Waterlily Fire

Flowers of Fire by Georgia O'Keeffe

….Whatever can happen to anyone can happen to me.

Fire striking its word among us, waterlilies
Reaching from darkness upward to a sun
Of rebirth, the implacable. And in our myth
The Changing Woman who is still and who offers.

Eyes drinking light, transforming light, this day
That struggles with itself, brings itself to birth.
In ways of being, through silence, sources of light
Arriving behind my eye, a dialogue of light.

And everything a witness of the buried life.
This moment flowing across the sun, this force
Of flowers and voices body in body through space.
The city of endless cycles of the sun.

I speak to you You speak to me

- Muriel Rukeyser

Symbols

“The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.”

—John Steinbeck

Dim

   

Senecio by Paul Klee

   dim
i
nu
tiv
e this park is e
mpty(everyb
ody’s elsewher
e except me 6e 

nglish sparrow
s) au
tumn & t
he rai

n
th
e raintherain

- e e cummings 

Start Close In

Lavender Iris by Georgia O'Keeffe (1951)

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.

To hear
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice

becomes an
intimate
private ear
that can
really listen
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

- David Whyte