Door County, Wisconsin
Someone
Joseph O. Legaspi
Somewhere someone rises
far earlier than you before
the faintest glimmer blues
the darkest dark wakens
without alarm without body
roused by the nightingales
neighbor friend or stranger
who hasn’t seen his sunlit
children faces a cold sink
oh caffeinated sleepwalker
march daily industry with
necessity down one flight
then up two is heaven in
someone warm beside you
(Source: poets.org)
When Giving Is All We Have
Alberto Ríos, 1952
One river gives
Its journey to the next.
We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.
We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.
We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—
Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.
Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:
Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.
You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me
What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made
Something greater from the difference.
(Source: https://www.poets.org)
And in giving… We find us. And in giving…. Joy arrives. And in giving… We remember.
Into the same river we step and do not step.
You cannot step twice in the same river.
Everything flows and nothing abides.
Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.
Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool.
The moist dries, the parched becomes moist.
It is by disease that health is pleasant;
by evil that good is pleasant;
by hunger, satiety, by weariness, rest.
It is one and the same thing to be living or dead,
awake or asleep, young or old.
The former aspect in each case becomes the latter,
and the latter again the former,
by sudden unexpected reversal.
It throws apart
and then brings together again.
All things come in their due seasons.
Into the same rivers we step and do not step…
– Heraclitus
Just flow. Nothing is permanent. You change every moment. Just flow.
Méia Jacobs 