"You are another myself"

"Let the beauty you love be what you dare" ~ Rumi

"There's a moment when fear and dreams must collide. Someone I am is waiting for my courage. the one I want the one I will become will catch me, so let me fall if I must fall..."
~Cirque Du Soliel's Quidam

"Last night, at eventide, I led the girl who has no seeing a little way into the forest. Where it was darkness and where shadows were. I led her towards a shadow that was coming our way. It did touch her face with it's velvety fingers... and now her fears that were are gone."
~ Opal Whitely from her "journal of an understanding heart.

"Faith is knowing that when you step off the edge of all- that one of two things will happen. You will land safely on a ledge or you will sprout wings and fly."
~ unknown

"Climb the mountains and get thier good tidings. Natures peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow thier own freshness into you...while cares will drop off like autumn leaves."
~ John Muir

"Be patient towards all that is unanswered in your heart and learn to love the questions themselves." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom" ~ Ana'is Nin

"Faith is a bird that feels dawn breaking and sings while it is still dark" ~ old scandanavian saying

We have not come here to take prisoners,
But to surrender to joy.
We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run my dear,
From anything
that may not strengthen
your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
to put a sharp knife
Into the sacred tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.

We have duty to befriend
Those aspects of obedience
that stand outside of our house
And shout to our reason
"O please, O please,
Come out and play."

For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wonderous spirits,
But to experience ever and ever more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom, and Light!
~ Hafiz
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

POEM
The spirit likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers, ten toes, shoulders and all the rest
at night in the black branches,
in the morning in the blue branches of the world.
It could float,of course,
but would rather plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs the metaphor of the body,
lime and appetite, the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body's world,
instinct and imagination and the dark hug of time,
sweetness and tangibility,
to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns where no one is-
so it enters us- in the morning shines from brute
comfort like a stitch of lightning;
and at night lights up the deep and wonderous
drownings of the body like a star.
~ Mary Oliver

Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me...We also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun...With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds..."

The Powerful Play Goes On
In my class, you will learn to think for yourselves again. You will learn to savor words and languages. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. I see that look in Mr Pitts' eyes like 19th century literature has nothing to do with going to business school or medical school, right? Maybe. You may agree and think yes, we should study our Mr. Pritcher and learn our rhyme and meter and go quietly about the business of achieving other ambitions. Well, I have a secret for you. Huddle Up...Huddle UP! We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business these are all noble pursuits necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, and love; these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman "Oh me, Oh life of the question of these recurring. of the endless trains of the faithless of cities filled with the foolish. What good amid these? Oh me, Oh life." "Answer...that you are here and life exists....You are here. Life exists, and identity. The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse." The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?
-John Keating, The Dead Poets Society
...***

Aunt Leaf
Needing one, I invented her- the great-great-aunt dark as hickory called Shining Leaf, or drifting Cloud or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.
Dear aunt I'd call into the leaves, and she'd rise up, like an old log in a pool, and wisper in a language only the two of us knew the word that meant follow.
and we'd travel cheerful as birds out of the dusty town and into the trees where she would change us both into something quicker- two foxes with black feet, two snakes green as ribbons, two shimmering fish- and all day we'd travel.
At day's end she'd leave me back at my own door with the rest of my family, who were kind, but solid as wood and rarely wandered. while she, old twist of feathers and birch bark, would walk in circles wide as rain and then float back
scattering the rags of twilight on fluttering moth wings;
or she'd slouch from the barn like a gray opossom;
or she'd hang in the milky moonlight burning like a medallion,
this bone dream, this friend I had to have, this old woman made out of leaves.
~ Mary Oliver