Leaf With Water Drop Quotes

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There is an eternal love between the water drop and the leaf. When you look at them, you can see that they both shine out of happiness.
Mehmet Murat ildan
Midnight" The hours glide Like drops of water on a window pane Midnight silence Fear unrolls in the air And the wind hides at the bottom of the well OH It's a leaf We think the earth is going to end Time stirs in the shadow Everyone is asleep A SIGH Inside the house someone has just died
Vicente Huidobro (The Cubist Poets in Paris: An Anthology (French Modernist Library))
The second spell I cast beneath it. It was an enchantment woven into the island itself, every bird and beast and grain of sand, every leaf and rock and drop of water. I marked them, and all the generations in their bellies, with Telegonus’ name. If ever she did break through that smoke, the island would rise up in his defence, the beasts and birds, the branches and rocks, the roots in the earth.
Madeline Miller (Circe)
When one does not have wisdom, one behaves like a leaf of a ‘touch-me-not’ plant, which shrinks its leaves at the slightest touch of a drop of water. The drop of water is compared to calamities that come into our life. When one becomes like a ‘touch-me-not’ plant, one becomes sensitive to even small provocations. One starts whining at small things, shrinks when calamities come and blasts those who touch him.
Radhanath Swami (Evolve: Two Minute Wisdom)
There’s a planet,’ said Spike, ‘made of water, entirely of water, where every solid thing is its watery equivalent. There are no seas because there is no land. There are no rivers because there are no banks. There is no thirst because there is no dry. ‘The planet is like a bowl of water except that there is no bowl. It hangs in space as a drop of water hangs from a leaf, except that there is no leaf. It cannot exist, and yet it does. I tell you this so you know that what is impossible sometimes happens.
Jeanette Winterson (The Stone Gods)
I have no worries even if I die the very next moment, for I am sure that I will be around you even after that! Perhaps as an orphan cloud upon the blue skies, a drop of water falling onto your palms, a leaf of green that capture your vision or an invisible breeze caressing your skin - for I am the beauty of the universe!
Preeth Padmanabhan Nambiar (The Voyage to Eternity)
The best kiss in nature is not between Romeo and Juliet, but it is between a dying autumn leaf and a shiny water drop!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The leaf does not immediately absorb the drop of water falling on it; she slowly drinks with great pleasure!
Mehmet Murat ildan
For a water drop, the most beautiful house is a leaf; and for a man: The goodness! Let the goodness be your home you permanently live in!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Find a little water drop on a leaf and touch it gently. You know, you touch your existence!
Mehmet Murat ildan
In the Holy Land are two ancient bodies of water. Both are fed by the Jordan River. In one, fish play and roots find sustenance. In the other, there is no splash of fish, no sound of bird, no leaf around. The difference is not in the Jordan, for it empties into both, but in the Sea of Galilee: for every drop taken in one goes out. It gives and lives. The other gives nothing. And it is called the Dead Sea.
William Sloane Coffin
The fairy let her go and pulled aside a piece of bright gold-and-pink silk hanging on the wall. Behind it was the fairy's own private room. She had a soft bed of bright green moss with several iridescent feathers for a counterpane. A shelf mushroom served as an actual shelf displaying an assortment of dried flowers and pretty gewgaws the fairy had collected. There was a charming little dining table, somewhat bold in irony: It was the cheery but deadly red-and-white amanita. The wide top was set with an acorn cap bowl and jingle shell charger. In the corner, a beautifully curved, bright green leaf collected drops from somewhere in the celling much like the water barrel did, but this was obviously for discreet fairy bathing. An assortment of tiny buds, rough seeds, and spongy moss were arranged neatly on a piece of gray driftwood nearby to aid in cleansing.
