“When You Return
Fallen leaves will climb back into trees.
Shards of the shattered vase will rise
and reassemble on the table.
Plastic raincoats will refold
into their flat envelopes. The egg,
bald yolk and its transparent halo,
slide back in the thin, calcium shell.
Curses will pour back into mouths,
letters un-write themselves, words
siphoned up into the pen. My gray hair
will darken and become the feathers
of a black swan. Bullets will snap
back into their chambers, the powder
tamped tight in brass casings. Borders
will disappear from maps. Rust
revert to oxygen and time. The fire
return to the log, the log to the tree,
the white root curled up
in the un-split seed. Birdsong will fly
into the lark’s lungs, answers
become questions again.
When you return, sweaters will unravel
and wool grow on the sheep.
Rock will go home to mountain, gold
to vein. Wine crushed into the grape,
oil pressed into the olive. Silk reeled in
to the spider’s belly. Night moths
tucked close into cocoons, ink drained
from the indigo tattoo. Diamonds
will be returned to coal, coal
to rotting ferns, rain to clouds, light
to stars sucked back and back
into one timeless point, the way it was
before the world was born,
that fresh, that whole, nothing
broken, nothing torn apart.”
― Ellen Bass, quote from Like a Beggar
“This choreography of ruin, the world breaking
like glass under a microscope,
the way it doesn’t crack all at once,
but spreads out from the damaged cavities.
Still for a moment it all recedes.
The backyard potatoes swell quietly
buried beneath their canopy of leaves.
The wind rubs its hands through the trees.”
― Ellen Bass, quote from Like a Beggar
“It's a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little.”
― Ellen Bass, quote from Like a Beggar
“The World Has Need Of You”
everything here
seems to need us
—Rainer Maria Rilke
I can hardly imagine it
as I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient
prayer of my arms swinging
in counterpoint to my feet.
Here I am, suspended
between the sidewalk and twilight,
the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.
What if you felt the invisible
tug between you and everything?
A boy on a bicycle rides by,
his white shirt open, flaring
behind him like wings.
It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little. Does the breeze need us?
The cliffs? The gulls?
If you’ve managed to do one good thing,
the ocean doesn’t care.
But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth,
the earth, ever so slightly, fell
toward the apple.”
― Ellen Bass, quote from Like a Beggar
“the dolphins stitch sky to sea.”
― Ellen Bass, quote from Like a Beggar
Ellen Bass
Born place: Philadelphia, PA, The United States
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“This is the first day of the rest of my life. So why is my hair sticking up like a cockerel?”
― Louise Rennison, quote from Love Is a Many Trousered Thing
“Tienes que elegir", dijo Aiden. "Puedes quedarte aquí, renunciar a la misión, y vivir una vida feliz con Caleb. Será una vida del corazón. Pero no del espíritu. Hemos sido traídos a este planeta para elegir entre dos vidas: una vida del corazón, o una vida del espíritu. Nuestro corazón nos puede atar a las cuestiones domésticas. Pero nuestro espíritu debe elevarse. Debe seguir su vocación.”
― Morgan Rice, quote from Desired
“For a moment Carl tried to picture everything in his mind, and then it happened. Somewhere inside of him, where cause and effect were not weighted against each other, and where logic and explanations never challenged consciousness, in that place where thoughts could live freely and played out against each other - right there in that spot, things fell into place, and he understood how it all fitted together”
― Jussi Adler-Olsen, quote from The Keeper of Lost Causes
“Cannot it actually be that in a wildly literal sense, unacceptable to one's reason, he meant disappearing in his art, dissolving in his verse, thus leaving of himself, of his nebulous person, nothing but verse?”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
“Miki held up a tennis ball, looked at Sara’s new Pack, and tossed it out into the forest away from the ongoing rave. They all watched it go, then they turned back to Miki.
“Okay. Go…”
Sara and Angelina slapped their hands over their friend’s mouth before the word “fetch” could come out of it.
They pulled her over to one of the food tables.
“Are you out of your ever-loving mind?! Everyone here but us is like Sara.” Angelina snapped.
“And after seeing them in action I’d rather not fuck with them!”
Miki gave that innocent smile. “It was just a little experiment.”
― quote from Go Fetch!
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Simply Christian: Wh...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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