musings on June

by William Stafford

It could happen any time, tornado, earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen. Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That’s why we wake and look out -- no guarantees in this life.

There’s something between us [...]  a sort of pull. Something you always do to me and I to you⁠—

⁠— F. Scott Fitzgerald, from 'Presumption'

I am stretched like a bow with your pull.

⁠— Rumi, The Forbidden Rumi: The Suppressed Poems of Rumi on Love, Heresy, and Intoxication; from ‘Give Up Yourself’, tr. Will Johnson and Nevit Ergin

Something of you still taut / still tugs still pulls, / a rope that trembled / hummed between us.

⁠— Sandra Cisneros, Loose Woman; from 'Vino Tinto'

I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.

⁠— Charlotte Brontë, from ‘Jane Eyre’

There was a silence between them, and a strange tension of hostility. They always kept a gap, a distance between them, they wanted always to be free each of the other. Yet there was a curious heart-straining towards each other.

⁠— D. H. Lawrence, from 'Women in Love'

I could feel the inevitable magnetic polar forces in us, and the tidal blood beat loud, Loud, roaring in my ears, slowing and rhythmic.

⁠— Sylvia Plath, from ‘The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath’ ⁠— 15th May 1952

The tides inside your heart still pull me towards you.

⁠— Richard Jackson, from 'After All This', published in 'Salt Hill 22'

By then I was used to silence. / Though something stretched between us / like a whisper, like a rope:

⁠— Margaret Atwood, Interlunar; from ‘Orpheus (1)’

⁠— what still deepens pulls us back together.

— Caitríona O’Reilly, The Nowhere Birds; from ‘Possession’

We're connected by a thread / If we're ever far apart / I'll still feel the pull of you

Agnes Pelton (American painter) 1881 - 1961

Departure, 1952

oil on canvas private collection of Mike Stoller and Corky Hale Stoller