~~~~~~~~~~~
THE JOURNEY
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver
~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~
COURAGE
Courage is the price which life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
from little things;
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear
Nor mountain heights, where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.
How can life grant us boon of living, compensate
for dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate,
Unless we dare
The soul’s dominion?
Each time we make a choice we pay
With courage to behold resistless day
And count it fair.
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean,
and the first person to fly solo across the Pacific from Honolulu to Oakland, California.
Her first poems were submitted for publication the same year she became a pilot.
Photo: Amelia Earhart perched atop the nose of her plane in 1936.
Photo Credit: The New York Times
~~~~~~~~~~~
BEFORE I LEAVE THE STAGE
Before I leave the stage
I will sing the only song
I was meant truly to sing.
It is the song
of I AM.
Yes: I am Me
&
You.
WE ARE.
I love Us with every drop
of our blood
every atom of our cells
our waving particles
—undaunted flags of our Being—
neither here nor there.
Alice Walker
From The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness into Flowers, (New Poems).
Art credit: “After the Show,” photograph by Garrett Crawford.
