Poems, Quotes, Analects, Aphorisms, Proverbs...

From Parabola:

Photograph: Edward Steichen, “Experiment in Three-Color Photography,” 1906






Visiting the Graveyard



When I think of death

it is a bright enough city,

and every year more faces there

are familiar



but not a single one

notices me,

though I long for it,

and when they talk together,



which they do

very quietly,

it’s in an unknowable language -

I can catch the tone



but understand not a single word -

and when I open my eyes

there’s the mysterious field, the beautiful trees.

There are the stones.



—Mary Oliver, “Red Bird.” Courtesy of Whiskey River