Redwood Love Quotes

Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating. And the oceans are above me here, rolling clouds, heavy and dark. It is winter and there is smoke from the fires. It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.

God. He was an eye-gasm if she ever saw one.

How southern belle of her.

Hazard of the job. That's Ode de Anal Gland you smell.

Translation: She's too good for you.

Her mother and memory lapses were BFFs.

Just about every available female--and some unavailable--seemed to think the way to his heart was through his blood sugar levels.

Popcorn, chocolate, coffee, ice cream, and pizza. The five food groups. Health nuts are going to feel stupid one day, dying of nothing.

He used his soothing tone reserved for cray-cray animals.

I'll never get to hear her say, 'I love you, Mommy,' like other parents take for granted.

One would think he'd become a Master Jedi at it by now, but alas, "no" was not in his Webster.

As I walk through the redwood trees, my sneakers sopping up days of rain, I wonder why bereaved people even bother with mourning clothes, when grief itself provides such an unmistakable wardrobe.

I can feel you,” Willows whispered. Tears fell to down her cheeks, and he kissed her softly on the lips, pouring all his love into that one kiss.

Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does.

The thought of seeing him had left her a tangled jumble of basket case, complete with a straight jacket for accessory.

If the gods of Gorgeousness and Charm and Sexiness had a threesome, Jason Burkwell would’ve been the resulting love child.

I don’t care if it’s been five minutes or five months or five years. You’re it for me and there’s no sense in waiting.

Twenty-five years, and it still felt like yesterday he’d ripped her heart out of her chest. While it had still been beating.

Ever make toast? The act of browning bread. Apply butter or maybe jam afterward. Once finished, you can’t unmake it. You can’t change it back to bread. That’s what love is. Toast.

Death carves holes in your soul, and love fills them.

When a person sees someone attractive to them, their eyes dilate twenty percent. Their brain floods with dopamine, which makes them happy. Thus, they believe it’s love. That’s a medical fact. Love doesn’t exist.

Live or die, but don't poison everything... Well, death's been here for a long time -- it has a hell of a lot to do with hell and suspicion of the eye and the religious objects and how I mourned them when they were made obscene by my dwarf-heart's doodle. The chief ingredient is mutilation. And mud, day after day, mud like a ritual, and the baby on the platter, cooked but still human, cooked also with little maggots, sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother, the damn bitch! Even so, I kept right on going on, a sort of human statement, lugging myself as if I were a sawed-off body in the trunk, the steamer trunk. This became perjury of the soul. It became an outright lie and even though I dressed the body it was still naked, still killed. It was caught in the first place at birth, like a fish. But I play it, dressed it up, dressed it up like somebody's doll. Is life something you play? And all the time wanting to get rid of it? And further, everyone yelling at you to shut up. And no wonder! People don't like to be told that you're sick and then be forced to watch you come down with the hammer. Today life opened inside me like an egg and there inside after considerable digging I found the answer. What a bargain! There was the sun, her yolk moving feverishly, tumbling her prize -- and you realize she does this daily! I'd known she was a purifier but I hadn't thought she was solid, hadn't known she was an answer. God! It's a dream, lovers sprouting in the yard like celery stalks and better, a husband straight as a redwood, two daughters, two sea urchings, picking roses off my hackles. If I'm on fire they dance around it and cook marshmallows. And if I'm ice they simply skate on me in little ballet costumes. Here, all along, thinking I was a killer, anointing myself daily with my little poisons. But no. I'm an empress. I wear an apron. My typewriter writes. It didn't break the way it warned. Even crazy, I'm as nice as a chocolate bar. Even with the witches' gymnastics they trust my incalculable city, my corruptible bed. O dearest three, I make a soft reply. The witch comes on and you paint her pink. I come with kisses in my hood and the sun, the smart one, rolling in my arms. So I say Live and turn my shadow three times round to feed our puppies as they come, the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown, despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy! Despite the pails of water that waited, to drown them, to pull them down like stones, they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue and fumbling for the tiny tits. Just last week, eight Dalmatians, 3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood each like a birch tree. I promise to love more if they come, because in spite of cruelty and the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens, I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann. The poison just didn't take. So I won't hang around in my hospital shift, repeating The Black Mass and all of it. I say Live, Live because of the sun, the dream, the excitable gift.

Love should never be left to its own devices.

For the love of all the Gobstoppers in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, would he please just leave her alone?

Amory Lovins says the primary design criteria he uses is the question “How do we love all the children?” Not just our children, not just the ones who look like us or who have resources, not just the human children but the young of birds and salmon and redwood trees. When we love all the children, when that love is truly sacred to us in the sense of being most important, then we have to take action in the world to enact that love. We are called to make the earth a place where all the children can thrive.

