Now that's LOVE

By Louise Driscoll
       
Hold Fast your dreams!

Within your heart

Keep one, still secret spot

Where dreams may go,

And sheltered grow--

Where doubt and fear are not.

O, keep a place apart,

Within your heart,

For little dreams to go!

Think still of lovely things that are not true.

Let wish and magic work at will in you.

Be sometimes blind to sorrow. Make believe!

Forget the calm that lies

In disillusioned eyes.

Though we all know that we must die,

Yet you and I

May walk like gods and be

Even now at home in immortality.

We see so many ugly things--

Deceits and wrongs and quarrellings;

We know, alas! We know

How quickly fade

The color in the west,

The bloom upon the flower,

The bloom upon the breast

And youth's blind hour.

Yet keep within your heart

A place apart

Where little dreams may go,

May thrive and grow.

Hold fast--hold fast your dreams.

Unraveling

by Lotus Moonwise

I am unraveling
piece by piece
this identity
that confines me....
limits me
locks me in
to a form that is static
unchangeable

I have become a sculpture
a collage
of belief systems
voices
shoulds and should nots
expectations, obligations
like stones around my neck

I created this image
of who I am
collecting things here and there
from everyone and everywhere

A thread
passes through it all
the thin line of my true self
without the clutter
without the noise
and as I stand here
before this monolith
of solid stone
I see the spaces between
where the thread lies
embedded

Across the Border

Where all the trees bear golden flowers,

   And all the birds are white;

Where fairy folk in dancing hours

   Burn stars for candlelight;

Where every wind and leaf can talk,

   But no man understand

Save one whose child-feet chanced to walk

   Green paths of fairyland;

I followed two swift silver wings;

   I stalked a roving song;

I startled shining, silent things;

   I wandered all day long.

But when it seemed the shadowy hours

   Whispered of soft-foot night,

I crept home to sweet common flowers,

   Brown birds, and candlelight.  

The Time Will Come

By Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

When she walks into the room...

By Tony Hoagland

When she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious...
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy.

We've all tried to start a fire.
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.

By Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice

By Lucille Clifton

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me