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 solid fragrance,
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.

-- Pablo Neruda

Blue of the bay before the snow
was the blue - blue - blue of the kind that

... Tickles the nose
... Gasps the breath
... Leaps the heart
... & dances the most stationary feet
so pure and luminous was blue that
... only more pellucid blue might
re-illuminate its blueness.

-- Henry S. Maas

No two alike

Look then at the faces and bodies of people you love.
The explicit beauty that comes not from smoothness of skin
or neutrality of expression, but from the web of experience
that has left its mark.

Each face, each body is its own living fossilized, record.
A record of cats, combatants, difficult births;
of accidents, cruelties, blessings.

Reminders of folly, greed, indiscretion, impatience.
A moment of time, of memory, preserved, internalized,
and enshrined within and upon the body.

You need not be told that these records are what render your beloved beautiful.

If God exists, He is there, in the small, cast-off pieces,
rough and random and not two alike.

-- from Broken for You, (2005)by Stephanie Kallos

Spring Flowers!

We, the older ones,
call it Spring,
and we have been through it
many times.

But there is still nothing
like the children bringing home
such happiness
in their small hands.

-- Mary Oliver

Words of Truth

Words of Truth are the language of prayer
and if we desire results in prayer,
we must learn to speak its language.

-- Mary Kupferle