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Poem Quotes

“How does a tiny heart harbor so many clashing sentiments? One moment it is devoted. The next, purely disdaining. Weeping at tremendous heartache and then laughing, lighthearted, through the same tears. How can a heart rage so fierce as to boil blood while it turns to ice? How is this done? To love, hate, esteem, deride, rejoice, deplore, favor, resent— all of these and more swirling inside. This sensitive heart, so full and resilient, buoys up to the point of bursting and then deflates on a dime. It is a slave to whims and whispers. How is it that the human heart beats so wild and untamed?”

HeartPoetryPoetPoemEmotionsHeartacheRichelle GoodrichRichelle E Goodrich
Book:A Heart Made of Tissue Paper
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“Such a nasty bruise,” he says, staring straight into my eyes. I am stunned he can see it. Delicate to the touch and tender on every side, the bruise is deeper than days. My hand automatically moves to my chest. Science taught me with valid assurance that my heart was fixed in my rib cage, but life has since shown me otherwise. My heart in fact dangles from a tangle of strings. The ends are grasped tight by numerous people who yank and release, having caused many painful bruises over time. I cry because they are invisible to most. “Such a nasty bruise,” he repeats, tugging on my poor heart. His kind eyes fall away from mine as I feel a squeeze on my arm. He twists it enough to show me a small, round patch of purple surrounded by a sickly yellowish corona. “Oh. My elbow.” I let the air exhale from my lungs. Another bruise forms where my heart has hit the floor. It is jerked up again. “Can I do anything for you?” I see in his eyes the mirror image of a finger—his finger—wrapped in one of the dangling strings. He tugs and I feel it. “No,” I reply to his question. But it is a lie. There is something he could do, along with all who grasp a portion of the web entangling my heart. I wish they would mercifully let go.”

HeartPoetryPoemEmotionsSensitiveHeartacheRichelle GoodrichRichelle E GoodrichRichelleSensitivityHeart QuotesBruise
Book:Slaying Dragons: Quotes, Poetry, & a Few Short Stories for Every Day of the Year
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“I wanted to write you a love poem But my heart feels out of tune So I coax my breath into the darkness of my rib cage And invite it to fan open Maybe I would say something like, "One day, I would like to fall in love with you," And here I pause while the tears that have been threatening to rain down all day swell high in my chest, blurring my vision "One day, I would like to fall in love with you," I will start writing again, & continue, "wherever you are, whoever you are, but in this moment, I will fall in love with me." My brow furls ever so slightly, because that is not what I expected to say I pause again & allow the container to soften, for the edges to get blurry And the tears, one by one spill over And all the holding of the day crumples away And I am me again & you are you again, too”

LoveTruthRelationshipTearsPoemHeartacheLove PoemHeartfelt
Author:Bryonie Wise
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“PABLO, The reason that I love thee remains strange & blurry Do I love thee for thy creativity? For the songs thou has written so carefully? Do I love thee for thy strangeness & mystery? Each layer of thy persona is a cure to my melancholy Allow me to worship thy beauty from afar My fated heartache...my unreachable star. Letters To Pablo (forever unpublished)”

LovePoetryPoemLettersLove PoemIndie AuthorLove LettersOld LettersUnpublished
Author:Miss Rainbow Moonfire
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“In learning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws of words, we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point and concern ourselves only with the marvels of the formation of a language, seeking the hidden reason of all its apparent caprices, we do not reach that end, for grammar is not literature… When we come to literature, we find that, though it conforms to the rules of grammar, it is yet a thing of joy; it is freedom itself. The beauty of a poem is bound by strict laws, yet it transcends them. The laws are its wings. They do not keep it weighed down. They carry it to freedom. Its form is in law, but its spirit is in beauty. Law is the first step toward freedom, and beauty is the complete liberation which stands on the pedestal of law. Beauty harmonizes in itself the limit and the beyond – the law and the liberty.”

LawJoySpiritLiteratureLanguageFreedomLibertyBeautyLearningPoemWingsWordsLiberationGrammarPedestalMarvelLimitCapriceFirst StepHidden ReasonRules Of Grammar
Book:Sadhana
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“Let all the strains of joy mingle in my last song—the joy that makes the earth flow over in the riotous excess of the grass, the joy that sets the twin brothers, life and death, dancing over the wide world, the joy that sweeps in with the tempest, shaking and waking all life with laughter, the joy that sits still with its tears on the open red lotus of pain, and the joy that throws everything it has upon the dust, and knows not a word.”

