angelbirdflies

SOJOURNS IN THE PARALLEL WORLD by Denise Levertov We live our lives of human passions, cruelties, dreams, concepts, crimes and the exercise of virtue in and beside a world devoid of our preoccupations, free from apprehension—though affected, certainly, by our actions. A world parallel to our own though overlapping. We call it “Nature”; only reluctantly admitting ourselves to be “Nature” too. Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions, our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute, an hour even, of pure (almost pure) response to that insouciant life: cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing pilgrimage of water, vast stillness of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane, animal voices, mineral hum, wind conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering of fire to coal—then something tethered in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free. No one discovers just where we’ve been, when we’re caught up again into our own sphere (where we must...

LOVE AFTER LOVE by Derek Walcott The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

It is mid-morning. The sun hints at the summer months ahead, as I walk around Denver’s largest lake alongside other city goers similarly seeking a bit of nature on a fine spring day.  Couples and families dot the park, lounging on blankets and feasting on warmth. A man hurries past, gesticulating wildly to no one in particular, while talking at a fast clip to coworkers piped in through bluetooth earbuds. A young man rollerblades a languid dance while singing softly to a song only he can hear.  Runners dart past, brows furrowed with concentration.  My uttered hello's are lost amidst an array of podcasts, playlists and calls. My smile, hidden behind a cloth mask, crinkles my eyes in welcome.  I walk on. The lake narrows as it bends around its eastern edge. I round the corner and see her, standing in the center of the path, three-foot-tall on tiptoe, wearing a yellow canvas hat pulled low over ruffled curls.  Her lemony sun dress layered atop rainbow striped leggin...