Poems of Unalome

When people allow you to know about their pain and talk about it, take your shoes off. It’s a holy place. Be humble, be kind when someone shows you vulnerability. - Amani Albair art | Sandra Bierman

From "The Book of Time"  2. For how many years have you gone through the house shutting the windows, while the rain was still five miles away and veering, o plum-colored clouds, to the north, away from you and you did not even know enough to be sorry, you were glad those silver sheets, with the occasional golden staple, were sweeping on, elsewhere, violent and electric and uncontrollable–- and will you find yourself finally wanting to forget all enclosures, including the enclosure of yourself, o lonely leaf, and will you dash finally, frantically, to the windows and haul them open and lean out to the dark, silvered sky, to everything that is beyond capture, shouting I’m here, I’m here! Now, now, now, now, now.                                 Art credit: Andrew Wyeth

The witchery of living is my whole conversation with you, my darlings. All I can tell you is what I know. Look, and look again. This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes. It’s more than bones. It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse. It’s more than the beating of the single heart. It’s praising. It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving. You have a life—just imagine that! You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another. Excerpt from “To Begin With, the Sweet Grass” by Mary Oliver