“Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our ‘psychological immune system’ lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.”
From TED Talks (February 2004):
[Thanks JC!]
“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself."
[Thanks Alex!]
From Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert:
…Not to think about the future requires that we convince our frontal lobe not to do what it was designed to do, and like a heart that is told not to beat, it naturally resists this suggestion…
…No one can imagine everything, of course, and it would be absurd to suggest that they should. But just as we tend to treat the details of the future events that we do imagine as though they were actually going to happen, we have an equally troubling tendency to treat the details of future events that we don’t imagine as though they were not going to happen. In other words, we fail to consider how much imagination fills in, but we also fail to consider how much it leaves out.
by Jane Hirshfield, from Given Sugar, Given Salt
The shoes put on each time
left first, then right.
The morning potion's teaspoon
of sweetness stirred always
for seven circlings—no fewer, no more—
into the cracked blue cup.
Touching the pocket for wallet,
for keys,
before closing the door.
How did we come
to believe these small rituals' promise,
that we are today the selves we yesterday knew,
tomorrow will be?
How intimate and unthinking,
the way the toothbrush is shaken dry after use,
the part we wash first in the bath.
Which habits we learned from others
and which are ours alone we may never know.
Unbearable to acknowledge
how much they are themselves our fated life.
Open the traveling suitcase—
There the beloved red sweater,
bright tangle of necklace, earrings of amber.
Each confirming: I chose these, I.
But habit is different: it chooses.
And we, its good horse,
opening our mouths at even the sight of the bit.
Music by Andrew Bird featuring Dianogah, from the Daytrotter Session. The video is an adaptation of Lisa Barcy’s stop-motion animated film, Mermaid.
Being alone, it can be quite romantic
Like Jacques Cousteau underneath the Atlantic
A fantastic voyage to parts unknown
Going to depths where the sun's never shone
And I fascinate myself when I'm alone
So I go a little overboard, but hang on to the hull
While I'm airbrushing fantasy art on a life
That's really kind of dull
Oh, I'm in a lull
I'm all for moderation, but sometimes it seems
Moderation itself can be a kind of extreme
So I joined the congregation
I joined the softball team
I went in for my confirmation
Where incense looks like steam
I start conjugating proverbs
Where once there were nouns
This whole damn rhyme scheme's
Starting to get me down
Oh, I'm in a lull
I'm in a lull
Being alone, it can be quite romantic
Like Jacques Cousteau underneath the Atlantic
A fantastic voyage to parts unknown
Going to depths where the sun's never shone
And I fascinate myself, sure I do
When I'm alone
I'm rambling on rather self-consciously
While I'm stirring these condiments into my tea
And I think I'm so lame, I bet I think this song’s about me
Don't I, don't I, don't I?
I'm in a lull...
New York City offers rich opportunities for observing impermanence. It is still too chilly for sitting outside on a park bench to tune into the constantly changing blend of sounds and silence. But Gordon and Bertica’s generous windows are perfect for open-eyed meditation practice. Their apartment is on the twenty-first floor overlooking the Hudson River.
Wednesday morning, I hung out as a curious visitor observing the activity of my visual cortex, noticing activity and rest dancing in both the external visual field and the mental image screen. I let my gaze be broad and soft. This strategy focuses on the experience of seeing as opposed to the content. So there are four things to observe (1) seeing, (2) a restful, defocused gazing, (3) mental images appearing, and (4) periods when the mental screen is mostly blank. Faint internal visual impressions count equally with vivid mental images. I tried to stay with one of these aspects at a time, savoring each one for a few seconds before drifting on to the next.
When working this way, it is important to allow the habitual craving for meaning to operate in the background while exploring the play of light. Relaxing the need for content allows textures and movement to be revealed in both the objective and subjective visual spaces. Both the objective and subjective visually-oriented spaces were in constant motion: cars flowing, birds drifting through the air, boats cutting paths across the water. Letting internal conversations, external sounds, and physical sensations play out in the background allowed me to watch the light bleed glacially into the grayscale landscape, transforming its stony coldness with the vibrant palette of early spring.