Liz Braswell (Straight On Till Morning)
The rain passed, yielding to a wonderful silence. Viktor went out into the garden. The moist air was warm and clean; every strawberry leaf, every leaf on every tree, was adorned with a drop of water—and each of these drops was a little egg, ready to release a tiny fish, a glint of sunlight, and Viktor felt that somewhere in the depth of his own breast shone an equally perfect raindrop, an equally brilliant little fish, and he walked about the garden, marvelling at the great good that had come his way: life on this earth as a human being.
Vasily Grossman (Stalingrad)
Absence " Then the birds stitching the dawn with their song have patterned your name. Then the green bowl of the garden filling with light is your gaze. Then the lawn lengthening and warming itself is your skin. Then a cloud disclosing itself overhead is your opening hand. Then the first seven bells from the church pine on the air. Then the sun's soft bite on my face is your mouth. Then a bee in a rose is your fingertip touching me here. Then the trees bending and meshing their leaves are what we would do. Then my steps to the river are text to a prayer printing the ground. Then the river searching its bank for your shape is desire. Then a fish nuzzling for the water's throat has a lover's ease. Then a shawl of sunlight dropped in the grass is a garment discarded. Then a sudden scatter of summer rain is your tongue. Then a butterfly paused on a trembling leaf is your breath. Then the gauzy mist relaxed on the ground is your pose. Then the fruit from the cherry tree falling on grass is your kiss, your kiss. Then the day's hours are theatres of air where I watch you entranced. Then the sun's light going down from the sky is the length of your back. Then the evening bells over the rooftops are lovers' vows. Then the river staring up, lovesick for the moon, is my long night. Then the stars between us are love urging its light.
Carol Ann Duffy (Rapture)
horizontal division between clearness and opacity, but were imbedded in an elastic body of a monotonous pallor throughout. There was no perceptible motion in the air, not a visible drop of water fell upon a leaf of the beeches, birches, and firs composing the wood on either side. The trees stood in an attitude of intentness, as if they waited longingly for a wind to come and rock them. A startling quiet overhung all surrounding things—so completely, that the crunching of the waggon-wheels was as a great noise, and small rustles, which had never obtained a hearing except by night, were distinctly individualized. Joseph Poorgrass looked round upon his sad burden as it loomed faintly through the flowering laurustinus, then at the unfathomable gloom amid the high trees on each hand, indistinct, shadowless, and spectre-like in their monochrome of grey. He felt anything but cheerful, and wished he had the company even of a child or dog. Stopping the horse, he listened. Not a footstep or wheel was audible anywhere around, and the dead silence was broken only by a heavy particle falling from a tree through the evergreens and alighting with a smart rap upon the coffin of poor Fanny. The fog had by this time saturated the trees, and this was the first dropping of water from the overbrimming leaves. The hollow echo of its fall reminded the waggoner painfully of the grim Leveller. Then hard by came down another drop, then two or three. Presently there was a continual tapping of these heavy drops upon the dead leaves, the road, and the travellers. The nearer boughs were beaded with the mist to the greyness of aged men, and the rusty-red leaves of the beeches were
Thomas Hardy (Thomas Hardy Six Pack – Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, A Pair of Blue Eyes, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure and Elegy ... (Illustrated) (Six Pack Classics Book 5))
Sshhhhh from rain, pitpitpit from hemlock, bloink from maple, and lastly popp of falling alder water. Alder drops make a slow music. It takes time for fine rain to traverse the scabrous rough surface of an alder leaf. The drops aren't as big as maple drops, not enough to splash, but the popp ripples the surface and sends out concentric rings. I close my eyes and listen to the voices of the rain. The reflecting surface of the pool is textured with their signatures, each one different in pace and resonance. Every drip it seems is changed by its relationship with life, whether it encounters moss or maple or fir bark or my hair. And we think of it as simply rain, as if it were one thing, as if we understood it. I think that moss knows rain better than we do, and so do maples. Maybe there is no such thing as rain; there are only raindrops, each with its own story.
