"Take it and return it: the kiss of love."
~Unknown

"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason."
~Immanuel Kant

Love this poem...
 

One of my favorites...

“With a chaste heart
With pure eyes I celebrate your beauty
Holding the leash of blood
So that it might leap out and trace your outline
Where you lie down in my Ode
As in a land of forests or in surf
In aromatic loam, or in sea music

Beautiful nude
Equally beautiful your feet
Arched by primeval tap of wind or sound
Your ears, small shells
Of the splendid American sea
Your breasts of level plentitude
Fulfilled by living light
Your flying eyelids of wheat
Revealing or enclosing
The two deep countries of your eyes

The line your shoulders have divided into pale regions
Loses itself and blends into the compact halves of an apple
Continues separating your beauty down into two columns of
Burnished gold
Fine alabaster
To sink into the two grapes of your feet
Where your twin symmetrical tree burns again and rises
Flowering fire
Open chandelier
A swelling fruit
Over the pact of sea and earth

From what materials
Agate?
Quartz?
Wheat?
Did your body come together?
Swelling like baking bread to signal silvered hills
The cleavage of one petal
Sweet fruits of a deep velvet
Until alone remained
Astonished
The fine and firm feminine form

It is not only light that falls over the world spreading inside your body
Yet suffocate itself
So much is clarity
Taking its leave of you
As if you were on fire within

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”


― Pablo Neruda

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning,
Satan shudders & says... 'Oh shit...she's awake!!

it's true.
 

A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious
daring starts from within.

Eudora Welty

I just love this post! :) I suppose it is something to keep in mind.

As a nod towards nature who has blessed my backyard with blooming daffodils, snowdrops and camellias.
 

I wandered lonely as a cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ~Lao Tzu

Happiness after Grief
 

feels like such a betrayal: the hurt not denied, not pushed away, but gone entirely
for that moment you can't help feeling good in, a moment of sudden, irrational joy
over nothing of consequence, really, which makes it all somehow seem even worse.
Shouldn't happiness be the result of some grand event, something adequate to counter
that aching, gaping chasm that opened when . . . But, no: it's merely this: there goes
our little neighbor, running barefoot, no pants, fox stole wrapped around her shoulders.

Kim Addonizio

Conversation
 

We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don't tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life
is a chain of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,
and beginning to rise heavenward
in their confirmation dresses,
like white helium balloons,
the wreathes of flowers on their heads spinning,
and above all that,
that's where I'm floating,
and that's what it's like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?



Ai Ogawa

“ The simplest truth is more powerful than even the most elaborate lie.” ― Ally Carter

"Trying to stay afloat in life can be difficult. But don't mistake every rope for a lifeline. Some ropes have anchors tied to the other end." - Unknown

"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” ― Winston Churchill

Oh, Great Spirit......

Whose voice I hear in the winds,
And whose breath gives life to all the world,
hear me, I am small and weak,
I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes ever behold
the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have
made and my ears sharp to hear your voice.
Make me wise so that I may understand the things
you have taught my people.

Let me learn the lessons you have
hidden in every leaf and rock.

I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother,
but to fight my greatest enemy - myself.
Make me always ready to come to you
with clean hands and straight eyes.

So when life fades, as the fading sunset,
my Spirit may come to you without shame.


(translated by Lakota Sioux Chief Yellow Lark in 1887)

Now Seniors have their own texting codes:

* ATD- At the Doctor's

* BFF - Best Friends Funeral

* BTW- Bring the Wheelchair

* BYOT - Bring Your Own Teeth

* CBM- Covered by Medicare

* CUATSC- See You at the Senior Citizens

* DWI- Driving While Incontinent

* FWIW - Forgot Where I Was

* GGPBL- Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low

* GHA - Got Heartburn Again

* LMDO- Laughing My Dentures Out

* LOL- Living on Lipitor

* * TOT- Texting on Toilet

*


Hope these help. GGLKI (Gotta Go, Laxative Kicking in!)

Great reminders for love in the air this month!

Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.--Grandma Moses

“If loneliness was a choice, what was the other option? To settle for second-best and try to be happy with that?" - Unknown

“Agape doesn't love somebody because they're worthy.
Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love.
Agape doesn't love somebody because they're beautiful.
Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful.” ― Rob Bell

“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
― Will Rogers