Soft light Dying away Cool air drifting in Darkness settling over all The last rustles of an ending

A change is needed

There is a house built out of stone
Wooden floors, walls and window sills
Tables and chairs worn by all of the dust
This is a place where I feel alone
This is a place where I do not feel at home
'Cause, I tried to built a home
For you
For me
Until it disappeared
From me
To you
And now, it's time to leave and turn to dust
Out in the garden where we planted the seeds
There is a tree as old as me
Branches were sewn by the color of green
Ground had arose and passed it's knees
By the cracks of the skin I climbed to the top
I climbed the tree to see the world
When the gusts came around to blow me down
I held on as tightly as you held onto me
I held on as tightly as you held onto me
And, I built a home
For you
For me
Until it disappeared
From me
To you
And now, it's time
To leave and turn
To dust

How do you go on
When there is no love
Only darkness and pain
And no light to guide you

Numb
Wanting to be more numb
Yet lack the stregth to be so
Only make the numbness harder

Dead inside
Unable to breath
Alone
At the end

Feel again
Try to feel
Laying alone in bed
Delaying the day
While waiting
Waiting to feel again

The silence that may come / As it caves inward / And the end appears / Leaves no outward traces / Only pain

Yesterday Mike and I decided to wander over to the Library of Congress. After navigating a series of underground tunnel wandering from the Cannon House Office Building to the Jefferson Building, we finally emerged before the Main Reading Room. With its soaring ceiling, grand painting, and stack of books stretching toward the sky, it was all a little overpowering. I felt as if great things had to come from whoever sat in that room conducting research. The true joy of the trip, however, came from see a Thomas Jefferson’s collection. The library has gathered up as many of his original donation as possible and then found replacements for the one that had been destroyed. Standing amongst his books, I almost felt as if I was standing inside his mind.

To the top

I climbed to the top of the Capitol Dome today. My chief of staff arranged the visit. I had climbed to the top of dome once before, so the trip did not have the same magic it did the first time. As I climbed to the top, working my way through the metal girders and gazing down to the public far below who did not know we were there, I wondered if I could somehow survive on the Hill. 1,600 lost jobs. Perhaps 20 positions that work for me. I just don’t think it will work.

Long Run

I took a long run near the waterfront today with Donald and Mike. It felt good to get out of the office. I feel that I have applied for all the jobs that I could in the past few weeks. I am now in the “waiting game,” which isn’t very fun. Sitting at a computer with very little to do and anxiously looking at my inbox doesn’t make me feel very good. At least during the run all of that doesn’t matter. There is the simple internal push to keep going that washes over my mind and body. It fills the void where all the uncertainty lives.

Bad Day
by Kay Ryan

Not every day
is a good day
for the elfin tailor.
Some days
the stolen cloth
reveals what it
was made for:
a handsome weskit
or the jerkin
of an elfin sailor.
Other days
the tailor
sees a jacket
in his mind
and sets about
to find the fabric.
But some days
neither the idea
nor the material
presents itself;
and these are
the hard days
for the tailor elf.

The Wedding
Sidney Lanier

O marriage-bells, your clamor tells
Two weddings in one breath.
SHE marries whom her love compels:
-- And I wed Goodman Death!
My brain is blank, my tears are red;
Listen, O God: -- "I will," he said: --
And I would that I were dead.
Come groomsman Grief and bridesmaid Pain
Come and stand with a ghastly twain.
My Bridegroom Death is come o'er the meres
To wed a bride with bloody tears.
Ring, ring, O bells, full merrily:
Life-bells to her, death-bells to me:
O Death, I am true wife to thee!

Shedding Season
by Linda Lee Konichek

I start to lose winter’s weight as soon as
heavy chore boots are taken off
replaced by new Airstep Nikes.

My feet fly to the upper pasture to check
for fresh grass… grass that shimmers
more green than the Emerald City.

Overnight, the wonderful wizard has
visited the farm. Like magic, tiny buds
gleam on last week’s bare branches.

I take one more look at the creek
plunging below. In a few days
new leaves will curtain this scene.

I want to buck and snort
with the horses, shed winter
like they shed their coats,

then gallop through the water
splashing… splashing… splashing

make rainbows in the Springtime sun.

Treatment
Ange Mlinko

We went to the vivarium—to see
the tropical butterflies in a
walk-through biodome. They were
cocooning, their insides filled
with meconium. The chrysalises looked
like jade and rosy quartz pendants
for ladies' ears—with gold worked in,
something Babylonian.
Enormous specimens
breathed against tree bark.

Belated naturalists we.
I kept repeating to myself:
the mind is not a little spa.
The Mind is not a little Spa.
You can't retreat to its imaginary
standard distance
when outside construction
can't be told from ruin.
The butterflies set themselves
down like easels
on bromeliads, but their brushes
can't reach to scratch their
palette

Mist
Henry David Thoreau

Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain head and source of rivers,
Dew-cloth, dream drapery,
And napkin spread by fays;
Drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the dasied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinth
The bittern booms and heron wades;
Spirit of the lake and seas and rivers,
Bear only purfumes and the scent
Of healing herbs to just men's fields!

Summer in the South
Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Oriole sings in the greening grove
As if he were half-way waiting,
The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green,
Timid, and hesitating.
The rain comes down in a torrent sweep
And the nights smell warm and pinety,
The garden thrives, but the tender shoots
Are yellow-green and tiny.
Then a flash of sun on a waiting hill,
Streams laugh that erst were quiet,
The sky smiles down with a dazzling blue
And the woods run mad with riot.

Broken Music
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The mother will not turn, who thinks she hears
Her nursling's speech first grow articulate;
But breathless with averted eyes elate
She sits, with open lips and open ears,
That it may call her twice. 'Mid doubts and fears
Thus oft my soul has hearkened; till the song,
A central moan for days, at length found tongue,
And the sweet music welled and the sweet tears.

But now, whatever while the soul is fain
To list that wonted murmur, as it were
The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate strain, -
No breath of song, thy voice alone is there,
O bitterly beloved! and all her gain
Is but the pang of unpermitted prayer.

The Old Neighbors
by Katha Pollitt

The weather's turned, and the old neighbors creep out
from their crammed rooms to blink in the sun, as if
surprised to find they've lived through another winter.
Though steam heat's left them pale and shrunken
like old root vegetables,
Mr. and Mrs. Tozzi are already
hard at work on their front-yard mini-Sicily:
a Virgin Mary birdbath, a thicket of roses,
and the only outdoor aloes in Manhattan.
It's the old immigrant story,
the beautiful babies
grown up into foreigners. Nothing's
turned out the way they planned
as sweethearts in the sinks of Palermo. Still,
each waves a dirt-caked hand
in geriatric fellowship with Stanley,
the former tattoo king of the Merchant Marine,
turning the corner with his shaggy collie,
who's hardly three but trots
arthritically in sympathy. It's only
the young who ask if life's worth living,
notMrs. Sansanowitz, who for the last hour
has been inching her way down the sidewalk,
lifting and placing
her new aluminum walker as carefully
as a spider testing its web. On days like these,
I stand for a long time
under the wild gnarled root of the ancient wisteria,
dry twigs that in a week
will manage a feeble shower of purple blossom,
and I believe it: this is all there is,
all history's brought us here to our only life
to find, if anywhere,
our hanging gardens and our street of gold:
cracked stoops, geraniums, fire escapes, these old
stragglers basking in their bit of sun.

Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

In Flanders Field
John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.