It was a memory so embedded, it was a part of her DNA. This was the exact reason why she’d never married or found a long-term partner after him. Because no one else could reach her where it hurt in order to heal what he’d done. And here he was, back again, making an old wound bleed.

John Hay, in The Immortal Wilderness, has written: 'There are occasions when you can hear the mysterious language of the Earth, in water, or coming through the trees, emanating from the mosses, seeping through the undercurrents of the soil, but you have to be willing to wait and receive.' Sometimes I hear it talking. The light of the sunflower was one language, but there are others more audible. Once, in the redwood forest, I heard a beat, something like a drum or a heart coming from the ground and trees and wind. That underground current stirred a kind of knowing inside me, a kinship and longing, a dream barely remembered that disappeared back to the body.... Tonight, I walk. I am watching the sky. I think of the people who came before me and how they knew the placement of the stars in the sky, watching the moving sun long and hard enough to witness how a certain angle of light touched a stone only once a year. Without written records, they knew the gods of every night, the small, fine details of the world around them and the immensity above them. Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating....It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.

So are we going to play this good cop, bad cop?" Brett asked as Nathan returned to the monitoring room. "Absolutely not. We're going to play this bad cop and on-the-verge-of-homicidal-maniac cop. You get to play bad cop." "But you know I love the maniacal, homicidal role better." "Let's just do it cleanly.

I’m passing the bar Where you first got in my car I’m not ashamed to admit That it’s you I won’t forget I saved your cigarettes and Bad habits I regret But the hours flew by like clouds Whenever I had you around Parachute lover Take me away From the plane that went crashing And the earth that’s in flames Saving you is saving me High above the redwood trees But down below I see shadows And parachute debris We're drifting like children Along for the ride Each time we find love Another parachute arrives Our madness will burn As bright as the sun And I’ll keep finding lovers But you were the one

Under the redwood tree my grave was laid, and I beguiled my true love to lie down. The stream of our kiss put a waterway around the world, where love like a refugee sailed in the last ship. My hair made a shroud, and kept the coyotes at bay while we wrote our cyphers with anatomy. The winds boomed triumph, our spines seemed overburdened, and our bones groaned like old trees, but a smile like a cobweb was fastened across the mouth of the cave of fate. Fear will be a terrible fox at my vitals under my tunic of behaviour. Oh, canary, sing out in the thunderstorm, prove your yellow pride. Give me a reason for courage or a way to be brave. But nothing tangible comes to rescue my besieged sanity, and I cannot decipher the code of the eucalyptus thumping on my roof. I am unnerved by the opponents of God, and God is out of earshot. I must spin good ghosts out of my hope to oppose the hordes at my window. If those who look in see me condescend to barricade the door, they will know too much and crowd in to overcome me. The parchment philosopher has no traffic with the night, and no conception of the price of love. With smoky circles of thought he tries to combat the fog, and with anagrams to defeat anatomy. I posture in vain with his weapons, even though I am balmed with his nicotine herbs. Moon, moon, rise in the sky to be a reminder of comfort and the hour when I was brave.

People of Redwood Ridge always referred to themselves as victims when they were found in the path of Cupid’s arrow, wielded by the sisters. They ran. They hid. They resisted. In the end, they succumbed. He was the sheriff. He got around. He saw and heard things most didn’t. And the truth was, not a solitary “victim” was unhappy after The Battleaxes were through with them.

He was nose-diving way past in like with her and headed straight toward Faceplantville.

Tan Chau lies on the Thanh Hoa canal, which sings with freedom as it flows into the Mekong River on its way to the sea. Only the wind and the water, which you cannot imprison, are truly free.

Whenever you see redwoods in the National Geographic, or fog, or watch Shamu on TV, you'll be seeing me. Whenever you smell pine and spruce and day-old socks, that's me. Whenever you hear wind in the tops of trees, that's me, and whenever you taste crab and wine and Brie, that's me, and whenever the wind blows your hat off or you get under a cold shower, that's me. Whenever you read about an earthquake, that's me, sure as gun's iron. Whenever you smell wet dog, that's Curtis and me, and whenever you see a Rattus rattus, that's Forrest, and I'm right behind him. Never see me again? You'll never not see me. And I'll never not see you . . .Didn't I say I'd always be your same stars? If you get to missing me, just look up.

