Yet all experience is an arch where through
gleams that untravelled world,
whose margin fades for ever and for ever
when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life.
Life piled on life were all too little, and of one to me little remains.
From Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson
How long the winter.
How strange and wild.
One day blundering through icy winds
Another past thawing ponds
But, the sunset reaches into evening now
Fingers want to feel the soil
Nose misses fragrance of fresh earth
Blueberries rest under burlap blankets
But, doesn’t cardinal sing of hope in the morning
February Snow Moon rises soon
Keep the shovel handy, the garden still slumbers
O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie,
gimme a break before I die:
grant me wisdom, will, & wit,
purity, probity, pluck, & grit.
Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind,
gimme great abs & a steel-trap mind,
and forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice—
these little blessings would suffice
to beget an earthly paradise:
make the bad people good—
and the good people nice;
and before our world goes over the brink,
teach the believers how to think.
by Philip Appleman
LuceStellare 