JoyPoetryPoem
Book:Gitanjali
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“Sonnet of Unity I am vicdan, I am saadet. My life isn't mine, It's your emanet. Soy sanity, Soy humanidad. Life lies in service, Selfishness kills vitalidad. Ich bin inclusion, Ich bin indivisible. Mein kampf is unity, Human and hate are incompatible. Life divided brings degradation. Growth comes through expansion. (vicdan=conscience, saadet=joy, emanet=keepsake, soy=I am, humanidad=humanity, vitalidad=vitality, Ich bin=I am, mein kampf=my struggle)”

JoyPoemDiversityUnityHumanismService Of HumanityInclusionSonnetIndivisibleCultural Diversity
Book:Martyr Meets World: To Solve The Hard Problem of Inhumanity
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“I wish I were a tree. Tall. Strong. Abiding. Rooted in the spot I stand, impervious to lures that drag the transient here and there. Possessing neither a negligent ear nor a traitorous tongue that would only soak in and breath out rabid gossip. Able to endure fickle shifts in the wind and not bend. Lazing under the fierce sun, weariless, suffering no sweat or burn. Alive, sipping water, quietly providing. How I wish I were a tree.”

PoetryPoetPoemRichelle GoodrichRichelle E GoodrichTreesWishing
Book:A Heart Made of Tissue Paper
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“You have no control over how your story begins or ends. But by now, you should know that all things have an ending. Every spark returns to darkness. Every sound returns to silence. And every flower returns to sleep with the earth. The journey of the sun and moon is predictable. But yours, is your ultimate ART.”

PurposeSunPathFateJourneyPoemMoonSuzy KassemLife Plan
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“I write our names on the page. What of it, if the paper will be burned? I write our names in the sand. What of it, if the shore will be washed by waves? I write our names on trees that will be cut and benches that will be painted, but what of it? I will keep on writing our names because in this world of ephemera, You and I are the only constant.”

WorldLoveInspirationalWritingInspirationTogetherRomancePoetryChangeLove QuotesDestinyWifeFateRelationshipSeaPoemHusbandPaperOceanQuoteConstantPaintBelovedGirlfriendSandWriterShoreBurnedLoverLovingSoulmateTreesDestinedOne LoveWriteLove PoemBoyfriendKamandKojouriKamand KojouriLove PoemsNameWavesLovedBurnDateLove Is All You NeedYou And MeCutYou And IPageEphemeraWashBenchEmphemeralWhat Of It
Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky’s stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off. At the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp. There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed; it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch. The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea. All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light. It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve. I long for the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to such a pure slip of bone. But I’ll not go northing this year. I’ll stalk that floating pole and frigid air by waiting here. I wait on bridges; I wait, struck, on forest paths and meadow’s fringes, hilltops and banksides, day in and day out, and I receive a southing as a gift. The North washes down the mountains like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, and pours across the valley; it comes to me. It sweetens the persimmons and numbs the last of the crickets and hornets; it fans the flames of the forest maples, bows the meadow’s seeded grasses and pokes it chilling fingers under the leaf litter, thrusting the springtails and the earthworms deeper into the earth. The sun heaves to the south by day, and at night wild Orion emerges looming like the Specter over Dead Man Mountain. Something is already here, and more is coming.”

SoulPhilosophyGodLightScienceJoySpiritPoetryReligionFaithBeliefEnergyGrowthNatureFreedomPrayerConsciousnessWonderBeautyPowerFireGraceFateSeeingMysteryCreationHumilityPoetPrayingWalkingPoemMindfulnessPraiseCuriositySeekingToleranceFearlessExplorationGapsJoyfulFreeIlluminationDisbeliefEpiphanyPrayersAmenMultiplicityJoyfulnessHallelujahWatchingIntricacyReligious DiversityLife ForceLiving In The Present MomentEnoughnessPhilosopher S StoneExultantStalking The GapsThe Tree With The Lights In ItRing The Bells
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready-for what? I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. “For the Heavenly Father desires that we should see,” says Ruysbroeck, “and that is why He is ever saying to our inmost spirit one deep unfathomable word and nothing else.” But what is the word? Is this mystery or coyness? A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred, it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn’t make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn’t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense.”