They spent a summer talking beneath the redwoods. There was a curiosity to the way they knew. She would take his hips in her hands and turn him to the left, so the sun would not be in his eyes. He would take her hips in his hands and turn her to the right, so the sun would not be in her eyes.. It is a dance. A very careful way they care.

Love in any language, Straight from the heart, Pulls us all together, Never apart.

I have had a lifelong association with these things. (Odd that the word 'trees' does not apply.) I can accept them and their power and their age because I was early exposed to them. ON the other hand, people lacking such experience begin to have a feeling of uneasiness here, of danger, of being shut in, enclosed and overwhelmed. It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them. And why not? For these are the last remaining members of a race that flourished over four continents as far back in geologic time as the upper Jurassic period. Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left--a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it?

If you want to save the snow leopard, or the giant Redwoods, or the Okavango delta, or the Amazon, or the atmosphere, or the Earth, or those you love, or yourself, or the human race, this is the only path that can achieve that–so the truth is the sooner you support and adopt this path of transformation through understanding the better. The choice is self-destruction or self-discovery.

Finally, sweet finally, he was inside her to the hilt. "I need a second," he ground out, his body pulsing. "You're really freaking big, Quinn," she panted. "Move. Please, for the love of the goddess, move." He grinned before kissing her. "You say such sweet things.

Relationships are tenuous, like a fragile seedling. You could ruin its chances at growing and thriving by carelessly trampling it or shrouding it in a canopy of darkness. And also like a seedling, if you give it light and love and time for the roots to grow deeply, it’ll flourish into a majestic redwood.

May God bless and protect you. May he smooth the path that lies before you, and give you the grace and humility to accept both fortune and sorrow. May you be strong as the redwood when troubles arise, and bend like the willow when forgiveness beckons. Above all, may you love joyfully, gratefully, faithfully, in Christ’s name. Amen.

In giving rise to man, the evolutionary process has, apparently for the first and only time in the history of the Cosmos, become conscious of itself. So, the Devil's Chaplain might conclude, Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence; the gift of revulsion against its implications; the gift of foresight — something utterly foreign to the blundering short-term ways of natural selection — and the gift of internalizing the very cosmos.

Their eyes, warm not only with human bond but with the shared enjoyment of the art objects he sold, their mutual tastes and satisfactions, remained fixed on him; they were thanking him for having things like these for them to see, pick up and examine, handle perhaps without even buying. Yes, he thought, they know what sort of store they are in; this is not tourist trash, not redwood plaques reading Muir Woods, Marin County, PSA, or funny signs or girly rings or postcards or views of the Bridge. The girl’s eyes especially, large, dark. How easily, Childan thought, I could fall in love with a girl like this. How tragic my life, then; as if it weren’t bad enough already. The stylish black hair, lacquered nails, pierced ears for the long dangling brass handmade earrings. “Your

It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them. And why not? For these are the last remaining members of a race that flourished over four continents as far back in geologic time as the upper Jurassic period. Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left--a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it?

When she was younger, Ellie used to believe that her invisibility was a metaphor for something else, assuming it was her awkwardness, her fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. She had thought as she grew older, more confident, wiser, she would outgrow this not being noticed. But lately, Ellie really felt like a ghost. She would be in a place, but not really there. People looked through her, past her. Her invisibility had taken on a life of its own. It wasn't a metaphor anymore, or a defense mechanism or eccentric little tic. She was actually invisible. At least, that was how it felt to her. Ellie wondered whether her parents were to blame. They were, after all, children of the sixties who had met at a love-in or lie-down or something of that sort, about which Ellie knew little except that a lot of drugs had been involved. Could Ellie's lack of physical presence be a genetic mutation caused by acid or mushrooms? Ellie grew up on their hippie commune among the highest, densest redwoods, where they dug their hands deep into the soil and grew their own food, made their own clothes. So perhaps it is there that the mystery is solved. Ellie indeed was a child of the earth, a baby of beiges and taupes and browns and muted greens. Nature doesn't scream and shout, demanding constant attention, and neither did Ellie. Maybe her invisibility was just her blending right in.

San Francisco always felt like an island to me, surrounded by the mythical East Bay with its restaurants and parks and North Bay with its wealth and its redwoods. South of the city was where our dead were buried—but not my mother, whose ashes returned to the ocean that killed her, which was also the ocean she loved. South of that were little beach towns, and then Silicon Valley and Stanford. But the people, everyone I knew, everyone I’d ever known, all lived in the city.

