"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.  Let me learn from you, bless you before you depart.  Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow."

-Mary Jean Irion-

"People are like bicycles.

They can keep their balance only as long as they keep moving."

Albert Einstein,

in a letter to his son Eduard

(February 5, 1930)

Freshen the Flowers, She Said

Freshen the Flowers, She Said 

So I put them in the sink, for the cool porcelain

was tender,

and took out the tattered and cut each stem

on a slant,

trimmed the black and raggy leaves, and set them all -

roses, delphiniums, daisies, iris, lilies,

and more whose names I don't know, in bright new water -

gave them

a bounce upward at the end to let them take

their own choice of position, the wheels, the spurs,

the little sheds of the buds. It took, to do this,

perhaps fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes of music

with nothing playing.

-Mary Oliver-

"Are my boots old?  Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?"

-Mary Oliver-

"Sometimes," said Pooh, "the smallest things take up

the most room in your heart."

- A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh -