q

The Last Rites of the Bokononist Faith

(excerpt)

 

God made mud.

God got lonesome.

So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"

"See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."

 

And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.

Lucky me, lucky mud.

 

I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.

Nice going, God.

Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have.

I feel very unimportant compared to You.

The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud

that didn't even get to sit up and look around.

I got so much, and most mud got so little.

Thank you for the honor!

 

Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.

What memories for mud to have!

What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!

I loved everything I saw!

Good night.

 

 

~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ~

q

In the beginning, the universe was created.  This made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad idea.

     Douglas Adams

q

You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.

     Amy Carmichael

p

Pulling Up Beside My Husband at the Stoplight

We are going to the same place
but we take two cars. Sunday morning
and there's not much traffic
so I pull up beside him at the light.
The sun is shining on the road.
Here he is in his car

beside my car,
the curve of his shoulder
through the glass, his face
fresh from a shave, his hair
against the brown of his neck.
He turns and blows me a kiss.
I watch it float on by. I ask
for another. I think of him
coming into the dark bedroom

in the mornings,
the sound of his workboots
across the carpet,
the scent of his face
when he finds me in the covers,
pulls the blanket away and
kisses my eyebrow,
the corner of my mouth,
tells me the weather report
and the precise time of day.
I roll down the window,

whistle in my throat,
pull my glasses crooked on my face,
do my best baboon snorting,
pound the horn
as if it were bread dough.
There's only the lady in the white Taurus
but he is embarrassed, glad to see the green.
I'm stepping on the gas,
catching up, wondering
what I can do at 56th and Calvert.

 

            Marjorie Saiser

p

For What Binds Us

 

There are names for what binds us:

strong forces, weak forces.

Look around, you can see them:

the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,

nails rusting into the places they join,

joints dovetailed on their own weight.

The way things stay so solidly

wherever they've been set down --

and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

 

And see how the flesh grows back

across a wound, with a great vehemence,

more strong

than the simple, untested surface before.

There's a name for it on horses,

when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

 

as all flesh

is proud of its wounds, wears them

as honors given out after battle,

small triumphs pinned to the chest --

 

And when two people have loved each other

see how it is like a

scar between their bodies,

stronger, darker, and proud;

how the black cord makes of them a single fabric

that nothing can tear or mend.

 

 ~ Jane Hirschfield ~

q

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the
potter's oven?

     -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)

p

REMOVING THE PLATE OF THE PUMP ON THE HYDRAULIC SYSTEM OF THE BACKHOE

            Gary Snyder

 

Through mud, fouled nuts, black grime

it opens, a gleam of spotless steel

machined-fit perfect

swirl of intake and output

relentless clarity

at the heart

                                                                     of work.

q

The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

     John Ruskin