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants)
That awkward moment when you realize you’ve lived your entire life inside of a picture.” ~Peregrine Storke~ It was raining when my mother pulled up to the simple two-level brick home. Drops of water pounded on the roof of her beat up red Toyota, the sound both ominous and comfortable, before tunneling down her windows in rivers and tiny tributaries. The damp infiltrated the interior, soaking my skin despite the vehicle surrounding us. Rain was never simple this time of year in Louisiana. It always came followed by lightning, thunder, and a myriad of warnings. Leaves blew against the windshield, still full and green from summer, and I watched as one of them stuck against the glass, the leaf’s veins prominent. I wanted to sketch the way it looked now, alone and surrounded by tears, but there was no time. “Don’t forget to call me when you get there,” Mom murmured. Her knuckles were white against the steering wheel, her lips pinched. She wouldn’t cry. Mom seldom cried, she
R.K. Ryals (The Story of Awkward)
Let us suppose that this ounce of mud is left in perfect rest, and that its elements gather together, like to like, so that their atoms may get into the closest relations possible. Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all foreign substance, it gradually becomes a white earth, already very beautiful; and fit, with help of congealing fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and painted on, and be kept in kings’ palaces. But such artificial consistence is not its best. Leave it still quiet to follow its own instinct of unity, and it becomes not only white, but clear; not only clear, but hard; not only clear and hard, but so set that it can deal with light in a wonderful way, and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only, refusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire. Such being the consummation of the clay, we give similar permission of quiet to the sand. It also becomes, first, a white earth, then proceeds to grow clear and hard, and at last arranges itself in mysterious, infinitely fine, parallel lines, which have the power of reflecting not merely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays in the greatest beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material whatsoever. We call it then an opal. In next order the soot sets to work; it cannot make itself white at first, but instead of being discouraged, tries harder and harder, and comes out clear at last, and the hardest thing in the world; and for the blackness that it had, obtains in exchange the power of reflecting all the rays of the sun at once in the vividest blaze that any solid thing can shoot. We call it then a diamond. Last of all the water purifies or unites itself, contented enough if it only reach the form of a dew-drop; but if we insist on its proceeding to a more perfect consistence, it crystallizes into the shape of a star. And for the ounce of slime which we had by political economy of competition, we have by political economy of co-operation, a sapphire, an opal, and a diamond, set in the midst of a star of snow.
John Ruskin (Modern Painters: Volume 5. Of Leaf Beauty. Of Cloud Beauty. Of Ideas of Relation)
Baruch Spinoza" Bruma de oro, el occidente alumbra La ventana. El asiduo manuscrito Aguarda, ya cargado de infinito. Alguien construye a Dios en la penumbra. Un hombre engendra a Dios. Es un judío De tristes ojos y piel cetrina; Lo lleva el tiempo como lleva el río Una hoja en el agua que declina. No importa. El hechicero insiste y labra A Dios con geometría delicada; Desde su enfermedad, desde su nada, Sigue erigiendo a Dios con la palabra. El más pródigo amor le fue otorgado, El amor que no espera ser amado. A haze of gold, the Occident lights up The window. Now, the assiduous manuscript Is waiting, weighed down with the infinite. Someone is building God in a dark cup. A man engenders God. He is a Jew With saddened eyes and lemon-colored skin; Time carries him the way a leaf, dropped in A river, is borne off by waters to Its end. No matter. The magician moved Carves out his God with fine geometry; From his disease, from nothing, he's begun To construct God, using the word. No one Is granted such prodigious love as he: The love that has no hope of being loved.
