Mark Doty - Golden Retrievals

Golden, a photo by wablair on Flickr.

Mark Doty - Golden Retrievals

                                                                            My work:

            to unsnare time's warp (and woof!), retrieving,

            my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

            a Zen master's bronzy gong, calls you here,

            entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

Copyright 1998 Mark Doty, Sweet Machine: Poems HarperFlamingo

Mark Doty writes: 'Dogs, in a way, are the present. Animals are infinitely attentive to now, wholly present with what's in front of them. Entirely themselves, without compromise or dissembling. Pure directness of being, the soul right in the eyes, brimming to the edges.'

secret brotherhood

'In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the books she took out of the municipal library ...'

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera, 1984  

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/feb/04/depression-bleak-stories-consoling-self-help 

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/24/neil-gaiman-face-facts-need-fiction 

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming 
 

Baja night sky, a photo by king damus on Flickr.

Invictus

By William Ernest Henley

 

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182194