In the deep blue

The gentle tremor of a peacock woman

Autumn encounter

The seasons that pass over my fields

Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder
at the daily miracles of your life, your pain
would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your
heart, even as you have always accepted
the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity
through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the
physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink
his remedy in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided
by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips,
has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter
has moistened with His own sacred tears. 

(Khalil Gibran: Your pain is....)

There’ll come a time

‘This can’t last. This misery can’t last. I must remember that and try to control myself. Nothing lasts, really. Neither 

happiness nor despair. Not even life lasts very long. There’ll come a time in the future when I shan’t mind about this 

anymore. When I can look back and say quite peacefully how silly I was. No, no, I don’t want that time to come, ever. 

I want to remember every minute. Always. Always, to the end of my days.’

(excerpt from Brief Encounter - UK, 1945; a film by David Lean; starring Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard)

A time when for blue rain I long

Winter solitude

Winter solitude--

in a world of one color

the sound of wind.

Matsuo Basho: Winter solitude

Red was your colour

Red was your colour.

If not red, then white. But red

Was what you wrapped around you.

Blood red.

And outside the window

Poppies thin and wrinkle-frail

As the skin on blood.

Ted Hughes: Red (fragment)