~selanaseleniselas~

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

I walk around with a drop of water in my hand. It looks at me with loathing. I stare at it in fear: It is so deep I cannot see bottom. I hold it carefully... A rainbow edged with red glitter in it. My hand trembles... If I stumble and fall, I will drown.

Paul Engle

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

"For what I should, yet never can, remember: No garden appears, no path, no hoar-green bush Of Lad's-love, or Old Man, no child beside, Neither father nor mother, nor any playmate; Only an avenue, dark, nameless, without end."

Edward Thomas

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

"Dark shape behind glass, Moveless. A heavy ragbag of brown feathers, Inert, Immobile, Stuffed?"

Frances Minturn Howard

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

"‘Mamma! mamma!’ two eaglets cried, ‘To let us fly you’ve never tried. We want to go outside and play; We’ll promise not to go away.’ The mother wisely shook her head: ‘No, no, my dears. Not yet,’ she said."

Mary Mapes Dodge

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

Galaxies run from us. “Don’t look!” Was this the meaning of the warning in the Garden? When a dreamer sees she’s dreaming, it causes figments to disperse.

Rae Armantrout

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

How I would like to believe in tenderness...

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

"The black moon turns away, its work done. A tenderness, unspoken autumn. We are faithful only to the imagination. What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth. What holds you to what you see of me is that grasp alone."

Denise Levertov, Excerpt from "Everything that Acts Is Actual"

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

"Lonely, oh, lonely, as a wistful bird

Mocked by the night and the wind's laughter, I call, and await your gentle cry, your word... To know only echoes after."

Lew R. Sarett, Lonely as a Bird

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

" walks with his winter shadow. He is all hoar's breath, health; he strides, a visible heart, the sun's hair spring. Who calls him incomplete?

...

Who calls him man? ..."

Daniel Berrigan

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

The world is full of loss; bring, wind, my love, my home is where we make our meeting-place, and love whatever I shall touch and read within that face.

Lift, wind, my exile from my eyes; peace to look, life to listen and confess, freedom to find to find to find that nakedness.

Muriel Rukeyser, Song (“The world is full of loss ... ”)

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

"Why sigh for a star Better bay at the moon Better bay at the moon... Oh moon, moon, moon"

Samuel Menashe

"Κύριε, είναι ώρα να βοηθήσεις μια ψυχή δρόμο να βρει τώρα η ζωή μου η ρηχή. Δεν μπορώ να ζω αντίθετα με Σένα, κι όπου σταθώ μ’ άγνωστους ρυθμούς κι επίθετα βοήθεια Σου ζητώ.

…

Θέλω να πετάξω ελεύθερα πιο πέρα κι απ’ το κενό πράγματα μικρά και δεύτερα δεν ξέρω ν’ αγαπώ.

…"

Αγαθή Δημητρούκα

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

"And under a swinging light bulb Some children Invent a game With the shadow the bulb makes, And the beat of their hearts. They call it dust in the mouth. They call it horse with no rider. They call it school with empty books."

Cornelius Eady

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

"Grey memories of autumn dreams;— Like visions of love forever flown, You, serial voyagers, wing your flight To some enchanted realm our youth has known, Beneath the dim, blue vault of night."

Sadakichi Hartmann

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

"Don’t talk to me of solemn days In autumn’s time of splendor, Because the sun shows fewer rays, And these grow slant and slender."

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

"So, impaired, uninnocent, If I love you—as I do— To the very perfection Of perfect imperfection, It's that I care more for you Than for my feeling for you."

J. V. Cunningham

Photo: Eleni Vasilaki

"I heard a young man say To this gentlest one. And then? she asked. And then? Dark are the waters there,

Those waters draw the dream, ...

Past fields of sleep and grasses Drowned at the water’s brim? And then? she asked, and then? You looked at me and I am changed

And I shall love you long If you love me. And if not— What then? she cried, what then?"

Jean Garrigue