I decided to make noticing internal and external visual activity my mindfulness strategy for the day. This intention soon evaporated when we encountered multiple obstacles to getting work done in Starbucks: the fight for a table, the scarcity of outlets, weighing the costs of various Internet connection options, and the noise which would prevent productive meetings over the phone. Meaning and feelings insisted on center stage and I forgot to even attempt to occasionally highlight the process of sight. Without noticing, I treaded the water of internal imagery and strong emotions.
In the afternoon, we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gordon had read a promising blurb in The New Yorker about an exhibit of the later interior work of French painter, Pierre Bonnard. His still life work became more interesting to me when I discovered that he painted them from memory rather than direct observation and that he spent years on each one, trying to get closer to the imagined images.
He said, “I’m trying to do what I have never done, give the impression one has on entering a room: one sees everything and at the same time nothing.”
The true subject of The White Interior (above) is white. What is white? He said he had been “investigating the secret of white his entire life.”
Here is an excerpt from a poem called Occupations by Richard Howard. It is written in the voice of Pierre Bonnard and is set in the time immediately following the death of Marthe, the painter’s wife of fifty years.
So much of life
is buried already!
All the same I still believe
in reality, the way
Cezanne believed in it—I believe
in repetition, that is, and I am
at work on some new views of the Bay…They must
be new, because every day I see different
things, or I see things differently:
the sky, the fields, the water beyond,
it all keeps changing, you could
drown in the differences.
Yet that is just what
keeps us alive, no?
Going Deaf
by Miller Williams, from American Life in Poetry
No matter how she tilts her head to hear
she sees the irritation in their eyes.
She knows how they can read a small rejection,
a little judgment, in every What did you say?
So now she doesn't say What? or Come again?
She lets the syllables settle, hoping they form
some sort of shape that she might recognize.
When they don't, she smiles with everyone else,
and then whoever was talking turns to her
and says, "Break wooden coffee, don't you know?"
She pulls all she can focus into the face
to know if she ought to nod or shake her head.
In that long space her brain talks to itself.
The person may turn away as an act of mercy,
leaving her there in a room full of understanding
with nothing to cover her, neither sound nor silence.
[Miller Williams is the father of singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams.]
Shinzen Young talks about the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures can be interpreted in two different ways. One shows the stages on the path of enlightenment and the other shows the process of truly grasping consciousness. This lecture was filmed near the end of a fourteen-day intensive at La Casa de Maria Retreat Center in Santa Barbara (1.9.09).
[Thank you Randy!]
From “Finding That Song,” by Michael Krikorian, The New York Times Sunday Magazine (3.22.09):
Back in 1998, I was driving down Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles when I spotted a man lying on his back smack dab in the middle of the street; one leg was splayed onto the westbound lane of Pico, the other onto the eastbound. I got out of my car, and as I approached I saw he was bleeding from his lower left side. I rushed to him, and before I could say anything, he said to me, “How you doin’?”
Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton, 'We are All Writing God's Poem'
by Barbara Crooker
Today, the sky's the soft blue of a work shirt washed
a thousand times. The journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step. On the interstate listening
to NPR, I heard a Hubble scientist
say, "The universe is not only stranger than we
think, it's stranger than we can think." I think
I've driven into spring, as the woods revive
with a loud shout, redbud trees, their gaudy
scarves flung over bark's bare limbs. Barely doing
sixty, I pass a tractor trailer called Glory Bound,
and aren't we just? Just yesterday,
I read Li Po: "There is no end of things
in the heart," but it seems like things
are always ending—vacation or childhood,
relationships, stores going out of business,
like the one that sold jeans that really fit—
And where do we fit in? How can we get up
in the morning, knowing what we do? But we do,
put one foot after the other, open the window,
make coffee, watch the steam curl up
and disappear. At night, the scent of phlox curls
in the open window, while the sky turns red violet,
lavender, thistle, a box of spilled crayons.
The moon spills its milk on the black tabletop
for the thousandth time.
