You Do Not Have to Be Good

Posted on by randomwordbyruth

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

Night Crawlers

Posted on by randomwordbyruth

Just a private conversation between the night crawlers…and, I.

As the sun wakes its weary head…mirrored reflections on mistakes made.

Holes bored into my soul.

Curled in upon itself…divots, to which I dare no enemy tread.

Modern day judgment comes often.

Frequently it is swift.

Always it is free.

I could tap love on her slender, shoulder.

But I appreciate that she not know such demons exist.

What it means to stare

Posted on by randomwordbyruth

Would have been better to keep an existential eye…

while looking between green gray hues

and, peering at anemic disarray.

Languid disorders, sight unseen,

grappling with a colorful mind…

∞

Well, in earnest, it is an ordeal best suited for the unrefined.

Dragnets flung over the road maps,.

collecting ‘speaking in third person’…

like passing the hat.

∞

Well noted, a window’s pardoning glare,

and,

with a quick glimpse forward,

fleetingly witness…

to be or not to be…be aware.

Forthwith, we will beg,

pardon my stare.

Pardon my stare.

“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Wide Open Spaces

Posted on by randomwordbyruth

Wide open spaces, looking at the trace of distant faces.

I sit in wait for moments to awaken.

Lonely, as I confront myself to be…

on a warmed summer’s bench.

There is only mystery.

Counting numbers, enlisting letters…

listening more than I think…

in wide open spaces.

Lily

Posted on by randomwordbyruth

The warmth of lily pads had beckoned me back.

Had I known I lost my way…would I have come here to stay?

So far down the broken walls and Morrill Ponds…I had strayed.

A graceful, swoop of Blue Heron, caught my entanglements and, my manner of being easily…dismayed.

Hidden inlets and their flowers…had rosined up the bow to a bullfrog’s song.

Sun bathing Snap Turtles felt no need to run from my dusty, collective thoughts.

In the echo of my dusty self indulgence….

Could it be I just needed to get out of my own way?