Mohandas K. Gandhi: “When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.”
Someone
on this train
is close to death
I look
out the window
like I’m midway
between Rome
and Bethany
still someone
may be dead
we all know
the smell
I pray it’s
not me again
Photo: Portland, Maine – January 2019
When a man’s self is hidden from everybody else . . . it seems also to become hidden even from himself, and it permits disease and death to gnaw into his substance without his clear knowledge. — Sidney Jourard
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
Photo: Town Landing, Falmouth, Maine – January 2015
In Iceland, in early January,
when dusk begins at dawn,
alone in a wind-whipped shack,
I kneel as though cowering
before my little stove door.
Nights are immense, and my coal is black
as night.
A geologist
in his lab might be able to say,
within a million years or so, just
when and where the coal’s towering
source-plants were laid down;
I only know, while waiting for
the room to warm, it was very
long ago, and far away.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John 1:1-5
Photo: Crescent Beach, Maine – November, 2016
Edge of Atlantic 