biking & beautiful spring days

Coming home

finally home after a long time away... so much has changed, but I'm so grateful for a chance to rest at last.

When we're driving, in the dark,
on the long road
to Provincetown, which lies empty
for miles, when we're weary,
when the buildings
and the scrub pines lose
their familiar look,
I imagine us rising
from the speeding car,
I imagine us seeing
everything from another place — the top
of one of the pale dunes
or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea—
and what we see is the world
that cannot cherish us
but which we cherish,
and what we see is our life
moving like that,
along the dark edges
of everything —the headlights
like lanterns
sweeping the blackness —
believing in a thousand
fragile and unprovable things,
looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping
barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow streets,
the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me.
-Mary Oliver

grateful for these hands that create

a little Grace on a dark day

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attainfreefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.
-Denise Levertov

Within This Strange and Quickened Dust

O God, within this strange and quickened dust
The beating heart controls the coursing blood
In discipline that holds in check the flood
But cannot stem corrosion and dark rust,
In flesh’s solitude I count it blest
That only you, my Lord, can see my heart
With passion’s darkness tearing it apart
With storms of self, and tempests of unrest,
But your love breaks through blackness, bursts with light;
We separate ourselves, but you rebind
In Dayspring all our fragments; body, mind
And spirit join, unite against the night.
Healed by your love, corruption and decay
Are turned, and whole, we greet the light of day.
-Madeleine L’Engle

Hope is the Thing with Feathers pt. 2

Hope is the Thing with Feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson