You Have Become a Forest

One day when you wake up, 

you will find that you have become a forest. 

You have grown roots 

and found strength in them 

that no one thought you had. 

You have become stronger and more beautiful, 

full of life-giving qualities. 

You have learned to take all the negativity around you 

and turn it into oxygen for easy breathing. 

A host of wild creatures live inside you 

and you call them stories. 

A variety of beautiful birds rest inside your mind 

and you call them memories. 

You have become an incredible self-sustaining thing of epic proportions. 

And you should be so proud of yourself, 

of how far you have come 

from the seeds of who you used to be.

- Nikita Gill, You Have Become a Forest

This Quintessence of Dust

"I have of late,
—but wherefore I know not,—
lost all my mirth,
forgone all custom of exercises;
and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame,
the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory;
this most excellent canopy,
the air, look you,
this brave o’erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,
why, it appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty!
in form, in moving, how express and admirable!
in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god!
the beauty of the world!
the paragon of animals!
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
man delights not me..."

- Hamlet II.ii

First Grief

First Grief

Last night, my daughter—
Mine by right of love and law,
But not by birth—
Cried for her "other mother."

Accountable
And duly baptized she may be,
But eight is young . . .
For grown-up grief,
The first I cannot mend
With Bandaids,
Easy words,
Or promises.

I cannot tell her yet
How often I have also cried
Sometimes at night
To one whose memory
My birth erased;
Who let me go
To other parents
Who could train and shape the soul
She had prepared,
Then hid her face from me.

-Margaret Munk
(found here)

The Smell of Burnt Wood

"When you're standing at the plate and you hit a sharp foul ball to the backstop, the spot on the bat that made contact gets hot; the American dream forgot to tell me to step back and enjoy the smell of burnt wood."

- Adrian Cárdenas, formerly a player for the Chicago Cubs, who quit baseball to pursue an education in creative writing and philosophy (via Kottke)

But Thou Art All Replete With Very Thou

Indwelling

If thou couldst empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,
And say—" This is not dead,"—
And fill thee with Himself instead. 
But thou art all replete with very thou,
And hast such shrewd activity,
That, when He comes, He says :—" This is enow
Unto itself—’Twere better let it be:
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me."

- T.E. Brown