I wake to a rising of robin voices,

their tiny chests puffed like ripe persimmons.

Acres of clouds strum across the day-blue sky,

wind breathes its endless score over heathered hills

and the sea beyond my window churns.

Somewhere a hazelnut drops rustling to the ground.

Peony peels herself open in a slow yawn 

to reveal a multitude of pleasures.

Fox darts between hedgerows, breaking her silent reverie,

orange fur brushing against golden gorse profusion.

Beneath sirens and the perpetual groan of cars,

the march of trains and planes propelled by timetables,

beneath the endless clatter of your own mind, you can, 

for a moment, hear the asparagus heaving headlong into spring.

My labor is to love this secret symphony.

You curl yourself around me at night,

song of your breath stuns me into the sweetest sleep.

And the blue glass vase sits on the table beside me, 

holding roses you bought because they smelled like an aria.

When this is over, all I want to say is that I heard the music

of the very last petal 

drop.

~Christine Valters Paintner

do you listen well?

inquiry for today~ what will you miss along the way?

what was remembered?

But what is passion, what are emotions?

There is the source of fire, there is the fullness of energy.

A man who is not on fire is nothing: he is ridiculous, he is two-dimensional.

He must be on fire even if he does make a fool of himself.

A flame must burn somewhere, otherwise no light shines; there is no warmth, nothing.

~CG Jung