREVER by the tracks we leave."

~ Dakota Indian Proverb

"There is music in all hearts. If we listen, we can hear each other's song."

~ Susan Squellati Florence in A Book of Loving Thoughts

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in RISING every time we fall."

~ Confucious