I KNEW THAT if I continued to debate politics and science—and stayed in the mind instead of the heart and the spirit—it would always be about one side versus the other. We all understand love, however; we all understand respect, we all understand dignity, and we all understand compassion up to a certain point. But how could I convince the loggers to transfer those feelings that they might have for a human being to the forest? And how could I get them to let go of their stereotypes of me? Because in their mind, I was a tree-hugging, granola-eating, dirty, dreadlocked hippie environmentalist. They always managed to say this word with such disgust and disdain!

February 11: Andre de Dienes sends Marilyn a telegram calling her “Turkey Foot,” his nickname for her: “STOP FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF. GET OUT OF THE HOSPITAL. LET’S GO DRIVING AND HIKING THROUGH THE REDWOODS, INCOGNITO, AND TAKE BEAUTIFUL PICTURES LIKE NOBODY COULD EVER TAKE. IT WILL CURE YOU OF ALL YOUR ILLS. CALL ME UP. LOVE.” Nan Taylor, the wife of Frank Taylor, producer of The Misfits, writes to Marilyn: “It seems to me again, as it did last summer, very sad that we who have been given so much by you cannot give you even what little we might in return. You have my admiration for your courage, my gratitude for the many delights of charm and beauty and humor your presence has meant, and my deep sorrow for your troubles. I believe in your strength, Marilyn, as I believe in the sun. If at any time I can help in any way, please let me, Love, Nan.

The morning after / my death” The morning after my death we will sit in cafés but I will not be there I will not be * There was the great death of birds the moon was consumed with fire the stars were visible until noon. Green was the forest drenched with shadows the roads were serpentine A redwood tree stood alone with its lean and lit body unable to follow the cars that went by with frenzy a tree is always an immutable traveller. The moon darkened at dawn the mountain quivered with anticipation and the ocean was double-shaded: the blue of its surface with the blue of flowers mingled in horizontal water trails there was a breeze to witness the hour * The sun darkened at the fifth hour of the day the beach was covered with conversations pebbles started to pour into holes and waves came in like horses. * The moon darkened on Christmas eve angels ate lemons in illuminated churches there was a blue rug planted with stars above our heads lemonade and war news competed for our attention our breath was warmer than the hills. * There was a great slaughter of rocks of spring leaves of creeks the stars showed fully the last king of the Mountain gave battle and got killed. We lay on the grass covered dried blood with our bodies green blades swayed between our teeth. * We went out to sea a bank of whales was heading South a young man among us a hero tried to straddle one of the sea creatures his body emerged as a muddy pool as mud we waved goodbye to his remnants happy not to have to bury him in the early hours of the day We got drunk in a barroom the small town of Fairfax had just gone to bed cherry trees were bending under the weight of their flowers: they were involved in a ceremonial dance to which no one had ever been invited. * I know flowers to be funeral companions they make poisons and venoms and eat abandoned stone walls I know flowers shine stronger than the sun their eclipse means the end of times but I love flowers for their treachery their fragile bodies grace my imagination’s avenues without their presence my mind would be an unmarked grave. * We met a great storm at sea looked back at the rocking cliffs the sand was going under black birds were leaving the storm ate friends and foes alike water turned into salt for my wounds. * Flowers end in frozen patterns artificial gardens cover the floors we get up close to midnight search with powerful lights the tiniest shrubs on the meadows A stream desperately is running to the ocean The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage (The Post-Apollo Press, 1990)

When it begins it is like a light in a tunnel, a rush of steel and steam across a torn up life. It is a low rumble, an earthquake in the back of the mind. My spine is a track with cold black steel racing on it, a trail of steam and dust following behind, ghost like. It feels like my whole life is holding its breath. By the time she leaves the room I am surprised that she can’t see the train. It has jumped the track of my spine and landed in my mothers’ living room. A cold dark thing, black steel and redwood paneling. It is the old type, from the western movies I loved as a kid. He throws open the doors to the outside world, to the dark ocean. I feel a breeze tugging at me, a slender finger of wind that catches at my shirt. Pulling. Grabbing. I can feel the panic build in me, the need to scream or cry rising in my throat. And then I am out the door, running, tumbling down the steps falling out into the darkened world, falling out into the lifeless ocean. Out into the blackness. Out among the stars and shadows. And underneath my skin, in the back of my head and down the back of my spine I can feel the desperation and I can feel the noise. I can feel the deep and ancient ache of loudness that litters across my bones. It’s like an old lover, comfortable and well known, but unwelcome and inappropriate with her stories of our frolicking. And then she’s gone and the Conductor is closing the door. The darkness swells around us, enveloping us in a cocoon, pressing flat against the train like a storm. I wonder, what is this place? Those had been heady days, full and intense. It’s funny. I remember the problems, the confusions and the fears of life we all dealt with. But, that all seems to fade. It all seems to be replaced by images of the days when it was all just okay. We all had plans back then, patterns in which we expected the world to fit, how it was to be deciphered. Eventually you just can’t carry yourself any longer, can’t keep your eyelids open, and can’t focus on anything but the flickering light of the stars. Hours pass, at first slowly like a river and then all in a rush, a climax and I am home in the dorm, waking up to the ringing of the telephone. When she is gone the apartment is silent, empty, almost like a person sleeping, waiting to wake up. When she is gone, and I am alone, I curl up on the bed, wait for the house to eject me from its dying corpse. Crazy thoughts cross through my head, like slants of light in an attic. The Boston 395 rocks a bit, a creaking noise spilling in from the undercarriage. I have decided that whatever this place is, all these noises, sensations - all the train-ness of this place - is a fabrication. It lulls you into a sense of security, allows you to feel as if it’s a familiar place. But whatever it is, it’s not a train, or at least not just a train. The air, heightened, tense against the glass. I can hear the squeak of shoes on linoleum, I can hear the soft rattle of a dying man’s breathing. Men in white uniforms, sharp pressed lines, run past, rolling gurneys down florescent hallways.

