On Heartbreak, by David Whyte

"Heartbreak is how we mature; yet we use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream, a child lost before their time. Heartbreak, we hope, is something we hope we can avoid; something to guard against, a chasm to be carefully looked for and then walked around; the hope is to find a way to place our feet where the elemental forces of life will keep us in the manner to which we want to be accustomed and which will keep us from the losses that all other human beings have experienced without exception since the beginning of conscious time. But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.”

David Whyte

You Don't Just Lose Someone Once by Donna Ashworth Words

— You Don’t Just Lose Someone Once — You lose them over and over, sometimes many times a day. When the loss, momentarily forgotten, creeps up, and attacks you from behind. Fresh waves of grief as the realization hits home, they are gone. Again.

You don’t just lose someone once, you lose them every time you open your eyes to a new dawn, and as you awaken, so does your memory, so does the jolting bolt of lightning that rips into your heart, they are gone. Again.

Losing someone is a journey, not a one-off. There is no end to the loss, there is only a learned skill on how to stay afloat, when it washes over.

Be kind to those who are sailing this stormy sea, they have a journey ahead of them, and a daily shock to the system each time they realise, they are gone, Again.

You don’t just lose someone once, you lose them every day,

for a lifetime.

© Donna Ashworth Words

From “A Servant To Servants,” by Robert Frost.

“It's rest I want - there, I have said it out -

From cooking meals for hungry hired men
And washing dishes after them - from doing
Things over and over that just won't stay done.
By good rights I ought not to have so much
Put on me, but there seems no other way.
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.
He says the best way out is always through.”

Robert Frost

A Servant to Servants

my brain and heart divorced (by John Roedel)

 

John Roedel

my brain and

heart divorced

a decade ago

over who was

to blame about

how big of a mess

I have become

eventually,

they couldn't be

in the same room

with each other

now my head and heart

share custody of me

I stay with my brain

during the week

and my heart

gets me on weekends

they never speak to one another

- instead, they give me

the same note to pass

to each other every week

and their notes they

send to one another always

says the same thing:

"This is all your fault"

on Sundays

my heart complains

about how my

head has let me down

in the past

and on Wednesday

my head lists all

of the times my

heart has screwed

things up for me

in the future

they blame each

other for the

state of my life

there's been a lot

of yelling - and crying

so,

lately, I've been

spending a lot of

time with my gut

who serves as my

unofficial therapist

most nights, I sneak out of the

window in my ribcage

and slide down my spine

and collapse on my

gut's plush leather chair

that's always open for me

~ and I just sit sit sit sit

until the sun comes up

last evening,

my gut asked me

if I was having a hard

time being caught

between my heart

and my head

I nodded

I said I didn't know

if I could live with

either of them anymore

"my heart is always sad about

something that happened yesterday

while my head is always worried

about something that may happen tomorrow,"

I lamented

my gut squeezed my hand

"I just can't live with

my mistakes of the past

or my anxiety about the future,"

I sighed

my gut smiled and said:

"in that case,

you should

go stay with your

lungs for a while,"

I was confused

- the look on my face gave it away

"if you are exhausted about

your heart's obsession with

the fixed past and your mind's focus

on the uncertain future

your lungs are the perfect place for you

there is no yesterday in your lungs

there is no tomorrow there either

there is only now

there is only inhale

there is only exhale

there is only this moment

there is only breath

and in that breath

you can rest while your

heart and head work

their relationship out."

this morning,

while my brain

was busy reading

tea leaves

and while my

heart was staring

at old photographs

I packed a little

bag and walked

to the door of

my lungs

before I could even knock

she opened the door

with a smile and as

a gust of air embraced me

she said

"what took you so long?"

~ john roedel

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• To anyone who loves this author's words, he has written a book! Check out his website at https://www.johnroedel.com 

Pablo Neruda, on trees and the cosmos

"If a single tree is home to a miniature universe of life, and if we are learning with wide-eyed wonder that a tree is not a self-contained world but a synaptic node in a complex cosmos of relationships in constant and astonishing communication with other nodes, relationships that weave the fabric of earthly life, what does it make us — what does it reveal about our character, as a planetary people and a civilization — to watch the world’s forests vanish in flames before our eyes, in wildfires so ferocious as to be visible from space?"

Pablo Neruda

https://www.brainpickings.org/2020/04/26/leland-melvin-reads-pablo-neruda-chilean-forest/