With a pack on my back,
I lurched out of the known.
Would I ever be back?
Or go where I was blown?
Who can know where they'll land?
Maybe on a distant shore?
Or amid desert sands?
Or mountains? Or next door?
That's the joy of a life;
One can end up anywhere.
Embrace chaos sans strife,
And you'll live a life that's rare.
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where:
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
autumn breezes
send dry leaves tumbling, but for
one heavy rebel.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life, and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
snow falls
all night long,
silently piling.
i awaken
to a place
unrecognizable
as the one
in which i took to slumber:
the world's detail erased...
temporarily.
macaques on the march:
lockstep / shoulder-to-shoulder;
a crash in the trees.
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art --
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors --
No -- yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever -- or else swoon to death.
an egret flares
to a dramatic landing
in a sunny grass patch.
a muscular tree
poses with limbs outstretched;
shrubs are unimpressed.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 