Absent all speculation, the contemplation on everything known and unknown, there’s always an invitation to listen. We could even cease the meaning-making and surrender to the mystery. Be willing to feel the grief, not just for our own losses but for the big losses throughout time. We could exhale heartbreak for the death of mothers and children, grandparents and lovers, tribes and democracies. The crack of falling redwoods and splitting glaciers, the disappearance of the monarchs and the mourning of the giant tortoise. The landslides, the floods, the fires. We could feel the destruction of mountains, comets, galaxies. All the losses without redemption. All that has been broken. And in that silence between breaths we could pause. We could acknowledge… absence. In the liminal space we could feel the emptiness. Behold the big, spacious silence behind all noise. And there, right there, at the edges or perhaps smack in the middle of our awareness we might feel a fullness. The nearness of something sacred, the quiet presence which can’t be captured in words—only felt. That which is deeply personal and undeniably universal, that which is me and yet everything not-me, that nearness some people call Source, God, the Great Mother, the Great Perfection, that which can’t be named. And as we inhale, we can breathe in all of it, the richness of seas, the quiet dignity of deserts, the opalescent sheen of babies just born. The melody of a downpour and the clarion birdsong as the earth begins to dry. The warm symphonies of stars and the roar of everyone laughing at once. All the beauty beyond description. The truth that everything terrible exists alongside everything miraculous, that loss gives way for finding, and through it all, only love keeps us fighting for what’s right.

I can accept them and their power and their age because I was early exposed to them. On the other hand, people lacking such experience begin to have a feeling of uneasiness here, of danger, of being shut in, enclosed and overwhelmed. It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them. And why not? For these are the last remaining members of a race that flourished over four continents as far back in geologic time as the upper Jurassic period. Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left--a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it?

Do you grow straight up like a redwood to the sun in choosing your heart and not list like a weed in the wind to the fads of the day?

Georgia attacked her dinner prep more aggressively than usual. As she saw it, there were two kinds of chefs. First, there were the cerebral types, who cooked with an intellectual, almost academic, bent. They cooked with precision and accuracy, studying a particular ingredient's effects in multiple settings before introducing it into their kitchen. These chefs loved the science of food. Fastidious in their pre-prep prep, they knew with 99 percent accuracy that a dish would turn out well. Then there were the chefs who worked from the heart. Who were furious when a dish fizzled, chopped angrily at the food as if it were their enemy, but on a good day could coax such sensuous, sublime flavors from a paltry potato and a handful of herbs that no diner would suspect its humble origins. When they hit, they hit big. But when they fell, it was like a sequoia cracking open in the redwood forest.