From: Line Dance
From “But Enough About You… ” by Emily Yoffe, Slate.com (March 18, 2009):
A recent study titled "Leader Emergence: The Case of the Narcissistic Leader" describes how narcissists have skills and qualities—confidence, extraversion, a desire for power—that propel them into leadership roles but that when true narcissists are in charge, other aspects of their makeup—a feeling the rules don't apply to them, a need for constant stroking—can have "disastrous consequences."
[Thanks Angela!]
by James Tate, from Return to the City of White Donkeys
A loon woke me this morning. It was like waking up
in another world. I had no idea what was expected of me.
I waited for instructions. Someone called and asked me
if I wanted a free trip to Florida. I said, "Sure. Can
I go today?" A man in a uniform picked me up in a limousine,
and the next thing I know I'm being chased by an alligator
across a parking lot. A crowd gathers and cheers me on.
Of course, none of this really happened. I'm still sleeping.
I don't want to go to work. I want to know what the loon is
saying. It sounds like ecstasy tinged with unfathomable
terror. One thing is certain: at least they are not speaking
of tax shelters. The phone rings. It's my boss. She says,
"Where are you?" I say, "I don't know. I don't recognize
my surroundings. I think I've been kidnapped. If they make
demands of you, don't give in. That's my professional advice."
Just then, the loon let out a tremendous looping, soaring,
swirling, quadruple whoop. "My god, are you alright?" my
boss said. "In case we do not meet again, I want you to know
that I've always loved you, Agnes," I said. "What?" she said.
"What are you saying?" "Good-bye, my darling. Try to remember me
as your ever loyal servant," I said. "Did you say you loved
me?" she said. I said, "Yes," and hung up. I tried
to go back to sleep, but the idea of being kidnapped had me
quite worked up. I looked in the mirror for signs of torture.
Every time the loon cried, I screamed and contorted my face
in agony. They were going to cut off my head and place it on
a stake. I overheard them talking. They seemed like very
reasonable men, even, one might say, likeable.
A personal essay written by Alex Larson, my daughter, which she read aloud in class this week:
It is hard to be a human. We are born as vulnerable little nuggets, incapable of doing anything, and somehow we manage to grow and adapt into functioning beings. We are surrounded by death, poverty, crime, all of which can drive a person to misery. Yet somehow a lot of us manage.
If you were in my English class last year, you may have learned that I have an affinity for the elderly, and if you weren’t, you will quickly see. Some of my friends shy away from old people because they say they are mean or grumpy. Some even comment that they smell bad. To that I say, people of all ages can be bitter or have poor hygiene. But all of this is slightly irrelevant. I was never quite sure what attracted me to older folks, but thanks to Senior Thesis, I now have an idea.
Every single individual I got the chance to speak with made it clear to me that they lived very happy lives. It is hard to grasp, as teenagers, that these people, were once our age. They probably hated school, had to find jobs, and fought with their friends. They have all been sick, yelled at someone, and cried. They grew up and watched the people they loved, their parents, their siblings, their spouses, all die. They lost their mobility and independence and were forced to move into a retirement home. It is inspiring that people can go through so much crap and still be completely satisfied with their lives.
I learned that I admire the elderly because they are able to get through all of the dreadful situations they encounter and are still, at ages nearing 90, able to tell their life stories with smiles on their faces. I can only hope, that if I am lucky enough to live that long, I will be able to sit down in my rocking chair with my knitting, and tell some little high school girl that I had a fantastic life.
[Thanks for letting me share this, Alex!]
I remember seeing real estate advertisements that taunted us with the idea that if we actually lived there, we’d be living the good life without having to go anywhere but out our own front door. A life lived in a land of perpetual vacation sounds great to kids, but adults realize that the magic carpet would wear thin under the ceaseless traipsing of guests through their living room.
From “Alan Moore: Author of the Week,” The Week Magazine (March 20, 2009):
The author behind the hit superhero film Watchmen doesn’t plan to see it, said Adam 
Moore says writers and directors have imitated his comic’s lurid violence while leaving out its moral nuance, 
* * * *
"To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate—unlike most films." ~ Alan Moore
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
~ T.S. Eliot, from "Little Gidding," the fourth poem of his Four Quartets.
