People like you and me, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.
- Albert Einstein

“God speaks to each of us as we are made,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words, the numinous words,
we hear before we begin:
You, called forth by your senses
reach to the edge of your longing.

Become my body
grow like a fire behind things
so their shadows spread
and cover me completely

Let everything into you;
beauty and terror.
Keep going, remember
no feeling lasts forever

Don’t lose touch with me.
Nearby is the land they call life,
you will know it by its intensity.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Things to Think

Think in ways you've never thought before  

If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message

Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged: or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

— Robert Bly from Morning Poems

Orchestra music,
on a mild July evening -
lounging by the lake.

Scent of pond water,
clouds scudding across full moon,
flashes of fireflies.