When Death Comes

By: Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a loin of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all of my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Web

By: Kyle Leia Elden

Strange
how people
pass through our lives
yelling,
muttering,
or singing boldly, or whispering softly
yet each leaving a mark,
touching us
deeply,
gently,
or fiercely, or barely

our lives
spread across time
nearly invisible
except in the afternoon light
when you slow down
and pay attention to the tiny details
a silvery spider web
the intricate weaving
of people and experiences
a map of what has occurred
here and there, then and when
the intersection of people
for a time

There is a place
where the only thing
that exists is love
shining through the unique patterns
that make up our relationships
the ebbs and flows
the coming together and the departure
casting shadow images that dance through eternity

We cannot capture any of it, the moments
can’t bottle it up
in a glass jar with a lid
like golden sunlight it sifts through
and leaves only warmth and emptiness
as reminders

Yet somehow, what was good
that love,
glows in our hearts
lighting our way forward
as we stumble through
the tangled and thorny
bushes of life
with the sweet wild scent of roses
in the air
trying to understand why, and how,
and what if
trying to make sense of it all

Letters to a Young Poet

By: Rainer Maria Rilke

How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at
the beginning of all races---the myths about dragons that
at the last moment are transformed into princesses.
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses
waiting for us to act, just this once, with beauty and courage.
Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest
essence, something helpless that wants our love.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises before
you larger than any you've ever seen, if an anxiety like
light and cloud shadows moves over your hands and
everything you do. you must realize that something
has happened to your; that life has not forgotten you; it
holds you in its hands and will not let you fall. Why do
you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any
miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know
what work these conditions are doing inside you.

Messenger

By: Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Friends

By: Anais Nin

Each friend represents a world in us,
a world not born until they arrive,
and it is only by this meeting that
a new world is born.