How can you just leave me standing

Alone in a world that's so cold?

Dig, If You Will, the Picture

Of the Dark Doves:

In the branches of the laurel tree

I saw two dark doves

One was the sun

and one the moon

Little neighbors I said

where is my grave — 

In my tail said the sun

On my throat said the moon

And I who was walking

with the land around my waist

saw two snow eagles

and a naked girl

One was the other

and the girl was none

Little eagles I said

where is my grave —

In my tail said the sun

On my throat said the moon

In the branches of the laurel tree

I saw two naked doves

One was the other

and both were none

Federico García Lorca.

Like shooting at a dove

That's how you think of love.

When the Wind Is Southerly

Evening Hawk:

From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through

Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds,

Out of the peak's black angularity of shadow, riding

The last tumultuous avalanche of

Light above pines and the guttural gorge,

The hawk comes.

His wing

Scythes down another day, his motion

Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear

The crashless fall of stalks of Time.

The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error.

Look! Look! he is climbing the last light

Who knows neither Time nor error, and under

Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings

Into shadow.

Long now,

The last thrush is still, the last bat

Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics. His wisdom

Is ancient, too, and immense. The star

Is steady, like Plato, over the mountain.

If there were no wind we might, we think, hear

The earth grind on its axis, or history

Drip in darkness like a leaking pipe in the cellar.

Robert Penn Warren.

Look in the mirror and point all your fingers there

No need to shout it, I've heard it again and again.

BTW, you might check out the New Noise Magazine interview with "vocalist, guitarist, and occasional drummer Julia Kugel."

Then Shall I Know Even as Also I Am Known

Sonnet 3:

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,

Now is the time that face should form another,

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose uneared womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime;

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,

Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

    But if thou live rememb’red not to be,

    Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

William Shakespeare.

And I Think to Myself

The planet can spell your name – literally. 🔤🌍

This Earth Day, see your name written in landscapes captured by Landsat: https://t.co/kcP12dhsI2 pic.twitter.com/z2Ubn42iY1

— NASA's Kennedy Space Center (@NASAKennedy) April 22, 2026

You know I went there (albeit a day late and a dollar short):

What a wonderful world...

#throwbackthursday

Fletcher, VT, April 2016.

When Martin Luther nailed his protest up to the church door in 1517...

...he may not have realized that five hundred years later, JD Vance would be called the worst catholic since Martin Luther.

A Mute and Utter Joy

When All the Wild Valley Recovers the Leaf:

When all the wild valley recovers the leaf,
   And you turn to the green land,
The day will be beautiful beyond belief,
   And beautiful you'll stand 
There on the hill with your head in the shadow
   And the whole wild world in your eyes,
With all of her good, and none of her evil
   Dark, seductive lies. 
You will stand on the highest hill forever
   With summer ablaze on the bough;
And you will be beautiful beyond belief.
   You are even more beautiful now. 

William Jay Smith.

Starless And Bible-Black

Needed to hear this for some reason.  Maybe I should watch the whole production again.

the dark that, just past twilight, overtakes a canyon

Entire Known World So Far:

What’s meant to be wind emerges from what’s

presumably a god’s mouth, as if  people

thought that way, once, as I have read they did,

though I have never believed it. Yes,

the stag inexplicably there, on a raft

at sea, how the light catches in the runneled

fur of a dog’s underpaws as he steers

across dream; yes, the gods and their

signs, if you want, everywhere—

but the wind is the wind. The map makes

the world seem like a human body

when it’s been stripped and you can finally

see it for the world it is: plunderable—

almost, in places, as if asking for it—

who wouldn’t want to lay waste to it,

the map suggests, suggest the hands

that made the map, with the kind of

grace that proves grace can

be a sturdiness, too.

Carl Phillips.