[Thank you Shinzen!]
“Most people give their attention to what they don't like. Put your attention on what you love.”
Barbershop Quartet,
East Village Grille
by Sebastian Matthews, from American Life in Poetry
Inside the standard lunch hour din they rise, four
seamless voices fused into one, floating somewhere
between a low hum and a vibration, like the sound
of a train rumbling beneath noisy traffic.
The men are hunched around a booth table,
a fire circle of coffee cups and loose fists, leaning in
around the thing they are summoning forth
from inside this suddenly beating four-chambered
heart. I've taken Avery out on a whim, ordered quesadillas
and onion rings, a kiddy milk with three straws.
We're already deep in the meal, extra napkins
and wipes for the grease coating our faces
and hands like mid-summer sweat. And because
we're happy, lost in the small pleasures of father
and son, at first their voices seem to come from inside
us. Who's that boy singing? Avery asks, unable
to see these men wrapped in their act. I let him
keep looking, rapt. And when no one is paying
attention, I put down my fork and take my boy's hand,
and together we dive into the song. Or maybe it pours
into us, and we're the ones brimming with it.
From “Musicians’ Brains ‘Fine-Tuned’ to Identify Emotion,” by Wendy Leopold
In a study in the latest issue of European Journal of Neuroscience, an interdisciplinary Northwestern research team for the first time provides biological evidence that musical training enhances an individual’s ability to recognize emotion in sound.
“Quickly and accurately identifying emotion in sound is a skill that translates across all arenas, whether in the predator-infested jungle or in the classroom, boardroom or bedroom,” says Dana Strait, primary author of the study.
A doctoral student in the Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music, Strait does research in the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory directed by neuroscientist Nina Kraus. The laboratory has done pioneering work on the neurobiology underlying speech and music perception and learning-associated brain plasticity.
[A] study titled “Musical Experience and Neural Efficiency: Effects of Training on Subcortical Processing of Vocal Expressions in Emotion,” [which was] funded by the National Science Foundation, found that the more years of musical experience musicians possessed and the earlier the age they began their music studies also increased their nervous systems’ abilities to process emotion in sound.
[Thanks Dōshin!]
From Jonathan Carroll:
Love sits at any table
comfortable with the surroundings.
It has great stories to tell—
you can't get enough of them.
It knows every menu; can say the names of dishes
in any language. Trust it to order for you.
Maybe during the meal it waves to someone it knows
across the room, but don't be jealous.
Tonight it only has eyes for you
and wouldn't want to be anywhere else on earth.
[Check out his blog and this recent Barnes & Noble interview.]
Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day:
equanimity • \ee-kwuh-NIM-uh-tee\ • 
• noun
Meaning
*1 : evenness of mind especially under stress
2 : right disposition : balance
Example Sentence
Carol's famous equanimity didn't desert her, even in the midst of the crisis.
See a map of "equanimity" in the Visual Thesaurus.
Did you know?
If you think "equanimity" looks like it has something to do with "equal," you've guessed correctly. Both "equanimity" and "equal" are derived from "aequus," a Latin adjective meaning "level" or "equal." "Equanimity" comes from the combination of "aequus" and "animus" ("soul" or "mind") in the Latin phrase "aequo animo," which means "with even mind."
English speakers began using "equanimity" early in the 17th century with the now obsolete sense "fairness or justness of judgment," which was in keeping with the meaning of the Latin phrase.
Equanimity quickly came to suggest keeping a cool head under any sort of pressure, not merely when presented with a problem, and eventually it developed an extended sense for general balance and harmony.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
[Thanks Krista!]
From Content by Cory Doctorow:
We make the future in the same way: we extrapolate as much as we can, and whenever we run out of imagination, we just shovel the present into the holes. That’s why our pictures of the future always seem to resemble the present, only more so.
So the futurists told us about the Information Economy: they took all the “information-based” businesses (music, movies, and microcode, in the neat coinage of Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash) and projected a future in which these would grow to dominate the world’s economies.
