spring

But you can't spend your whole life hoping people will ask you the right questions. You must learn to love and answer the questions they already ask.

What do you have when you don't have a shared name for a place? You have possibility.

Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.

There are mountains for climbing, journeys to take, dreams that are hopeful, decisions to make. Dark days may shake us, and worries creep in. With dragons to duel and battles to win. Thunder will rumble. Lightning will flash. The wind will start blowing, and tall waves will crash. But...there are footsteps to follow and words that are wise. There's a map thact will guide us when troubles arise.

Let's paint a big rainbow to put on display. When people pass by it they'll see it and say, "All rainstorms must end, and this rainstorm will, too."

Be someone's cardinal glimpsed between leaf-shadows,
flit of brightness so startling they have to blink
to believe their eyes. Be the reason someone looks up
from the cracked blankness of concrete and remembers
the world is so much larger than what's locked inside
head and heart. Be the red swoop from free to tree,
the thread that stitches one uncertain moment to the next.

There is no amount of darkness that can extinguish the inner light. The important thing is not to spend our lives trying to control the environment around us. The task is to control the environment within us.

The Sun said to the Clouds, "Remember when we used to be together all the time and make rainbows?"

The Clouds nodded. "I'm sorry for going clap bang boom! at you," said the Clouds.

"I'm sorry for going sizzle sizzle sizzle! at you," said the Sun.

"It's better being friends!" said the Sun, and the Clouds agreed. They hugged. The Sun shined brightly and the Clouds misted happy rain. Ever so slowly, rainbows reappeared near and far, turning the world colorful once again.

Two miles into
the sky, the snow
builds a mountain
unto itself.

Some drifts can be
thirty feet high.
Picture a house.
Then bury it.

Plows come from both
ends of the road,
foot by foot, month
by month. This year

they didn't meet
in the middle
until mid-June.
Maybe I'm not

expressing this
well. Every year,
snow erases
the highest road.

We must start near
the bottom and
plow toward each
other again.

I too have known loneliness.
I too have known what it is to feel
misunderstood,
rejected, and suddenly
not at all beautiful.
Oh, mother earth,
your comfort is great, your arms never withhold.
It has saved my life to know this.
Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning.
Oh, motions of tenderness!