Eating the Avocado, by Carrie Fountain

Now I know that I’ve never described
anything, not one single thing, not
the flesh of the avocado which darkens
so quickly, though if you scrape
what’s been exposed to the air it’s new-green
beneath like nothing ever happened.
I want to describe this evening, though
it’s not spectacular. The baby babbling
in the other room over the din
and whistle of a football game, and now
the dog just outside the door, scratching,
rattling the tags on her collar, the car
going by, far away but loud, a car without
a muffler, and the sound of the baby
returning again, pleasure and weight.
I want to describe the baby. I want to describe
the baby for many hours to anyone
who wishes to hear me. My feelings for her
take me so far inside myself I can see the pure
holiness in motherhood, and it makes me
burn with success and fear, the hole her
coming has left open, widening. Last night
we fed her some of the avocado I’ve just
finished eating while writing this poem.
Her first food. I thought my heart might burst,
knowing she would no longer be made
entirely of me, flesh of my flesh. Startled
in her amusing way by the idea of eating,
she tried to take it in, but her mouth
pushed it out. And my heart did burst. 

Archaic Torso of Apollo, by Rainer Maria Rilke

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

There those who water
the seed of light that no one sees.
They are visionaries.

And those who hold others, feeling
the power of what they can become.
They are teachers.

And those who care enough
to love the truth of what-is
until Heaven is revealed
here on Earth.
They are sages.

Few are celebrities.
Few are rich.
The best
are often silent,
deflecting attention,
bowing to the gift.

This is for them
and their lineage
and the hope
that we can do this
for each other.

— Mark Nepo, Epigraph of the book ‘Drinking from the river of light: The Life of Expression’

Even if, from the sky, poison befalls all,
I am still sweetness
wrapped in sweetness
wrapped in sweetness.

Rumi

‘The doors to the world of the wild self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old old story, that is a door, if you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.’

Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Nikki Mclarron

Larissa Hofmann

Charlotte Lapalus

The interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect in the world.
— James Baldwin