Epitaph

When I die
Give what’s left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.

And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.

And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.

I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.

Look for me
In the people I’ve known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on in your eyes
And not your mind.

You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.

Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.

- Merrit Malloy

A Good Love

They say 
a good love 
is one that sits you down,

gives you a drink of water, and
pats you on top of the head.

But I say 
a good love
is one that casts you into the wind,
sets you ablaze,
makes you burn through the skies
and ignite the night
like a phoenix;

the kind that cuts you loose like a wildfire
and you can't stop running simply because
you keep on burning everything 
that you touch!

I say
that's a good love; 
one that burns and flies, 
and you run with it!

― C. JoyBell C.
(arranged quote)

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-- Mary Oliver

Live Like the Yukon

By the time I reached the sea, 

I knew I could do far worse than 

to live life like the Yukon: 

keep moving but find places to slow down. 

Don't go straight at the expense of meandering. 

Nurture others; accommodate 

both change and attrition.

Savor the element of 

surprise. Be gracious, 

accepting, resilient.

 - Jill Fredston, Rowing to Latitude

(arranged quote)

A love that lights the whole sky

Even after all this time,
the Sun never says
to the earth, ‘You owe me.'

Look what happens
with a love like that.
It lights the whole sky.

- Hafiz

Purpose

Life will break you.

Nobody can protect you from that, and
living alone won’t either, for solitude
will also break you with its yearning.

You have to love.

You have to feel.

It is the reason
you
are here on earth.

You are here to risk your heart.

You are here to be swallowed up.

And when it happens that you are
broken, or
betrayed, or
left, or
hurt, or
death brushes near,

let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you
in heaps, wasting their sweetness.

Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum