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Don’t go far off, not even for a day, because –
because — I don’t know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don’t leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don’t leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you’ll have gone so far
I’ll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

- Pablo Neruda

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Excerpt from “A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles”

- Marianne Williamson

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o’er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o’er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,—
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.

- Lord Byron

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.’
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
‘The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.’
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

- A.E. Housman

Among rocks, I am the loose one,
among arows, I am the heart,
among daughters, I am the recluse,
among sons, the one who dies young.

Among answers, I am the question,
between lovers, I am the sword,
among scars, I am the fresh wound,
among confetti, the black flag.

Among shoes, I am the onw with the pebble,
among days, the one that never comes,
among the bones you find on the beach
the one that sings was mine.

- Lisel Mueller

1.
wind rocks the car.
we sit parked by the river,
silence between our teeth.
birds scatter across islands
of broken ice. another time
i’d have said, “canadian geese,”
knowing you love them.
a year, ten years from now
i’ll remember this –
this sitting like drugged birds
in a glass case –
not why, only that we
were here like this together.

2.
they’re tearing down, tearing up
this city, block by block.
rooms cut in half
hang like flayed carcasses,
their old roses in rags,
famous streets have forgotten
where they were going. only
a fact could be so dreamlike.
they’re tearing down the houses
we met and lived in,
soon our two bodies will be all
left standing from that era.

3.
we have, as they say,
certain things in common.
i mean: a view
from a bathroom window
over slate to stiff pigeons
huddled every morning; the way
water tastes from our tap,
which you marvel at, letting
it splash into the glass.
because of you i notice
the taste of water,
a luxury i might
otherwise have missed.

4.
our words misunderstand us.
sometimes at night
you are my mother:
old detailed griefs
twitch at my dreams, and i
crawl against you, fighting
for shelter, making you
my cave. sometimes
you’re the wave of birth
that drowns me in my first
nightmare. i suck the air.
miscarried knowledge twists us
like hot sheets thrown askew.

5.
dead winter doesn’t die,
it wears away, a piece of carrion
picked clean at last,
rained away or burnt dry.
our desiring does this,
make no mistake, i’m speaking
of fact: through mere indifference
we could prevent it.
only our fierce attention
gets hyacinths out of those
hard cerebral lumps,
unwraps the wet buds down
the whole length of a stem.

- Adrienne Rich

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon’s kiss was lost in jest,
Robin’s lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin’s eyes
Haunts me night and day.

- Sara Teasdale

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

- William Carlos Williams

I wanted to write you some words you’d remember
words so alert they’d leap from the paper
and crawl up your shoulder and lie by your ears
and be there to comfort you down through the years.
But it was cloudy that day and I was lazy
and so I stayed in bed all day just thinking about it.

I wanted to write you and tell you that maybe
love songs for lovers are unnecessary.
We are what we feel and writing it down
seems foolish sometimes without vocal sound.
But I spent the day drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes
And looking in the mirror practicing my smile.

I wanted to write you one last long love song
That said what I feel one final time.
Not comparing your eyes and mouth to the stars
but telling you only how like yourself you are.
But by the time I thought of it, found a pen,
put the pen to ink, the ink to paper,
you were gone.

And so this song has no words.

- Rod McKuen

Halfway through shaving, it came–
the word for a poem.
I should have scribbled it
on the mirror with a soapy finger,
or shouted it to my wife in the kitchen,
or muttered it to myself till it ran
in my head like a tune.

But now it’s gone with the whiskers
down the drain.  Gone forever,
like the girls I never kissed,
and the places I never visited–
the lost lives I never lived.

- Barriss Mills