Morning Trip (286)

“At around age six, perhaps, I was standing by myself in our front yard waiting for supper, just at that hour in a late summer day when the sun is already below the horizon and the risen full moon in the visible sky stops being chalky and begins to take on light. There comes the moment, and I saw it ten, when the moon goes from flat to round. For the first time it met my eyes as a globe. The word ‘moon’ came into my mouth as though fed to me out of a silver spoon. Held in my mouth the moon became a word. It had the roundness of a Concord grape Grandpa took off his vine and gave me to suck out of its skin and swallow whole, in Ohio.”
–Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings

Morning Trip (250)

“I watch the running sheets of light raised on the creek’s surface. The sight has the appeal of the purely passive, like the racing of light under clouds on a field, the beautiful dream at the moment of being dreamed. The breeze is the merest puff, but you yourself sail headlong and breathless under the gale force of the spirit.”
–Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Morning Trip (136)

“…Beauty is subversive. Why? Because it is powerful. It’s powerful because it makes us dream. It makes us think. It makes us imagine a world that’s bigger than the one we know and one that’s worth taking a risk for. Even in a brutal world, beauty exists and its power leads us to hope, faith, and love.

Beauty inspires. It’s as simple as that.”

–The Words of Michael Fryer, guest contributor On Being

When I am here–Purple Profundity: Poetry by Elisabeth Connelley

When I am here
what part of me do you love
do you fantasize about
without knowing
me
understanding you
smiling at
who
you can paint
yourself
when you feel
near
me
myself
who are you
do you ask
do you dream
illusions and puffy things
you wake up
you think me gone
eye
was never here
missing the view
of the image
in the mirror
smoke
wisps of air
curling away

–by elisabeth connelley