Jorge Luis Borges
Nevertheless, it would be prudent to remain concerned. For, like death, IT would come: Armageddon. There would be-without exaggeration-a series of catastrophes. As a consequence of the evil in man...-no mere virus, however virulent, was even a burnt match for our madness, our unconcern, our cruelty-...there would arise a race of champions, predators of humans: namely earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, droughts-the magnificent seven. Floods, winds, fires, slides. The classical elements, only angry. Oceans would warm, the sky boil and burn, the ice cap melt, the seas rise. Rogue nations, like kids killing kids at their grammar school, would fire atomic-hydrogen-neutron bombs at one another. Smallpox would revive, or out of the African jungle would slide a virus no one understood. Though reptilian only in spirit, the disease would make us shed our skins like snakes and, naked to the nerves, we'd expire in a froth of red spit. Markets worldwide would crash as reckless cars on a speedway do, striking the wall and rebounding into one another, hurling pieces of themselves at the spectators in the stands. With money worthless-that last faith lost-the multitude would riot, race against race at first, God against God, the gots against the gimmes. Insects hardened by generations of chemicals would consume our food, weeds smother our fields, fire ants, killer bees sting us while we're fleeing into refuge water, where, thrashing we would drown, our pride a sodden wafer. Pestilence. War. Famine. A cataclysm of one kind or another-coming-making millions of migrants. Wearing out the roads. Foraging in the fields. Looting the villages. Raping boys and women. There'd be no tent cities, no Red Cross lunches, hay drops. Deserts would appear as suddenly as patches of crusty skin. Only the sun would feel their itch. Floods would sweep suddenly over all those newly arid lands as if invited by the beach. Forest fires would burn, like those in coal mines, for years, uttering smoke, making soot for speech, blackening every tree leaf ahead of their actual charring. Volcanoes would erupt in series, and mountains melt as though made of rock candy till the cities beneath them were caught inside the lava flow where they would appear to later eyes, if there were any eyes after, like peanuts in brittle. May earthquakes jelly the earth, Professor Skizzen hotly whispered. Let glaciers advance like motorboats, he bellowed, threatening a book with his fist. These convulsions would be a sign the parasites had killed their host, evils having eaten all they could; we'd hear a groan that was the going of the Holy Ghost; we'd see the last of life pissed away like beer from a carouse; we'd feel a shudder move deeply through this universe of dirt, rock, water, ice, and air, because after its long illness the earth would have finally died, its engine out of oil, its sky of light, winds unable to catch a breath, oceans only acid; we'd be witnessing a world that's come to pieces bleeding searing steam from its many wounds; we'd hear it rattling its atoms around like dice in a cup before spilling randomly out through a split in the stratosphere, night and silence its place-well-not of rest-of disappearance. My wish be willed, he thought. Then this will be done, he whispered so no God could hear him. That justice may be served, he said to the four winds that raged in the corners of his attic.
William H. Gass (Middle C)
Introducing a great artist, Alexander Wainwright in THe Fate of Pryde. In his landscapes, Alex expresses the totality of everything in the universe. At the same time, within each leaf, each drop of water or human hair, he conveys a light or glow, which seems to come—how shall I put this—from another dimension. And each brushstroke contains every ounce of his own life and vitality. From The Fate of Pryde, the second in The Trilogy of Remembrance. Enter the giveaway to win one of ten personalized, autographed copies of this novel starting July 31st to August 31st. You can sample the first fifty pages of it at my page.
Mary E.Martin
In his landscapes, Alex expresses the totality of everything in the universe. At the same time, within each leaf, each drop of water or human hair, he conveys a light or glow, which seems to come—how shall I put this—from another dimension. And each brushstroke contains every ounce of his own life and vitality. From The Fate of Pryde, the second in The Trilogy of Remembrance. Enter the giveaway to win one of ten personalized, autographed copies of this novel starting July 31st to August 31st. You can sample the first fifty pages of it on my page. Also, for the same time period, The Drawing Lesson, the first in the trilogy is offered as a giveaway.
Mary E. Martin
I want you to lock an image of these falls into your mind. I want you to consider it every time you press into the Spirit.' Reece stooped and picked up a leaf lying on the platform, held it up, and pointed to a drop of dew that hung from the end. 'This is the amount of water most people who follow Jesus tap into. But that'--Reece pointed at the falls--'is the kind of power available when we fully tap into the Spirit.
