Caterpillar edging to moth

I mean, by such flightiness, something that feels unsatisfied at the center of my life – that makes me shaky, fickle, inquisitive, and hungry.  I could call it a longing for home and not be far wrong.  Or I could call it a longing for whatever supersedes, if it cannot pass through, understanding…In my outward appearance and life habits I hardly change … But at the center: I am shaking; I am flashing like tinsel.

— Mary Oliver, Long Life

Image: Chad Wys
Title: Barbara Guest, excerpt from “Passage"

Bewilderment

"I want the muddled middle to be filled with the gristle of the living.”

-Dorianne Laux +

Image: Bill Brandt, Jean Dubuffet, 1960

Much Unseen is Also Here

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song.
-Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours I, 2



Image: Amy Judd
Title: Walt Whitman

The sight of morning

“A woman who writes feels too much, those trances and portents! 

As if cycles and children and islands weren’t enough; as if mourners and gossips and vegetables were never enough.

She thinks she can warn the stars.  A writer is essentially a spy. 

Dear love, I am that girl.”

-Anne Sexton

Image: Emon Toufanian
Title: W.S. Merwin

We hold clouds in our mouth

I dreamed longingly, and my thoughts wandered north….in the direction of my home, but I could only see clouds.

       -Viktor Frankl

       Title: Nathalie Handal
       Image: René Magritte, Song of the Storm, 1937