So laced and lush is this ecosystem that we walk our several miles through it today without making a footfall, only scuffs. Carol tells me that these Olympic rain forests and the rough coast to their west provide her the greatest calm of any place she has been. That she can walk in this rain forest and only be walking in this rain forest, moving in simple existence. Surprising, that, because neither of us thinks we are at all mystic. Perhaps, efficient dwellers we try to be, we simply admire the deft fit of life systems in the rain forest. The flow of growth out of growth, out of death . . . I do not quite ease off into beingness as she can. Memories and ideas leap to mind. I remember that Callenbach’s young foresters of Ecotopia would stop in the forest to hug a fir and murmur into its bark, brother tree. . . . This Hoh forest is not a gathering of brothers to humankind, but of elders. The dampness in the air, patches of fog snagged in the tree tops above, tells me another story out of memory, of having read of a visitor who rode through the California redwood forest in the first years of this century. He noted to his guide that the sun was dissipating the chilly fog from around them. No, said the guide looking to canyon walls of wood like these, no, “The trees is drinkin’ it. That’s what they live on mostly. When they git done breakfast you’ll git warm enough.” For a time, the river seduces me from the forest. This season, before the glacier melt begins to pour from the Olympic peaks, the water of the Hoh is a painfully lovely slate blue, a moving blade of delicate gloss. The boulder-stropped, the fog-polished Hoh. Question: why must rivers have names? Tentative answer: for the same reason gods do. These Peninsula rivers, their names a tumbled poem of several tongues—Quinault, Quillayute, Hoh, Bogashiel, Soleduck, Elwha, Dungeness, Gray Wolf—are as holy to me as anything I know. Forest again. For comparison’s sake I veer from the trail to take a look at the largest Sitka spruce along this valley bottom. The Park Service has honored it with a sign, giving the tree’s dimensions as sixteen feet four inches in diameter, one hundred eighty feet in height, but now the sign is propped against the prone body of the giant. Toppled, it lies like a huge extracted tunnel bore. Clambering onto its upper surface I find that the Sitka has burls, warts on the wood, bigger around than my body. For all that, I calculate that it is barely larger, if any, than the standard nineteenth-century target that Highpockets and his calendar crew are offhandedly devastating in my writing room. Evening, and west to Kalaloch through portals of sawed-through windfalls, to the campground next to the ocean. In fewer than fifty miles, mountain and ocean, arteried by this pulsing valley.

Getting It Right" Your ankles make me want to party, want to sit and beg and roll over under a pair of riding boots with your ankles hidden inside, sweating beneath the black tooled leather; they make me wish it was my birthday so I could blow out their candles, have them hung over my shoulders like two bags full of money. Your ankles are two monster-truck engines but smaller and lighter and sexier than a saucer with warm milk licking the outside edge; they make me want to sing, make me want to take them home and feed them pasta, I want to punish them for being bad and then hold them all night long and say I’m sorry, sugar, darling, it will never happen again, not in a million years. Your thighs make me quiet. Make me want to be hurled into the air like a cannonball and pulled down again like someone being pulled into a van. Your thighs are two boats burned out of redwood trees. I want to go sailing. Your thighs, the long breath of them under the blue denim of your high-end jeans, could starve me to death, could make me cry and cry. Your ass is a shopping mall at Christmas, a holy place, a hill I fell in love with once when I was falling in love with hills. Your ass is a string quartet, the northern lights tucked tightly into bed between a high-count-of-cotton sheets. Your back is the back of a river full of fish; I have my tackle and tackle box. You only have to say the word. Your back, a letter I have been writing for fifteen years, a smooth stone, a moan someone makes when his hair is pulled, your back like a warm tongue at rest, a tongue with a tab of acid on top; your spine is an alphabet, a ladder of celestial proportions. I am navigating the North and South of it. Your armpits are beehives, they make me want to spin wool, want to pour a glass of whiskey, your armpits dripping their honey, their heat, their inexhaustible love-making dark. I am bright yellow for them. I am always thinking about them, resting at your side or high in the air when I’m pulling off your shirt. Your arms of blue and ice with the blood running to make them believe in God. Your shoulders make me want to raise an arm and burn down the Capitol. They sing to each other underneath your turquoise slope-neck blouse. Each is a separate bowl of rice steaming and covered in soy sauce. Your neck is a skyscraper of erotic adult videos, a swan and a ballet and a throaty elevator made of light. Your neck is a scrim of wet silk that guides the dead into the hours of Heaven. It makes me want to die, your mouth, which is the mouth of everything worth saying. It’s abalone and coral reef. Your mouth, which opens like the legs of astronauts who disconnect their safety lines and ride their stars into the billion and one voting districts of the Milky Way. Darling, you’re my President; I want to get this right! Matthew Dickman, The New Yorker: Poems | August 29, 2011 Issue

Have I ever told you how much I love your tits?

They’re first, that’s all. I could love you more than life itself and they would still be first. It’s a commitment a mother makes when she has children.

Visions of ineffable beauty and harmony, health and exhilaration of body and soul, and grand foundation lessons in Nature's eternal love are the sure reward of every earnest looker in this glorious wilderness.

