Love Makes The Poet

Photo by Antony Chaignau

“The world is violent and mercurial — it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love — love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.” — Tennessee Williams

*

“We all participate in a universe of consciousness that is evolving all the time, from the dimmest flickering of sentiency existing in a dream state that is not even self-aware to the fabulously and unimaginably complex and radiant cosmic Beings whose lives embrace entire galaxies. And what we do affects that evolution, at least in the environment around us…

This is the true implication of saying that everything is alive. We are each caretakers for the consciousnesses evolving around us, particularly those of lesser complexity and capacity than our own.” — David Spangler

*

I wonder if my dead mother still thinks of me.

I know I don’t know her new name. I don’t know

her, not now. I don’t know if “her” is the word

burning in a stranger’s mind when he sees my dead

mother walking down the street in her bright black