I Have Learned 5 Things 1. The sulfurous flame sunbeams in corners lightning like cracked glass the bulb of an idea your dark eyes all have one source. 2. Pain is truer than people truer than a full plate truer than God 3. Joy is a suitcase packed with everyday things no beaded gowns, no hats no umbrella just pajamas, a toothbrush, sneakers. If it rains stand there soak up every drop like applause. 4. I have learned that I want less the sound of lake water lapping tadpoles listless in sun-heated shallows wispy grass, knobby reeds greeting me, my name caught in their raspy throats one or two clouds and a bird, maybe, if it doesn't sing. 5. Old age is where you started, a child looking up at the light at jumbled faces at mouths whispering, 'there, now, go back to sleep.'
More Quotes from Elaine Christensen:
WAKING In spring I write of earth still half asleep, of matted grass and weeds not yet aware that stretching fingers stir the soil down deep and sift the frozen dreams of roots with air that breathes forgotten scents of blossoming. I write of branches stiff and gnarled with cold, like ancient bones that can't remember spring or how the sun could painlessly unfold each timid, paling leaf. I write of birds returning one by one. They leave their flocks for tempting caterpillars scrawled like words across my garden wall of crumbling rocks. These early signs of spring unthaw my brain from numbing winter rest. I write again.Elaine Christensen
The Daffodil It is the quiet, the suffocating quiet that is so hard. I know the death you fear, the blackness the narrow bed the waiting for spring. It is a long time to have faith for you who buried me and for me with no voice to make sure I am remembered. Will you fall to your knees in April grass when you hear the sound of my yellow trumpet.
Elaine Christensen
Last Request Maybe it's because the days are growing shorter, and each one starts and ends in cold, maybe that's why the sun on my back this afternoon is a loving arm not a lover's, but a son's, the one who seldom comes anymore for love. Maybe it's becau.
Elaine Christensen
Covenant Water runs from a spout below my open window. A February sun thaws what's left of Thursday's storm. It is a day of whites and blues a squint-eyed day, a hold-still, breathe-deep day. When God made the world and put Adam and Eve in the garden of greens and orchids and grapes, part of Him longed for the day when they would discover winter. When it snows in the South, parents wake their children, even at three in the morning to see flakes like goose feathers, to feel them tingling on their eyelids. Children can't begin to understand what is given them, what it costs, that the cost doesn't matter. Dear God, don't let me take this day for granted. White edges every fence. Each roof is an untouched field. The honey locust offers clumps of snow like winter fruit left unpicked in its limbs. The ponderosa spreads voluminous petticoats out to dry. Light refracts, splinters across the snow like sequins scattered and hand-sewn on my daughter's wedding veil. It is a day for making vows, the kind you tell no one, the kind you keep.
Elaine Christensen
DRY LAND All around me your death like some great ocean rages, wave after crashing wave till the cliffs of my arms give way to defenseless shore and I lie blackened against the sand. My hair streams like weeds about my head and pulls me, as surely as the moon pulls her tides, to the depths of earth. In darkness, I am swallowed. In darkness, I remember Jonah... that God prepared for him a black fish and after three days and three nights dear God, dry land appeared.
Elaine Christensen
Sorrow Is A Box Of Flowers What it's all about is sorrow I've become convinced of that sorrow fences each field sorrow clings to stone walls sorrow hedges the road on both sides when her son died sorrow coated her spoon it curled in her bed it hung in her.
Elaine Christensen
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
Based on Topics: Age Quotes, Birds Quotes, Idea Quotes, Joy & Excitement Quotes, Light Quotes, Pain Quotes, Sleep QuotesBased on Keywords: beaded, bulb, gowns, greeting, jumbled, knobby, lapping, listless, pajamas, reeds, shallows, sneakers, soak, suitcase, sulfurous, sunbeams, tadpoles, toothbrush, wispy
The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
Blaise Pascal
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.
George Carlin
Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self.
B. R. Ambedkar