James L. Rubart (Soul's Gate (Well Spring #1))
I'll never see Ivy alive again. But she's still everywhere. In every drop of bubbling swamp water. In every leaf hanging from every tree. In every speck of swamp mud. In every blade of grass. In every gift she left behind for me: two sacks of miscellaneous objects, a grass bracelet, her home, her love, and my life. A swamp angel named Ivy lived in my backyard. And now she doesn't. But wherever she is, I know she's watching me. Just like the angel she's always been.
Colleen Boyd (Swamp Angel)
Being a woman is just be a leaf in the wind is perpetual search and verse is a fallen flower petal on the table one evening rain and restless hands of a drop of water that filters the perfume of a rock that emerges from a balcony with geraniums and roses is looking to be root moisture to keep the cup simply being woman is being land and seed is being tree branch and be eternally girl in the depths of the soul is the daughter and mother friend, sister, girlfriend, wife joy and tear being woman is simply being star rainbow and hot breakfast in the mornings and evenings is expected to be entangled balm and comfort to the bone meat scented with musk and eternal love.
Anonymous
The power of kings is transitory, like everything else. Royal glory is difficult to climb, like a bamboo; it is hard to hold, being fidgety like a monkey on a treetop; it is balanced precariously, like drops of water on a lotus-leaf; it is changeable, like the path of the wind; it is undependable, like the friendship of a dishonest man; it is difficult to tame, like a serpent; it glistens only for a moment, like a cloud at sunset; it is fragile, like bubbles on the surface of a river; it is elusive, like the treasure attained in a dream. Remember all this, and enjoy your kingdom modestly.
V.S. Narvane (Best Stories from Indian Classics: A History of Valour and Devotion)
Every cell in the tree integrates information about the state of the internal environment of the needs then open or close to admit gases or release water vapor. Every cell inside the needle is making similar assessments and decisions, sending and receiving signals, modulating its behavior as it learns about and responds to the environment. When such processes run though animal nerves, we call them “behavior and thought”. If we broaden our definition and let drop the arbitrary requirement of the possession of nerves, then the balsam fir tree is a behaving and thinking creature. Indeed, the proteins that we vertebrate animals use to create the electrical gradients that enliven our nerves are closely related to the proteins in plant cells that cause similar electrical excitation. The signals in galvanized plant cells are languid-they take a minute or more to travel the length of a leaf, twenty times slower than nerve impulses in a human limb-but they perform a similar function as animal’s nerves, using pulses of electrical charge to communicate from one part of the plant to another. Plants have no brain to coordinate these signals, so plant thinking is diffuse, located in the connections among every cell.
David George Haskell (The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature's Great Connectors)
And that's how it was, that night, shadow and space, earth and time, something that runs and falls and passes. And that's how all the nights go over the earth, leaving only a vague black odor. A leaf falls, a drop on the earth muffles its sound, the forest sleeps, the waters, the meadows, the bells, the eyes. I hear you and you breathe, my love, we sleep.
Pablo Neruda (The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems)
Representing Far Places In the canoe wilderness branches wait for winter; every leaf concentrates; a drop from the paddle falls. Up through water at the dip of a falling leaf to the sky's drop of light or the smell of another star fish in the lake leap arcs of realization, hard fins prying out from the dark below. Often in society when the talk turns witty you think of that place, and can't polarize at all: it would be a kind of treason. The land fans in your head canyon by canyon; steep roads diverge. Representing far places you stand in the room, all that you know merely a weight in the weather. It is all right to be simply the way you have to be, among contradictory ridges in some crescendo of knowing.
