Louise Erdrich

I'm usually not one for inspirational quotes but a friend shared this with me and I think it is beautiful. It starts off as a predictable motivational number but the ending analogy, I think, is quite profound.

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on this earth. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you have tasted as many as you could."
                                                                                                                          -Louise Erdrich

Might Be a Country Song

I've got houseplants and cast-iron cookware.
I've got a heavy bookshelf and a soft velvet sitting chair.

I can no longer fit my belongings in the back of my car.
And if I could, I don't think I'd get very far.

I've learned that I've got some needs of my own
Needs I'm not fit to run away from anymore.
And if I was, I don't think I'd get very far.

Since I can no longer give everything away,
I suppose it'd be best to stay.

I've got a bedroom with large windows.
A room for thinking or refusing to think.
I've got houseplants and a good deal of what I need.

Surely there is greener grass beyond the next stretch of highway.
But since I can no longer give everything away,
I suppose it'd be best to stay.

I've got houseplants and a rooting feeling.
Soft velvet that begs me to sit.
Cast-iron weighing me down.
So I guess I'll be seeing what it's like to stick around.

Angry Like A Child

It comes on warm and strong.

Rising up from the toes
it boils in the belly
blooming
into a firmament of fierceness.

It's a punch-a-hole-in-the-sky 

                                                        feeling.

It's a throw-the-coffee-cup-against-the-wall 

                                                                      feeling.

It's a everything-is-wrong-and-I-have-been-cheated
                                                                                     feeling.

It's a scream-in-the-middle-of-the-woods-so-nobody-can-hear
                                                                                                 feeling.

And it's a scream-in-the-middle-of-the-subway-car-so-everyone-can-hear
                                                                                                                feeling.

Its the feeling that I should have been loved better.

That my child should have been born.

Its a feeling that my hands should have been held

and not clenched into fists.

It's a feeling of having crossed
too many streets
alone.