The Shape of Light: TO SUN, FEAST, AND CONVERSE

Friday, April 20, 2018

TO SUN, FEAST, AND CONVERSE

Cedar Waxwings

Upstate South Carolina

Waxwings

By Robert Francis

(1901 - 1987)

Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings

chat on a February berry bush

in sun, and I am one.

Such merriment and such sobriety —

the small wild fruit on the tall stalk —

was this not always my true style?

Above an elegance of snow, beneath

a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four

birds. Can you mistake us?

To sun, to feast, and to converse

and all together — for this I have abandoned

all my other lives.

2 comments:

johnthebarmanApril 21, 2018 at 6:42 AM
Beautiful poem and picture. This is my first visit to your blog and it looks good. I must be away gardening. Still ground to dig. Best wishes and thanks for your efforts.
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VOICES OF INSPIRATION

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. ~ Ansel Adams

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world. ~ Henry Miller

You don't take a photograph, you make it. ~ Ansel Adams

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. ~ Dorothea Lange

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. ~ Confucius

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. ~ Marcel Proust

The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing. ~ Pierre Bonnard

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. ~ Henry Miller

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. ~ Albert Einstein

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. ~ William Blake