SoulPhilosophyGodLightScienceJoySpiritPoetryReligionFaithBeliefEnergyGrowthNatureFreedomPrayerConsciousnessWonderBeautyPowerFireGraceFateSeeingMysteryCreationHumilityPoetPrayingWalkingPoemMindfulnessPraiseLongingCuriositySeekingToleranceFearlessExplorationGapsJoyfulFreeIlluminationDisbeliefEpiphanyPrayersAmenMultiplicityJoyfulnessHallelujahWatchingIntricacyReligious DiversityLife ForceLiving In The Present MomentEnoughnessPhilosopher S StoneExultantStalking The GapsThe Tree With The Lights In ItRing The Bells
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“It looked as though the leaves of the autumn forest had taken flight, and were pouring down the valley like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, all the leaves of the hardwoods from here to Hudson’s Bay. It was as if the season’s colors were draining away like lifeblood, as if the year were molting and shedding. The year was rolling down, and a vital curve had been reached, the tilt that gives way to headlong rush. And when the monarch butterflies had passed and were gone, the skies were vacant, the air poised. The dark night into which the year was plunging was not a sleep but an awakening, a new and necessary austerity, the sparer climate for which I longed. The shed trees were brittle and still, the creek light and cold, and my spirit holding its breath.”

SoulPhilosophyGodLightScienceJoySpiritPoetryReligionFaithBeliefEnergyGrowthNatureFreedomPrayerConsciousnessWonderBeautyPowerFireGraceFateSeeingMysteryCreationHumilityPoetPrayingWalkingPoemMindfulnessPraiseCuriositySeekingToleranceFearlessExplorationGapsJoyfulFreeIlluminationDisbeliefEpiphanyPrayersAmenMultiplicityJoyfulnessHallelujahWatchingIntricacyReligious DiversityLife ForceLiving In The Present MomentEnoughnessPhilosopher S StoneExultantStalking The GapsThe Tree With The Lights In ItRing The Bells
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“I was in no tent under leaves, sleepless and glad. There was no moon at all; along the world’s coasts the sea tides would be springing strong. The air itself also has lunar tides; I lay still. Could I feel in the air an invisible sweep and surge, and an answering knock in the lungs? Or could I feel the starlight? Every minute on a square mile of this land one ten thousandth of an ounce of starlight spatters to earth. What percentage of an ounce did that make on my eyes and cheeks and arms, tapping and nudging as particles, pulsing and stroking as waves?”

SoulPhilosophyGodLightScienceJoySpiritPoetryReligionFaithBeliefEnergyGrowthNatureFreedomPrayerConsciousnessWonderBeautyPowerFireGraceFateSeeingMysteryCreationHumilityPoetPrayingWalkingPoemMindfulnessPraiseCuriositySeekingToleranceFearlessExplorationGapsJoyfulFreeIlluminationDisbeliefEpiphanyPrayersAmenMultiplicityJoyfulnessHallelujahWatchingIntricacyReligious DiversityLife ForceLiving In The Present MomentEnoughnessPhilosopher S StoneExultantStalking The GapsThe Tree With The Lights In ItRing The Bells
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“I want to think about trees. Trees have a curious relationship to the subject of the present moment. There are many created things in the universe that outlive us, that outlive the sun, even, but I can’t think about them. I live with trees. There are creatures under our feet, creatures that live over our heads, but trees live quite convincingly in the same filament of air we inhabit, and in addition, they extend impressively in both directions, up and down, shearing rock and fanning air, doing their real business just out of reach.”

SoulPhilosophyGodLightScienceJoySpiritPoetryReligionFaithBeliefEnergyGrowthNatureFreedomPrayerConsciousnessWonderBeautyPowerFireGraceFateSeeingMysteryCreationHumilityPoetPrayingWalkingPoemMindfulnessPraiseCuriositySeekingToleranceFearlessExplorationGapsJoyfulFreeTreesIlluminationDisbeliefEpiphanyPrayersAmenMultiplicityJoyfulnessHallelujahWatchingIntricacyReligious DiversityLife ForceLiving In The Present MomentEnoughnessPhilosopher S StoneExultantStalking The GapsThe Tree With The Lights In It
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“Yes, it’s tough, it’s tough, that goes without saying. But isn’t waiting itself and longing a wonder, being played on by wind, sun, and shade?”