…The futurists were just plain wrong. An “information economy” can’t be based on selling information. Information technology make copying information easier and easier. The more IT you have, the less control you have over the bits you send out into the world. It will never, ever, EVER get any harder to copy information from here on in. The information economy is about selling everything except information.
The U.S. traded its manufacturing sector’s health for its entertainment industry, hoping the Police Academy sequels could take the place of the rustbelt. The U.S. bet wrong.
From An Alchemy of Mind by Diane Ackerman:
Seeing themselves reflected in one another’s eyes, the Romans coined the word pupil, which meant “little doll.” Orchids take their name from the Greek word for testicle. Pansy derives from the French word pensée, or “thought,” because the flower seemed to have such a pensive face. Bless originally meant to redden with blood, as in sacrifice. Hence “God bless you” literally means “God bathe you in blood.” The snub of a cold shoulder originated in Europe, during the Middle Ages, when people who overstayed their welcome were served cold beef shoulder (rather than hot food); after a few cold meals, guests got the message. We say “windows” because Norsemen kept their doors closed in winter, relying on a ventilation hole (or “eye”) in the roof. The wind played through it expressively, and it became known as vindr auga, the “wind’s eye,” which the English changed to “window.”
We inhabit a deeply imagined world that exists alongside the real physical world. Even the crudest utterance, or the simplest, contains the fundamental poetry by which we live. This mind fabric, woven of images and illusions, shields us. In a sense, or rather in all senses, it’s a shock absorber. As harsh as life seems to us now, it would feel even worse—hopelessly, irredeemably harsh—if we didn’t veil it, order it, relate familiar things, create mental cushions.
One of the most surprising facts about human beings is that we seem to require a poetic version of life. It’s not just that some of us enjoy reading or writing poetry, or that many people wax poetic in emotional situations, but that all human beings of all ages in all cultures all over the world automatically tell their story in a poetic way, using the elemental poetry concealed in everyday language to solve problems, communicate desires and needs, even talk to themselves…
Sometimes I think we mainly invent words to help picture ourselves in metaphorical mirrors. We humans are easy to know, but hard to know well…
Despite our best efforts, the closer we look at anything, be it wildflowers or fever, the scrappier language becomes. It fails where we need it most, at the outskirts of mind, memory, and emotion. Poets solve this problem by fusion (metaphors), bridging (similes), and other devices. But whole cultures do it, too….The art of the brain is to use poetry to navigate the world. We breed symbols, we speak fossil poetry.
* * * * *
“Poetry is a dream dreamed in the presence of reason.”
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
by Emily Dickinson
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As Sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—
From the introduction to Antony Gormley written by the artist:
Making sculpture stems from a need to leave a trace of existence, but there is an even greater need to challenge existence itself with mute objects that look back at us and question our materiality with their own.
Sculpture is a material measure—a form of physical thinking that can produce feeling. A form that can help us to think and feel in ways that we had not previously thought possible, as does the act of making the form. Sculpture has a bodily dimension—in touching you are also weighing, judging, anticipating. I am using my existence to change my existence.
A sculptural object is a testimony to the story of its own making, while having a dialogue with all the made and unmade things already in the world. The project moves forward by making, and looking at what one has made. Things demand to be made, but that demand comes from things that have already been made. At times it is difficult to know who is the maker, and who the made.
Sculpture can treat everything as raw material—whether it is a sophisticated readymade piece of technology, a body or a piece of wood. It achieves a self-sufficiency and independence whilst acknowledging a dependency on all that already exists.
my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and
taste and smell and hearing and sight keep hitting and
chipping with sharp fatal tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of
chrome and execute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am
becoming something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and
scarlet bellowings.
E.E. Cummings, Portraits, VII
Parker Palmer, in conversation with Bill Moyers (Feb. 20, 2009):
We don't see it every day. We may not see it very often. But we know it's a possibility among real people and real space and time. Now, what happens when we don't learn to hold the tension between what is and what we know to be possible?
I think what happens is we flip out on one side or the other.
