"Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by."
-St. Augustine, from Confessions
Image: Georgia O’Keeffe, Road - Mesa with Mist, 1961
Title: adapted from Herman Melville, Pierre
For a while I climbed the ladder,
not realizing I’d placed it
against the wrong house. The window
I tried to look into was a mirror.
I fell backward into the world.
-Stephen Dunn
Image: Lukas Schnitzer, Vöstung Sadtwar, Hungary 1665
Title: adapted from Richard Garcia, “Ladders”
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
-Mary Oliver
