“ As I started to picture the trees in the storm, the answer began to dawn on me. The trees in the storm don’t try to stand up straight and tall and erect. They allow themselves to bend and be blown with the wind. They understand the power of letting go. Those trees and those branches that try too hard to stand up strong and straight are the ones that break. Now is not the time for you to be strong, Julia, or you, too, will break. — Julia Butterfly Hill
Little Butterflies
“I’ve turned on lights all over the house,
but nothing can save me from this darkness.”
but nothing can save me from this darkness.”
By Edward Hirsch, from More Than Halfway
Photo from Lacking Focus’ Flickr. Used with permission.
“ The jump is so frightening between where I am and where I want to be… because of all I may become I will close my eyes and leap. — Mary Anne Radmacher
“ Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime and falling into at night. I miss you like hell. — Edna St. Vincent Millay
Again and Again
by Rainer Maria Rilke, from Ahead of All Parting: the Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke
Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
have fallen: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with heaven.
“Shadows On the Walk” photo from doncon402’s Flickr. Used with permission.
“ and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes — James Joyce
Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda, from One Hundred Love Sonnets
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain fragance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
“ I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center. — Kurt Vonnegut
“ Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp but which may, if you will sit down quietly, alight upon you. — Nathaniel Hawthorne