Flip out into too much possibility and you get irrelevant idealism. Which sounds very different from corrosive cynicism but both have the same function in our lives. Both take us out of the action. Both keep us out of the fray...Because if you don't have a capacity to hold the tension in your heart between reality and possibility then you're just going to give up eventually...I don't think in this culture we teach very much or have very much formation around the holding of these great tensions, which is so critical to our lives. We want instant resolution. You give us a tension. We want it to get it over within fifteen minutes.
[Thanks Kit!]
“If you wanted to create an education environment that was 
~ Dr. John Medina, from Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
The answer has to do with our assumptions about the skills of paying attention. What is the point of learning to stay in the present more often? Isn’t this just one more trendy drop in the ocean of self-improvement strategies that fail to live up to their promises?
Habit
by Jane Hirshfield, from Given Sugar, Given Salt
left first, then right.
The morning potion's teaspoon
of sweetness stirred always
for seven circlings—no fewer, no more—
into the cracked blue cup.
Touching the pocket for wallet,
for keys,
before closing the door.
How did we come
to believe these small ritual's promise,
that we are today the selves we yesterday knew,
tomorrow will be?
How intimate and unthinking,
the way the toothbrush is shaken dry after use,
the part we wash first in the bath.
Which habits we learned from others
and which are ours alone we may never know.
Unbearable to acknowledge
how much they are themselves our fated life.
Open the traveling suitcase—
There the beloved red sweater,
bright tangle of necklace, earrings of amber.
Each confirming: I chose these, I.
But habit is different: it chooses.
And we, its good horse,
opening our mouths at even the sight of the bit.
Anita Barrows in conversation with Krista Tippett from “The Soul in Depression,” Speaking of Faith (Feb. 26, 2009):
Suddenly, in depression you are ripped from what felt like your life, from what felt right and familiar and balanced and ordinary and ordered, and you're just thrown into this place where you're ravaged, where the wind rips the leaves from the trees, and there you are. Yeah. Very, very much the soul in depression.
This is a poem called "Questo Muro." It is a phrase from a passage in Dante's Purgatory. Dante has been in the depths of depression, in the depths of the inferno, and he's now working his way out of it toward Beatrice, who is — you know, you could call her the soul or the anima. And he and Virgil are climbing the mountain, and all of a sudden they get to a wall of fire, and you can't go any farther unless you go through it. So this is my poem, and it really is a poem, I think, about finding the courage to persist, to go through that fire.
Questo Muro
You will come at a turning of the trail
to a wall of flame
After the hard climb & the exhausted dreaming
you will come to a place where he
with whom you have walked this far
will stop will stand
beside you on the treacherous steep path
& stare as you shiver at the moving wall, the flame
that blocks your vision of what comes after.
And that one
who you thought would accompany you always,
who held your face
tenderly a little while in his hands —
who pressed the palms of his hands into drenched grass
& washed from your cheeks, the tear-tracks —
he is telling you now
that all that stands between you
& everything you have known since the beginning
is this: this wall. Between yourself
& the beloved, between yourself & your joy,
the riverbank swaying with wildflowers, the shaft
of sunlight on the rock, the song.
Will you pass through it now, will you let it consume
whatever solidness this is
you call your life, & send
you out, a tremor of heat,
a radiance, a changed
flickering thing?
April 5, 1974
by Richard Wilbur, from New and Collected Poems
In the dull pasture where I strolled
Was something I could not believe.
Dead grass appeared to slide and heave,
Though still too frozen-flat to stir,
And rocks to twitch, and all to blur.
What was this rippling of the land?
Was matter getting out of hand
And making free with natural law?
I stopped and blinked, and then I saw
A fact as eerie as a dream,
There was a subtle flood of steam
Moving upon the face of things. 
And what of snow was still around;
It came of winter's giving ground
So that the freeze was coming out,
As when a set mind, blessed by doubt,
Relaxes into mother-wit.
Flowers, I said, will come of it.
[More by Richard Wilbur at The Writer’s Almanac.]
Daron Larson
Freelance Contemplative
