quotations and poetry

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
      And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
      When I put out to sea,
   But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
      Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
      Turns again home.
   Twilight and evening bell,
      And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
      When I embark;
   For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
      The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
      When I have crost the bar.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson
For many years I’ve known that my father wanted this read at his memorial service.  On Sunday, it will be.

we are saying thank you and waving dark though it is

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions.
…
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

– W. S. Merwin

We need you

You’re not too much. You probably haven’t shown the world nearly enough. We need you to be your strong, imperfect, direct, funny, brash, hilarious, sometimes intimidating self. We need you to surround yourself with people who don’t need to diminish you in order to feel more secure. We need your ideas, your vision, your leadership, your presence… all of it, 120 proof. If we need a chaser after being around you, that’s up to us to figure that out.

-Steve Wiens, An Ode to the Women Who Are “Too Much”

I may be shy, but I’ve also been told more times than I can count to take it down a notch, that I’m too intense, that I need to stop taking everything so personally.  I’ve been offered unasked-for feedback more than once.  I say sorry too much, and so does my daughter. I love this short piece and am sharing it with her.

dead reckoning

So we navigate mostly by dead reckoning, and deduction from what clues we find.

-Robert Pirsig, Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

we, every one of us, are in it

The world is beautiful and dangerous,
and joyful and sad,
and ungrateful and giving,
and full of so, so many things.
The world is new and it is old.
It is big and it is small.
The world is fierce and it is kind,
and we, every one of us, are in it.

-Mark Twain, The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine