An Estate
The swimming pool appears to lack one edge. Water strains gently at its own meniscus and overflows the blue slate to allege to the god of boundaries that there are no boundaries.
The bathhouse is a fane of Alaskan cedar, a virgin forest marked out and consumed, all for the delight of a Japanese master, and without the use of a single nail.
A Brahms quintet leaks from the undergrowth around each supine body and beaded drink. She leads us through a blushing sandstone labyrinth, flanking inducements of the sybaritic
to stoop gracefully where a cliff swallow lies motionless, small stunned voluptuary, in noon’s thin margin of glass and shadow; and though she leaves for Anguilla on Tuesday,
pelagic traveler, to her alone (not to a guest whom privilege makes passive) it falls to cup that body’s buff and cinnamon and raise it to us, ruffled and alive.
i.m. Laura Baudo Sillerman (1947-2024)
There are Stars
There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct.
There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world even though they are no longer among the living.
These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind.
- Hannah Senesh
Friendship
Oh the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a personhaving neither to weigh thoughts, nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keepingand with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
- Dinah Maria Craik (1826-87)
The Small Man Builds Cages for Everyone
The small man Builds cages for everyone He Knows.
While the sage, Who has to duck his head When the moon is low, Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the Beautiful Rowdy Prisoners. - Hafiz
