sight

I Can See Your Tracks

/ Elisa / 1 Comment

“Oh I can see your tracks
But I won’t follow them
I’ll just hope for rain
Or some kind of crazy wind
To erase them
And chase them into oblivion

Oh I can smell the smoke
From your fire, babe
But I’ll leave you alone
And sleep in this lonely cave
And pray for
A storm to scrub this dirt away

Oh I can hear the snakes
Creeping cross the scene
I’m quaking in my boots
But you won’t hear me scream
You’re half way
Down to New Orleans
You’re half way
Down to New Orleans”
–source

Morning Trip (68)

/ Elisa / 1 Comment

“Mindful

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?”
– Mary Oliver

Fullness and An Evening Dance with My Lover, The Moon

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“From birth to death time surrounds us
with its intangible walls.
We fall with the centuries, the years, the minutes.
Is time only a falling, only a wall?
For a moment, sometimes, we see
not with our eyes but with our thoughts
time resting in a pause.
The world half-opens and we glimpse
the immaculate kingdom,
the pure forms, presences
unmoving, floating
on the hour, a river stopped:
truth, beauty, numbers, ideas
and goodness, a word buried
in our century.
A moment without weight or duration,
a moment outside the moment:
thought sees, our eyes think.”
– Octavio Paz

The Vessel is continuously in movement, fluid. A cup can only hold a limited and coveted amount. A vessel, like our human blood reminds us of the gift of constant fullness combined with constant motion, renewal and grace. Be Full!

–elisa

Where does Passion go in Winter?

/ Elisa / 4 Comments

Where is that giggling bounding joy? The one that comes each day of the greening. Pause…inhale…discern…locate… Each new scent. Each new sound. Closing my eyes, following and searching, grinning, opening eyes wide in Joyful Passion filled abandon having located its source.

Spring Joy--elisabeth connelley

Where does it hide in the winter?
OH! There it is….

Scent of Meyer Lemons!

It’s also smelling basil, though I cannot post that one this morning, it got frosted over night on the windowsill! Shhh…ignore that part…imagine bright green and very large basil leaves, radiating light through leaves, creamy denseness upon fingertips…fingertips across lips and inhaled mmmm nothing like it.

I think for me, knowing passion comes more easily with each new sight and sound of the growing season, it is still to be had in Winter, I just need to pay more attention and rummage a bit!

Morning Trip (33) Butterfly, Bread, and Rumi

/ Elisa / 4 Comments


“A Year With Rumi by Coleman Barks

A Basket of Fresh Bread (2)

There is a basket of fresh bread on your head,

yet you go door to door asking for crusts.

Knock on the inner door. No other.

Sloshing knee-deep in clear streamwater,

you keep wanting a drink from other poeple’s waterbags.

Water is everywhere around you,

but you see only barriers that keep you from water.

A horse is moving beneath the rider’s thighs,

yet still he asks, Where is my horse?

Right there, under you. Yes, this is a horse,

but where’s the horse? Can’t you see? Yes,

I can see, but whoever saw such a horse?

Mad with thirst, he cannot drink from the stream

running so close by his face.

He is like a pearl on the deep bottom

wondering, inside the shell, Where is the ocean?

His mental questionings form the barrier.

HIs physical eyesight bandages his knowing.

Self-consciousness plugs his ears.

Stay bewildered in God and only that.”