Kimberly

“it is discouraging to leave the past behind only to see it coming toward you like the thunderstorm which drenched you yesterday.”
― William H. Gass, The Tunnel

“Of mystery there is no end. Of clarity, there is precious little.”
― Leonard Michaels, The Collected Stories

“That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it -
books, bricks, grief -
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled -
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?”
― Mary Oliver

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”
― William H. Gass, A Temple of Texts