Manbird wrote:

Good. Make this place beautiful...

 ScottN wrote:

I love it!

 ScottN wrote: 

Returning

EMILY DICKINSON

I YEARS had been from home,
And now before the door,
I dare not open, lest a face
I never saw before

Stare vacant into mine
And ask my business there.
My business, — just a life I left,
Was such still dwelling there?

I fumbled at my nerve,
I scanned the windows near;
The silence like an ocean rolled,
And broke against my ear.

I laughed a wooden laugh
That I could fear a door,
Who danger and the dead had faced,
But never quaked before.

I fitted to the latch
My hand with trembling care,
Lest back the awful door should spring,
And leave me standing there.

I moved my fingers off
As cautiously as glass,
And held my ears, and like a thief
Fled gasping from the house. 

Another Year
Is mowing closer. He hasn’t been subtle, has he.
Too many good people gone, and I could sit and cry
For them except that you look exceptionally snazzy
Despite the miles on your odometer,
As if you have a few more aces up your sleeve,
Maybe you were born under a lucky comet or
Maybe it’s the wine, but I do believe
When I look at you and take your hand you’re
Positively glowing. Maybe we’ve been sorry a
Long enough time and now we get some grandeur
And do our dance and sing our aria.
    May this year bring us before it has flown
    All we would have wished for had we only known.

Tomorrow the winter solstice creeps up upon us
Wearing wings of fractal flakes made of fluffy white snow
It says that it needs to trust those of us
To make all those worthy a happy warm glow 

 Antigone wrote:

Winter’s long shadows
Creep up the hills, lit briefly
As if by spring’s fire.

I will love you, again.

 Manbird wrote: 

Mad Girl's Love Song
By Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

 cptbuz wrote: 
dude  

 cptbuz wrote: 

Fading gaze -  W. LeTendre

I see you sitting there
staring out that dirty window
Are you lost in the past
in a muddied cloud of memories
Faces without names
places just out of reach
Time is not your friend
when confusion sets in
I'll sit with you
make up conversations
I could talk the same talk
day after day
Your gaze treats me
like a stranger at your door
After 57 years together
I am still here for you
though you left some time ago.

Officer Prodigy

Self-Compassion
by James Crews

My friend and I snickered the first time
we heard the meditation teacher, a grown man,
call himself honey, with a hand placed
over his heart to illustrate how we too
might become more gentle with ourselves
and our runaway minds. It’s been years
since we sat with legs twisted on cushions,
holding back our laughter, but today
I found myself crouched on the floor again,
not meditating exactly, just agreeing
to be still, saying honey to myself each time
I thought about my husband splayed
on the couch with aching joints and fever
from a tick bite—what if he never gets better?—
or considered the threat of more wildfires,
the possible collapse of the Gulf Stream,
then remembered that in a few more minutes,
I’d have to climb down to the cellar and empty
the bucket I placed beneath a leaky pipe
that can’t be fixed until next week. How long
do any of us really have before the body
begins to break down and empty its mysteries
into the air? Oh honey, I said—for once
without a trace of irony or blush of shame—
the touch of my own hand on my chest
like that of a stranger, oddly comforting
in spite of the facts.

 Antigone wrote: Amazing...