Student teaching, Peace Corps, vacations, family, friends, fun, a real teaching job, married life, love, laughter, loss, adventure, and growth . . . if it's happening to me it's all here.
love after love
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, whome you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters form the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott
Laughter
There is one kind of laughter that I always did recommend; it looks out of the eye first with a merry twinkle, then it creeps down on its hands and knees and plays around the mouth like a pretty moth around the blaze of a candle, then it steals over into the dimples of the cheeks and rides around in those little whirlpools for a while, then it lights up the whole face like the mellow bloom on a damask rose, then it swims up on the air, with a peal as clear and as happy as a dinnerbell, then it goes back again on gold tiptoes like an angel out for an airing, and lies down on its little bed of violets in the heart where it came from. JOSH BILLINGS (HENRY WHEELER SHAW)
I Am Offering This Poem - Jimmy Santiago Baca
I am offering this poem to you since I have nothing else to give; keep it like a warm coat, when winter come to cover you, or like a pair of thick socks the cold cannot bite through
I love you,
I have nothing else to give you, so it is a pot full of yellow corn to warm your belly in the winter; it is a scarf for your head, to wear over your hair, to tie up around your face,
I love you,
Keep it, treasure it as you would if you were lost, needing direction, in the wilderness life becomes when mature; and in the corner of your drawer, tucked away like a cabin or a hogan in dense trees, come knocking, and I will answer, give you directions, and let you warm yourself by this fire, rest by this fire, and make you feel safe,
I love you,
It's all I have to give, and it's all anyone needs to live, and to go on living inside, when the world outside no longer cares if you live or die; remember,
Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in your joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.
My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.
My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.
Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.
Laught at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.
Pablo Neruda
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