R.E.M., "You Are The Everything"

Love.

Westron wynde, when wyll thow blow
The smalle rayne downe can rayne?
Cryst yf my love were in my armys,
And I yn my bed agayne!

Geoffrey Chaucer 

Beyond.

Homer, Blown Away, 1888

somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience ...

e.e. cummings

Eddie Vedder, "Without You"

Now.

Well, the sun's not so hot in the sky today

You know I can see summertime slipping on away.
A few more geese are gone, a few more leaves turning red,
But the grass is as soft as a feather in a featherbed.

So I'll be king and you'll be queen, 

Our kingdom's gonna be this little patch of green.
Won't you lie down here right now in this September grass?
Won't you lie down with me now, September grass.

John Sheldon, from "September Grass"

Bruce Springsteen, "Better Days"

Well, my soul checked out missing as I sat listening
To the hours and minutes tickin' away
Yeah just sittin' around waitin' for my life to begin
While it was all just slippin' away

I'm tired of waitin' for tomorrow to come
Or that train to come roarin' round the bend
I got a new suit of clothes a pretty red rose
And a woman I can call my friend

These are better days baby
Yeah there's better days shining through
These are better days baby
Better days with a girl like you

Well, I took a piss at fortune's sweet kiss
It's like eatin' caviar and dirt
It's a sad funny ending to find yourself pretending
A rich man in a poor man's shirt
Now my ass was draggin' when from a passin' gypsy wagon
Your heart like a diamond shone
Tonight I'm layin' in your arms carvin' lucky charms
Out of these hard luck bones

These are better days, baby
These are better days it true
These are better days
There's better days shining through

Now a life of leisure and pirate's treasure
Don't make much for tragedy
But it's a sad man, my friend, who's livin' in his own skin
And can't stand the company

Every fool's got a reason for feelin' sorry for himself
And turning his heart to stone
Tonight this fool's halfway to heaven and just a mile outta hell
And I feel like I'm comin' home

These are better days baby
There's better days shining through
These are better days
Better days with a girl like you

These are better days baby
These are better days it's true
These are better days
Better days are shining through

Lots better.  Thanks, Buddy!

Whisper.

A STORY THAT COULD BE TRUE

If you were exchanged in the cradle and

your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.

He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by–
you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs

any day in your mind,
“Who are you really, wanderer?”–
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
“Maybe I’m a king.”

William Stafford

Sam Bush, "Circles Around Me"

We were riding down through the grapevines

When I heard someone say your name
Hand on my shoulder, just a little bit older now
And I remember everything

High in Telluride, up on Bridal Veil
Ten thousand feet above the sound
The news came around and sent me to count all my blessings
And to thank you for all the good friends that I’ve found

Hey, hey, hey
How in the world did we get this far
Hey, hey, hey
Holding tight to the tail of a shooting star
Hey, hey, hey, you’re running circles around me
Circles around me now

Now, was I dreaming

Or did this really happen

I could feel the earth below my feet

The world is turn fast and wild

I’m like a newborn baby child

Who’s never known regret or defeat

I am surrounded, tangled in the wire

Drawn up tight to the calling and the rising frequency

Of the silence, smiles, and laughter of those that came before

And the deafening sound of all this love falling down on me

Hey, hey, hey

How in the world did we get this far
Hey, hey, hey
Holding tight to the tail of a shooting star
Hey, hey, hey, you’re running circles around me
Circles around me now

For Jessica.  Thank You for a wonder-filled summer.

Discover.

As to when I shall visit civilization, it will not be soon, I think.  I have not tired of the wilderness; rather, I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time.

I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and the star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities.

Do you blame me then for staying here, where I feel that I belong and am one with the world around me?

It is enough that I am surrounded by beauty.  I know that I could not bear the routine and humdrum of the life that you are forced to lead.

I don't think I could ever settle down.  I have known too much of the depths of life already, and I would prefer anything to an anticlimax.

I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. 

 Always I want to live more intensely and richly.

Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?

Everett Ruess

Thank You, Jessica!  What an adventure!

Joy.

Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.

Terry Tempest Williams

Thank You, Poetessa.

Aspire.

When a man loves a woman he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.

Fulton J. Sheen

Buried.

Language has not the power to speak what love indites.
The soul lies buried in the Ink that writes.

John Clare

Beyond.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Rainer Maria Rike

Great.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for the moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Charles Dickens, from Great Expectations

Calling.

THE CALL OF THE WILD

Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on,

Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,

Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the binding sunsets blazon,

Black Canyons where the rapids rip and roar?

Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,

Search the Vastness for a something you have lost?

Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and do it;

Hear the Challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sage-brush desolation,

The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?

Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of creation,

And learned to know the desert's little ways?

Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped o'er the ranges,

Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through an through?

Have you chummed up with the messa? Do you know its moods and changes?

Then listen to the Wild - it's calling you.

Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver?

(Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.)

Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river,

Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?

Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races,

Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?

And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses?

Then hearken to the Wild - it's wanting you.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet grasped at glory,

Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?

"Done things" just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,

Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?

Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders?

(You'll never hear it in the family pew.)

The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things -

Then listen to the Wild - it's calling you.

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,

They have soaked you in convention through and through;

They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching -

But can't you hear the Wild? - it's calling you.

Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;

Let us journey to a lonely land I know.

There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling ... Let us go.

Robert Service

Unsayable.

Chagall, Lovers, 1915

Things aren’t all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Together.

here with you
    i could remain
    for countless days and years
    silent as the bright moon
    we watched together

Teishin

Lives.

VIRTUE

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 

The bridal of the earth and sky; 

The dew shall weep thy fall to-night, 

For thou must die. 

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave 

Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye; 

Thy root is ever in its grave, 

And thou must die. 

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, 

A box where sweets compacted lie; 

My music shows ye have your closes, 

And all must die. 

Only a sweet and virtuous soul, 

Like season'd timber, never gives; 

But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives. 

George Herbert

For Jessica, with Love.

Spoke.

My soul melted when my beloved spoke.

Thomas Aquinas

Thought.

I took a trip on the train
And I thought about You,
I passed a shadowy lane
And I thought about You,

Two or three cars parked under the stars
A winding stream
Moon shining down on some little town
And with each beam, same old dream

At every stop that We made
Oh, I thought about You
But when I pulled down the shade
Then I really felt blue,

I peeked through the crack

And looked at the track
The one going back to You
And what did I do
I thought about You

Johnny Mercer

Thank you, Everything We Come Across