Weekly Reading

Famous
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence –
which knew it would inherit the earth before anybody said so.
The cat, sleeping on the fence, is famous to the birds watching him from the birdhouse. The tear is famous – briefly – to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom – is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth – more famous than the dress shoe
–which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it,
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men who smile while crossing streets.
To sticky children in grocery lines, famous is the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous or a buttonhole.
Not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Weekly Reading

The rain keeps falling.
Even in dreams.
The skull leaks badly

There's a constant dripping
down the back.
The rain, which no one

Remembers starting
Keeps on falling,
Even on the finest days.
-Shinkichi Takahashi

Weekly Reading

The flowers
I wanted to bring you,
wild and wet
from the pale dunes

and still smelling
of the summer night,
and holding a moment or two
of the night cricket's

humble prayer,
would have been so handsome
in your hands-

so happy-I dare to say it-
in your hands-
yet your smile
would have been nowhere

and maybe you would have tossed them
onto the ground,
or maybe, for tenderness,
you would have taken them

into your house
and given them water
and put them in a dark corner
out of reach.

In matters of love
of this kind
there are things we long to do
but must not do.

I would not want to see
your smile dimished.
And the flowers, anyway,
are happy just where they are,

on the pale dunes,
above the cricket's humble nest,
under the blue sky
that loves us all.
~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

The thought manifests as the word.
The word manifests as the deed.
The deed develops into habit and habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways with care.
And let it spring out of love.
Born out of concern for all beings.
As the shadow follows the body, as we think, so we become.
-From the Dhammapada, sayings of the Buddha