Love was a paltry, insignificant thing: There one day, gone another. But admiration, respect: From those could sprout great trees, towering redwoods, that could reach and reach and almost touch—

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep," Jess intoned as they took the path down from the parking lot. She had imagined finding a spot to read and meditate, leaving Emily to walk alone for half an hour, but the trees were so tall, and the light filtering down so green that she forgot her stratagem, and her troubles as well. The saplings here were three hundred years old, their bark still purple, their branches supple, foliage feathery in the gloaming. They rose up together with their ancestors, millennia-old redwoods outlasting storms, regenerating after lightning, sending forth new spires from blasted crowns. What did Hegel matter when it came to old-growth? Who cared about world-historical individuals? Not the salamanders or the moss. Not the redwoods, which were prehistoric. Potentially post-historic too.

A-Alec," I murmured. "Fuck," he groaned, moving his fingers faster. "I love it when you say my name, Cupcake.

I fucking love you, Vera Rodriguez. I always will.

You’re not leaving yet.” “No,” I said, taking my backpack back and unzipping it. “I wanted to, um…” I thrust my hand into my backpack and gripped a stack of what must’ve been three hundred double-spaced and double-sided papers. I pulled them out and handed them to him. “To give this to you, as a… housewarming gift.” Blaise arched a brow and slid onto one of the stools beside me. “What is it?” I glanced down at my feet, heart pounding inside my chest. “It’s the story that I’ve been writing… about us. It’s our story. It’s not finished yet. I still have to write the last chapter, but I wanted you to read it.” With brown eyes so big, Blaise peered over at me. “You wrote a story about us?” Somehow my cheeks burned even hotter. “Yeah, I did. And I plan on publishing it one day because I love us so fucking much.” I moved closer to him, so I stood between his legs, and then I grabbed his face. “And I love you more than I ever thought I could. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Blaise Harleen.

I loved being with him, more than anyone else.

God,” he whispered, pushing strands of hair out of my face. While he had been smiling and laughing only a moment ago, his face was now relaxed, completely with no strain, only… awe. He parted his lips and brushed the pad of his thumb across my cheek. “I fucking love you.

I love you,” he murmured over and over and over. “I love you. I love you. I love you.

I fucking love you, Sakura,” I said. “I wouldn’t choose anyone over you.

I… I didn’t…” he stuttered for a couple moments, stumbling aimlessly over his words until he finally pressed his lips together and stared at me even more seriously this time. “I love you, Vera.” Blaise Harleen loves me? Me?

If you want to prove something to someone”—I wrapped my hand into her hair and pulled her closer to me—“come here.” And then I kissed the woman I loved in front of my wife.

When I was with Sakura, I didn’t have to think about fucking anything. I didn’t have to put up a façade of a happily married man, like I had to at work, in front of colleagues, family, and friends. Because truthfully, I was a miserable asshole who wished he’d never met Georgina. With Sakura though… I could reach and teach literature, do what I loved without the constant shaming and bashing. I didn’t have to pretend like I cared, didn’t have to feel weak for once in my fucking life.

I don’t know what you’ve done to me, Sunshine, but I can’t get enough of you. You’ve been the only person there for me, the only person who truly cares.” “Blaise, I…” “I know you want me to take it back and act like the same guy I was toward you that first day in World History, but I can’t. I don’t want to take it back. I fucking love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. You’re the best damn thing that’s happened to me.” This wasn’t a character saying this in one of my stories. This was real. “You don’t have to say it back right now.” He took my hand in his and gently kissed my knuckles. “I promise I’ll wait until whenever you’re ready. I’m not going anywhere. So, if you want to run out of here, scared shitless, then you have another thing—” My chest exploded with warmth. I turned onto my stomach, gently gripped his chin in my hand, and kissed him deeply, passion completely overtaking me. “I love you too.

What if she snatched my hand in her small one and told the woman that we didn’t use condoms, that she loved being filled to the brim with my cum, that she loved the thought of me getting her preg— Fuck, I really need to stop.

Tell me that you love me again,” he mumbled against my lips. “I want to hear you say it again and again and again, Sunshine.

I love you,” I whispered, tangling my fingers into his hair. He thrust into me deeper. “I love you.” Another deep thrust, nearly sending me over the edge. “I love you so—

There was so much that I wanted to tell him, so much that he needed to hear. I didn’t just love that boy. Blaise Harleen was everything to me. Blaise Harleen had given me confidence and happiness and so much fucking love that my insides exploded with warmth every time I was with him. I love him, I mouthed to myself, wishing he could hear me. “I fucking love him.

I love him. My eyes shot open while I kissed him. I didn’t just… I didn’t just think that… Oh God, I really did just think that! Do I love the way he feels inside me, or do I really love him?

