We Let the Boat DriftI set out for the pond, crossing the ravine where seedling pines start up like sparks between the disused rails of the Boston and Maine.The grass in the field would make a second crop if early autumn rains hadn't washed the goodness out. After the night's hard frost it makes a brittle rustling as I walk. The water is utterly still. Here and therea black twig sticks up. It's five years today, and even now I can't accept what cancer did to him -- not death so much as the annihilation of the whole man, sense by sense, thought by thought, hope by hope. Once we talked about the life to come. I took the Bible from the nightstand and offered John 14: "I go to prepare a place for you."" Fine. Good, " he said. "But what about Matthew? 'You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.'" And he wept. My neighbor honks and waves driving by. She counsels troubled students; keeps bees; her goats follow her to the mailbox. Last Sunday afternoon we went canoeing on the pond. Something terrible at school had shaken her. We talked quietly far from shore. The paddlesrested across our laps; glittering dropsfell randomly from their tips. The lightaround us seemed alive. A loon-itinerant-let us get quite close before it dove, coming upafter a long time, and well away from humankind . Jane Kenyon
The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?
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Percy Bysshe Shelley
In youth, it was a way I had, To do my best to please. And change, with every passing lad To suit his theories. But now I know the things I know And do the things I do, And if you do not like me...
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Dorothy Parker
If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human.
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Maggie Stiefvater
A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.
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Ingrid Bergman
This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of...
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Susan Polis Schutz
More Quotes By Jane Kenyon
The poet's job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.
HappinessThere's just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigalwho comes back to the dust at your feethaving squandered a fortune far away. And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of whatwas lost, and take...
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoopin the oats, to air in the lunglet evening come. Let it come, as it will, and don'tbe afraid. God does not leave uscomfortless, so let evening come.
Reading Aloud to My Father I chose the book haphazardfrom the shelf, but with Nabokov's firstsentence I knew it wasn't the thingto read to a dying man: The cradle rocks above an abyss, it began, and common sense tells us that our existenceis but a...
OtherwiseI got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I...