William Stafford
There are two seas in Palestine. One fresh, and fish are in it. Splashes of green adorn its banks. Trees spread their branches over it and stretch out their thirsty roots to sip of its healing waters. Along its shores the children play, as children played when He was there. He loved it. He could look across its silver surface when He spoke His parables. And on a rolling plain not far away He fed five thousand people. The river Jordan makes this sea with sparkling water from the hills. So it laughs in the sunshine. And men build their houses near to it, and birds their nests; and every kind of life is happier because it is there. The river Jordan flows on south into another sea. Here is no splash of fish, no fluttering leaf, no song of birds, no children's laughter. Travelers choose another route, unless on urgent business. The air hangs heavy above its water, and neither man nor beast nor fowl will drink. What makes this mighty difference in these neighbor seas? Not the river Jordan. It empties the same good water into both. Not the soil in which they lie; not in the country round about. This is the difference. The Sea of Galilee receives but does not keep the Jordan. For every drop that flows into it another drop flows out. The giving and receiving go on in equal measure. The other sea is shrewder, hoarding its income jealously. It will not be tempted into any generous impulse. Every drop it gets, it keeps. The Sea of Galilee gives and lives. This other sea gives nothing. It is named The Dead. There are two kinds of people in the world. There are two seas in Palestine.
Stephen R. Covey (The Divine Center)
LENTILS WITH SAUSAGES { LENTILLES AUX SAUCISSES } My friend Fabienne makes this dish at the drop of a hat, because it’s quick, simple, satisfying, and delicious! Traditional vegetables in a dish like this are carrots, celery, onions, and perhaps fennel, which make it so flavorful. Sometimes it’s fun to go a bit wild, though, as Fabienne says. “I use red bell pepper,” she said. “It gives the dish exciting color and flavor.” Whichever vegetables you use, be sure to dice them so they blend in nicely. This calls for a hearty red, from Cahors. NOTE: You need delicious pork for this recipe. I’ve suggested kielbasa and slab bacon; use pork belly or unsmoked bacon, salt pork that you’ve boiled in fresh water twice first, or fresh pork sausages. 1 tablespoon duck fat or extra-virgin olive oil 2 medium onions, diced 1 small red bell pepper, seeds and pith removed Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 large clove garlic, green germ removed, minced 1 cup (250g) green lentils (ideally lentilles de Puy), picked over for small stones, rinsed 1 bouquet garni 1 (8-ounce; 250g) Morteau or kielbasa, cut into ½-inch (1.2cm) rounds 2 to 3 fresh sausages (about 8 ounces; 250g total), cut into 2-inch (5cm) pieces 6 ounces (180g) lean slab bacon, cut into 1-inch (2.5cm) chunks Fresh flat-leaf parsley, for garnish Grainy mustard, for serving Melt the duck fat in a medium, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add the onions and bell pepper and stir. Season with salt and black pepper and cook until the onions are translucent, stirring frequently so they don’t stick, about 6 minutes. Add the garlic and stir. Add the lentils, stir, and add water to cover them by 1 inch (2.5cm). Add the bouquet garni, pushing it under the water. Raise the heat to medium-high and when the water boils, reduce the heat to medium so it is simmering, partially cover, and cook until the lentils begin to soften, about 15 minutes. Add the meats, pushing them into the lentils, and additional water if necessary to make sure that the lentils are moist. Return the liquid to a boil, then reduce the heat to maintain a simmer and cook, partially covered, until the lentils are “al dente” and not too soft, 15 to 20 minutes more. Remove from the heat and ladle into four shallow soup bowls. Garnish with a generous grind of black pepper and a parsley leaf. Serve immediately with the mustard alongside. SERVES 4
Susan Herrmann Loomis (In a French Kitchen: Tales and Traditions of Everyday Home Cooking in France)
Sullivan could hear drops of water snapping from leaf to leaf as it made its way to the ground, searching for a river or stream that would eventually carry it back to its mother sea.
