Canvas 1,259 — From the Beginning

And another little bird said, If you love and cherish children as they are, you need not fear what they will become. Canvas 1,259 May 5, 2022 . [ 1455 ]

And another little bird said, If you love and cherish children as they are, you need not fear what they will become. Canvas 1,259 May 5, 2022 . [ 1455 ]
Being complacent is one thing. Being happy is another. Someone must be happy, lest we all forget. Someone must be joyful, someone must laugh. Yes, someone must, someone must. Because not being happy is a crime as great as any war. Or why bring more children into the world? . [ 1388 ]
I wonder if there is anything more ludicrous than the idea of self-improvement. Imagine looking at a newborn baby and thinking such a beautiful, perfect thing can be better than it is. Imagine believing so strongly in the idea of imperfection that one is bound to see it everywhere and in everything. And then imagine teaching by example this tragic outlook to a blossoming, perfect child. . [ 1370 ]
Whatever the medium or craft — music, language, carpentry, working with the soil — the virtuoso is, first and foremost, a life-long learner — a child in an aging body whose heart and mind are an image in kind of the flowering cosmos. If it were only a matter of skill, the word virtuoso wouldn’t have the meaning it does. The world would be overrun with them. And yet that, […]
What miracle will this body reveal today? What lesson? What truth? I’m ready. I’m listening. This breath is the proof. There’s a path in the canyon. It winds through the mist. Is it this? Waterfalls and ravens. Stones and downed trees. Is it that? Or is it the place where my ancestors once walked? Is it their well and their garden? Is it their dark crusty bread? The song of […]
January 10, 1976. Forty-six years.Back then, my father’s mother referred to us as “two children playing.”She was seventy-five at the time. She’s still right. January 10, 2022 Canvas 1,130 January 10, 2018 . [ 1346 ]
I raked some leaves that didn’t need raking, Just to feel my muscles and lungs. I walked some ground that didn’t need walking, To see how the sky would respond. I watched some birds that didn’t need watching, I ate an orange that didn’t need eating, I thought a thought that didn’t need thinking, And the thought thought the same about me. Then I sat, then I stood, then I […]
And such were the questionsso persistently asked, that children taughtwords to speak at last, and the wordsused their eyes, and heldtheir lips fast. “Such Were the Questions”Recently Banned Literature, August 17, 2014 . That Little Bit I Say That little bit I say before it gives waybeneath its own weight, and the icy wind upon the faceof the statue I’ve become in this gardenof wonder, O dear one,hasten, grace alonecan […]
I remember one, a snowflakeit might have been, turned out to bea child’s hand melting in my own,as winter coaxed the last leafdown. “I Remember One”Recently Banned Literature, December 20, 2013 Canvas 333 December 12, 2013 . [ 1314 ]
You have been kind. I have been blind. And you have been blind. And I have been kind. Kindness and blindness bind us. Let’s keep that in mind, And find love. . [ 1258 ]