He could lie to me all he wanted, but I knew that he didn’t just think of me as another one of his students, as the smartest girl at Redwood Academy who loved literature. Callan had thought about me outside of school, just like I had thought about him.

Get off him, or I’ll… I’ll—” “Or what, Georgina?” Callan hummed. “What are you going to do? Call your father?” “He will torture you for this!” she shouted. “I killed your father last night,” he said, grunting as he lifted his hips to meet mine. “And I loved every second of it.” “You what?” she screamed. I smiled softly at Callan, gently gripping his face in my hand. “He did it for me.” Callan smirked, stared up at me, and tucked some hair behind my ear. “All for you.

I held her tighter and tighter with every word, desperate for her to love me, not hate me. I couldn’t lose her.

Never in a million freaking years had I thought someone would say those words to me. I had been alone for so long, throwing myself into love story after love story and wishing that I could find someone to love me as much as my characters loved each other.

I feared Callan Avery would ruin my life, from the inside out, because I was too far gone for that man, far too deep in whatever these goddamn feelings were inside me. I was madly in love with my Literature professor.

God, I don't know what I would do without you, Maddie. I love you with everything that I have left.

A smile tugged at my lips. God, I fucking loved her frizzy hair.

I love you, Allie,” Jace mumbled into my neck, his fingers digging into my sides. “I love you so much, and I don’t ever want to lose you. You’re the only thing I look forward to every day.

No more secrets. No more lies. No more hurt. I’m going to love you this time, Allie. I promise you that I will protect you with my life.

I promise to love you,” he said, moving lower down my chest and to my stomach. “I promise to care for you. I promise to protect you with everything that I have.

I fucking love you, Allie, with my entire heart.

Tell me you love me back, Allie. Tell me that for these two years, you loved me too,” he whispered, almost sounding desperate. “I’ve loved you for so long, Jace.

I’m not giving up my dreams. You’re the only fucking thing that matters, Allie. I want to finally be with you without all this shit going on. I want to be able to love you without worry anymore.” “We can still love each other. We’ll just be a couple hundred miles apart.” “A couple hundred miles would be fine; I could come back to see you every day. But Michigan is nearly a thousand. I’ll barely see you for who knows how long, Allie. I need you. I fucking need you.

I fucking love you, Allie. I don’t want to go.” “Don’t cry, Jace.” I whispered, knowing that once he did, I would start. “I love you too.” I rested my forehead against his and kissed his lips. “We’ll make us and this work. We always do.

Why don’t you just leave me alone? What is your problem?” I asked. “You’re always in my love life.” He learned around me to grab a beer from the counter, his body too close to mine. “I can’t be in something that doesn’t exist,” he said. “Says the guy who can’t keep a girlfriend,” I said blowing out a breath. “Says the girl who hasn’t had a boyfriend her entire life. You must be really lonely, spending every night alone. Haven’t been touched by a man in, what? One, two years?” He chuckled menacingly at me. “You know, if I remember correctly, I was the last person to touch that pussy of yours, wasn’t I?” “You drive everyone I like away because you’re an annoying asshole.” “That didn’t answer my question. I am aren’t I? There’s no harm in admitting that you try to get on my nerves every day to get it again.” “You’re drunk,” I whispered, knowing that everything he was saying might or might not have been true. I would never admit it. “And you’re a brat,” he said into my ear. “You know what I like to do to brats.

Look at the mess you’re making of yourself, Allie.” He sucked on my neck and stared at me through the reflection. “You love sucking cock so much that you’re going to come from it, aren’t you?

Are you and Imani dating, dating, like, for real now?” “Dating João?” Imani said, peeking her head into the room and scrunching her nose playfully. “Ew, boys are gross.” Ana giggled for the first time tonight, and then she turned back to me and pointed at Imani. “But I know that you like her. She’s so pretty and perfect for you, João. You have so much in common, like you both love me!

I stared at her smaller frame for a few long moments, wishing that I could tell her that I loved and cared about her the same way she cared about me. I wanted her to tell me that she loved me too, not just appreciated me.

They’re so in love with her. I never thought I would say this, but it’s actually cute.

He leaned down and placed a kiss on her lips, like she had kissed me earlier. Except she kissed him for a bit longer, with a bit more passion, with more… love. Fuck.

His hands all over my body again, but this time, they weren’t rough and demanding. This time, he was soft and gentle and—dare I say—loving.

Warmth spread around my chest, and I grinned like a fucking doofus. Imani loved me.

When I was in the hospital,” I said, knowing that it was a moment I would never forget. I had ingrained it in my memories for forever and refused to let go. “Sometimes I think back to it and still don’t believe that she could love someone like me.