A world torn loose

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L e a v e   M e   H e r e

Irmo Town Park

Irmo, South Carolina

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Not only sands and gravels

Were once more on their travels,

But gulping muddy gallons

Great boulders off their balance

Bumped heads together dully

And started down the gully.

Whole capes caked off in slices.

I felt my standpoint shaken

In the universal crisis.

But with one step backward taken

I saved myself from going.

A world torn loose went by me.

Then the rain stopped and the blowing,

And the sun came out to dry me.

= Robert Frost =

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Happy Thursday

Centuries of stony sleep

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W a l k   T h i s   W a y

Main Street

Union, South Carolina

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Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

= William Butler Yeats =

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Happy Wednesday

Her only levity is patience

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W o r k   I t   G i r l

Broyhill Walking Park

Hickory, North Carolina

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Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
She can ill afford the chances she must take
In rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging
A packing-case places, and almost any slope
Defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
She’s often stuck up to the axle on her way
To something edible. With everything optimal,
She skirts the ditch which would convert
Her shell into a serving dish. She lives
Below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
Will change her load of pottery to wings.
Her only levity is patience,
The sport of truly chastened things.

= Kay Ryan =

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Happy Tuesday

How passing strange

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D e s p a i r   T o   S p a r e

Kensico Cemetery

Valhalla, New York

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How strange, how passing strange, when we awake
And lift our faces to the light
To know that you are lying shut away
Within the night.

How strange, how passing strange, when we lie down
To sleep, to know that you are quite
Alone beneath the moon, the stars, the little leaves,
Within the night.

How strange, how passing strange to know -- our eyes
Will gladden at the fine sweet sight
Of you no more, for now your face is hid
Within the night.

Strange, strange indeed, these things to us appear
And yet we know they must be right;
And though your body sleeps, your soul has passed
Beyond the night.

Ah! friend, it must be sweet to slip from out
The tears, the pain, the losing fight
Below, and rest, just rest eternally
Beyond the night.

And sweet it must be too, to know the kiss
Of Peace, of Peace, the pure, the white
And step beside her hand in hand quite close
Beyond the night.

= Angelina Weld Grimké =

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Happy Monday

All was left for me

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S y m b o l i s m   a n d   S u b s t a n c e

Kensico Cemetery

Valhalla, New York

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Thy Life was given for me

Thy blood, O Lord, was shed

That I might ransomed be

And quickened from the dead

Thy Life was given for me

What have I given for Thee?

Long years were spent for me

In weariness and woe

That through eternity

Thy glory I might know

Long years were spent for me

Have I spent one for Thee?

Thy Father's home of light

Thy rainbow-circled throne

Were left for earthly night

For wanderings sad and lone

Yea, all was left for me

Have I left aught for Thee?

Thou, Lord, has borne for me

More than my tongue can tell

Of bitterest agony

To rescue me from hell

Thou sufferest all for me

What have I borne for Thee?

And Thou hast brought to me

Down from Thy home above

Salvation full and free

Thy pardon and Thy love

Great gifts Thou broughtest me

What have I brought to Thee?

O let my life be given

My years for Thee be spent

World-fetters all be riven

And joy with suffering blent

Thou gavest Thyself for me

I give myself to Thee.

= Frances Ridley Havergal =

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For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body,

and in your spirit, which are God's.

= I Corinthians 6:20 =

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Happy Sunday