SoulPhilosophyGodLightScienceJoySpiritPoetryReligionFaithBeliefEnergyGrowthNatureFreedomPrayerConsciousnessWonderBeautyPowerFireGraceFateSeeingMysteryCreationHumilityPoetPrayingWalkingPoemMindfulnessPraiseCuriositySeekingToleranceFearlessExplorationGapsJoyfulFreeIlluminationDisbeliefEpiphanyPrayersAmenMultiplicityJoyfulnessHallelujahWatchingIntricacyReligious DiversityLife ForceLiving In The Present MomentEnoughnessPhilosopher S StoneExultantStalking The GapsThe Tree With The Lights In ItRing The Bells
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“This is what I had come for, just this, and nothing more. A fling of leafy motion on the cliffs, the assault of real things, living and still, with shapes and powers under the sky- this is my city, my culture, and all the world I need.”

SoulPhilosophyGodLightScienceJoySpiritPoetryReligionFaithBeliefEnergyGrowthNatureFreedomPrayerConsciousnessWonderBeautyPowerFireGraceFateSeeingMysteryCreationHumilityPoetPrayingWalkingPoemMindfulnessPraiseCuriositySeekingToleranceFearlessExplorationGapsJoyfulFreeIlluminationDisbeliefEpiphanyPrayersAmenMultiplicityJoyfulnessHallelujahWatchingIntricacyReligious DiversityLife ForceLiving In The Present MomentEnoughnessPhilosopher S StoneExultantStalking The GapsThe Tree With The Lights In ItRing The Bells
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“And under the cicadas, deeper down that the longest taproot, between and beneath the rounded black rocks and slanting slabs of sandstone in the earth, ground water is creeping. Ground water seeps and slides, across and down, across and down, leaking from here to there, minutely at a rate of a mile a year. What a tug of waters goes on! There are flings and pulls in every direction at every moment. The world is a wild wrestle under the grass; earth shall be moved. What else is going on right this minute while ground water creeps under my feet? The galaxy is careening in a slow, muffled widening. If a million solar systems are born every hour, then surely hundreds burst into being as I shift my weight to the other elbow. The sun’s surface is now exploding; other stars implode and vanish, heavy and black, out of sight. Meteorites are arcing to earth invisibly all day long. On the planet, the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades. Somewhere, someone under full sail is becalmed, in the horse latitudes, in the doldrums; in the northland, a trapper is maddened, crazed, by the eerie scent of the chinook, the sweater, a wind that can melt two feet of snow in a day. The pampero blows, and the tramontane, and the Boro, sirocco, levanter, mistral. Lick a finger; feel the now. Spring is seeping north, towards me and away from me, at sixteen miles a day. Along estuary banks of tidal rivers all over the world, snails in black clusters like currants are gliding up and down the stems of reed and sedge, migrating every moment with the dip and swing of tides. Behind me, Tinker Mountain is eroding one thousandth of an inch a year. The sharks I saw are roving up and down the coast. If the sharks cease roving, if they still their twist and rest for a moment, they die. They need new water pushed into their gills; they need dance. Somewhere east of me, on another continent, it is sunset, and starlings in breathtaking bands are winding high in the sky to their evening roost. The mantis egg cases are tied to the mock-orange hedge; within each case, within each egg, cells elongate, narrow, and split; cells bubble and curve inward, align, harden or hollow or stretch. And where are you now?”

SoulPhilosophyGodLightScienceJoySpiritPoetryReligionFaithBeliefEnergyGrowthNatureFreedomPrayerConsciousnessWonderBeautyPowerFireGraceFateSeeingMysteryCreationHumilityPoetPrayingWalkingPoemMindfulnessPraiseCuriositySeekingToleranceFearlessExplorationGapsJoyfulFreeIlluminationDisbeliefEpiphanyPrayersAmenMultiplicityJoyfulnessHallelujahWatchingIntricacyReligious DiversityLife ForceLiving In The Present MomentEnoughnessPhilosopher S StoneExultantStalking The GapsThe Tree With The Lights In It
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“Say you could view a time-lapse film of our planet: what would you see? Transparent images moving through light, “an infinite storm of beauty.” The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth’s face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by a widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up-mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back. A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too swift and intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash frames. Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and then crumble, like patches of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cities appear, and rivers sift silt onto their rooftops; more cities emerge and spread in lobes like lichen on rock. The great human figures of history, those intricate, spirited tissues that roamed the earth’s surface, are a wavering blur whose split second in the light was too brief an exposure to yield any images. The great herds of caribou pour into the valleys and trickle back, and pour, a brown fluid. Slow it down more, come closer still. A dot appears, like a flesh-flake. It swells like a balloon; it moves, circles, slows, and vanishes. This is your life.”