Joe Hart (Singularity)
iced hibiscus tea This tea is one of life’s simple pleasures. At Little Pine, it is a constant—as in, the staff is constantly awash in the stuff. You will be, too, once you’ve tried it. TIME: 15 MINUTES SERVES: 6 4 cups boiling water ½ cup loose-leaf Art of Tea Hibiscus Cooler or other dried hibiscus flowers 2 cinnamon sticks 1 star anise pod 4 cups room-temperature water Pour the boiling water into an 8-cup pitcher. Put the hibiscus tea into a tea bag. Drop the tea bag, cinnamon sticks, and star anise into the boiling water. Let steep for 15 minutes, then take the bag out of the water, leaving the cinnamon sticks and star anise. Add the room-temperature water, let the tea cool down, then enjoy.
Moby (The Little Pine Cookbook: Modern Plant-Based Comfort)
You cannot find a drop of water in this world that will reject a leaf, nor a leaf that will reject a drop of water!
Mehmet Murat ildan
The Weed I dreamed that dead, and meditating, I lay upon a grave, or bed, (at least, some cold and close-built bower) In the cold heart, its final thought stood frozen, drawn immense and clear, stiff and idle as I was there; and we remained unchanged together for a year, a minute, an hour. Suddenly there was a motion, as startling, there, to every sense as an explosion. Then it dropped to an insistent, cautious creeping in the region of the heart, prodding me from desperate sleep. I raised my head. A slight young weed had pushed up through the heart and its green head was nodding on the breast. (All this was in the dark.) It grew an inch like a blade of grass; next, one leaf shot out of its side a twisting, waving flag, and then two leaves moved like a semaphore The stem grew thick. The nervous roots reached to each side; the graceful head changed its position mysteriously, since there was neither sun nor moon to catch its young attention. The rooted heart began to change (not beat) and then it spit apart and from it broke a flood of water. Two rivers glanced off from the sides, one to the right, one to the left, two rushing, half-clear streams, (the ribs made of them two cascades) which assuredly, smooth as glass, went off through the fine black grains of earth. The weed was almost swept away; it struggled with its leaves, lifting them fringed with heavy drops. A few drops fell upon my face and in my eyes, so I could see (or, in that black place, thought I saw) that each drop contained a light, a small, illuminated scene; the weed-deflected stream was made itself of racing images. (As if a river should carry all the scenes that it once reflected shut in its waters, and not floating on momentary surfaces.) The weed stood in the severed heart. "What are you doing there?" I asked. it lifted its head all dripping wet (with my own thoughts?) and answered then: "I grow," it said, "but to divide your heart again.
Elizabeth Bishop (The Complete Poems 1927-1979)
I wonder what would happen if the days were not pushed? What would happen if the time flowed in its natural sequence? The sky edging from darkness to gray, rising like a tide of light, pushing the flotsam of cloud upward. And then the sun’s rim, liquid gold, the slant of light through twigs and leaf. What would happen if you watched time’s river rise and flow, lifting you on its back and carrying you on its crest, until, lying back, you rested on the receding light, languishing in the slow pools of afternoon, the tips of the firs trembling and lifting, the ropes of birch leaves swaying in the light like sea kelp. To the west, the evening glow would linger, holding on to color. What if you could watch until the last drops spilled from the edge and then you came to know the night? Oh, but what would be served by such a life? Observation. Contemplation. Deliberation. What if your life came unplugged, disconnected, out of sync with the rest of the world? What if you rode this planet on one full circle round its star paying attention to light and plants and water? Seeing the way rain gathers in puddles or dew beads on grass, noticing the day violets open under the firs or ants appear in the bathroom? You could, you know. Shut off the bells. You could cut loose, unplug, begin. You could improve the nick of time.
Carolyn Wood (Tough Girl: Lessons in Courage and Heart from Olympic Gold to the Camino de Santiago)
A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan Mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees- willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter's flooding; and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them.Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of 'coons, and with the spread pads of dogs from the ranches, and with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark.
John Steinbeck
He had no idea that the universe could be found in a single instant, a drop of water, a blade of grass, a leaf of an apple tree.
Alice Hoffman (The Red Garden)