SoulPhilosophyGodLightScienceJoySpiritPoetryReligionFaithBeliefEnergyGrowthNatureFreedomPrayerConsciousnessWonderBeautyPowerFireGraceFateSeeingMysteryCreationHumilityPoetPrayingWalkingPoemMindfulnessPraiseCuriositySeekingToleranceFearlessExplorationGapsJoyfulFreeIlluminationDisbeliefEpiphanyPrayersAmenMultiplicityJoyfulnessHallelujahWatchingIntricacyReligious DiversityLife ForceLiving In The Present MomentEnoughnessPhilosopher S StoneExultantStalking The GapsThe Tree With The Lights In ItRing The Bells
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“In the forty minutes I watched the muskrat, he never saw me, smelled me, or heard me at all. When he was in full view of course I never moved except to breathe. My eyes would move, too, following his, but he never noticed. Only once, when he was feeding from the opposite bank about eight feet away did he suddenly rise upright, all alert- and then he immediately resumed foraging. But he never knew I was there. I never knew I was there, either. For that forty minutes last night I was as purely sensitive and mute as a photographic plate; I received impressions, but I did not print out captions. My own self-awareness had disappeared; it seems now almost as though, had I been wired to electrodes, my EEG would have been flat. I have done this sort of thing so often that I have lost self-consciousness about moving slowly and halting suddenly. And I have often noticed that even a few minutes of this self-forgetfulness is tremendously invigorating. I wonder if we do not waste most of our energy just by spending every waking minute saying hello to ourselves. Martin Buber quotes an old Hasid master who said, “When you walk across the field with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their souls come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.”

SoulPhilosophyGodLightScienceJoySpiritPoetryReligionFaithBeliefEnergyGrowthNatureFreedomPrayerConsciousnessWonderBeautyPowerFireGraceFateSeeingMysteryCreationHumilityPoetPrayingWalkingPoemMindfulnessPraiseCuriositySeekingToleranceFearlessExplorationGapsJoyfulFreeIlluminationDisbeliefEpiphanyPrayersAmenMultiplicityJoyfulnessHallelujahWatchingIntricacyReligious DiversityLife ForceLiving In The Present MomentEnoughnessPhilosopher S StoneExultantStalking The GapsThe Tree With The Lights In ItRing The Bells
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“The color-patches of vision part, shift, and reform as I move through space in time. The present is the object of vision, and what I see before me at any given second is a full field of color patches scattered just so. The configuration will never be repeated. Living is moving; time is a live creek bearing changing lights. As I move, or as the world moves around me, the fullness of what I see shatters. “Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying; it is a canvas, nevertheless. But there is more to the present than a series of snapshots. We are not merely sensitized film; we have feelings, a memory for information and an eidetic memory for the imagery of our pasts. Our layered consciousness is a tiered track for an unmatched assortment of concentrically wound reels. Each one plays out for all of life its dazzle and blur of translucent shadow-pictures; each one hums at every moment its own secret melody in its own unique key. We tune in and out. But moments are not lost. Time out of mind is time nevertheless, cumulative, informing the present. From even the deepest slumber you wake with a jolt- older, closer to death, and wiser, grateful for breath. But time is the one thing we have been given, and we have been given to time. Time gives us a whirl. We keep waking from a dream we can’t recall, looking around in surprise, and lapsing back, for years on end. All I want to do is stay awake, keep my head up, prop my eyes open, with toothpicks, with trees.”

SoulPhilosophyGodLightScienceJoySpiritPoetryReligionFaithBeliefEnergyGrowthNatureFreedomPrayerConsciousnessWonderBeautyPowerFireGraceFateSeeingMysteryCreationHumilityPoetPrayingWalkingPoemMindfulnessPraiseCuriositySeekingToleranceFearlessExplorationGapsJoyfulFreeIlluminationDisbeliefEpiphanyPrayersAmenMultiplicityJoyfulnessHallelujahWatchingIntricacyReligious DiversityLife ForceLiving In The Present MomentEnoughnessPhilosopher S StoneExultantStalking The GapsThe Tree With The Lights In It
Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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