Nice Poem About Horses - About Life

The Weight

by Linda Gregg

Two horses were put together in the same paddock.
Night and day. In the night and in the day
wet from heat and the chill of the wind
on it. Muzzle to water, snorting, head swinging
and the taste of bay in the shadowed air.
The dignity of being. They slept that way,
knowing each other always.
Withers quivering for a moment,
fetlock and the proud rise at the base of the tail,
width of back. The volume of them, and each other's weight.
Fences were nothing compared to that.
People were nothing. They slept standing,
their throats curved against the other's rump.
They breathed against each other,
whinnied and stomped.
There are things they did that I do not know.
The privacy of them had a river in it.
Had our universe in it. And the way
its border looks back at us with its light.
This was finally their freedom.
The freedom an oak tree knows.
That is built at night by stars.

"The Weight" by Linda Gregg, from Chosen by the Lion. © Graywolf Press, 1994.

Three Writers

Going to Heaven

by Emily Dickinson

Going to heaven!
I don't know when,
Pray do not ask me how,--
Indeed, I'm too astonished
To think of answering you!
Going to heaven!--
How dim it sounds!
And yet it will be done
As sure as flocks go home at night
Unto the shepherd's arm!

Perhaps you're going too!
Who knows?
If you should get there first,
Save just a little place for me
Close to the two I lost!
The smallest "robe" will fit me,
And just a bit of "crown";
For you know we do not mind our dress
When we are going home.

I'm glad I don't believe it,
For it would stop my breath,
And I'd like to look a little more
At such a curious earth!
I am glad they did believe it
Whom I have never found
Since the mighty autumn afternoon
I left them in the ground.

"Going to Heaven" by Emily Dickinson. Public domain. 

It's the birthday of Anton Chekhov (books by this author), born in Taganrog, Russia (1860). He was in medical school and took up writing as a way to support his family. He wrote sketches and stories, never spending more than a day on any story. Two years after he graduated, Chekhov got a letter from the critic Dmitry Grigorovich, telling him that he was the most gifted writer of his generation and should take his work more seriously. Chekhov responded: "Your letter struck me like lightning. I became very emotional upon opening it. I nearly cried. I understand now that if I have a gift, I should honor it, which I have not always done in the past."
The next year he published a collection of short stories, At Dusk (1887), and it won the Pushkin Prize, a huge literary award in Russia. That same year, he wrote his first play. As he earned more from his writing, he didn't give up his medical practice — instead, he treated more and more poor patients free of charge.  He said, "Any idiot can face a crisis — it's day to day living that wears you out."

It was on this day in 1845 that Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" was published in the New York Evening Mirror (books by this author). It was a huge sensation: Abraham Lincoln memorized it, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a fan letter to Poe. He was paid $9 for "The Raven," and it was extensively reprinted without his permission, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had written an unsigned article for the Mirror before about copyright law, saying, "Without an international copyright law, American authors may as well cut their throats," but there was no such law until 1891. His income in 1844 was $424; in 1845, he made $549.

A Writer's Biography

It's the birthday of Sue Hubbell (books by this author), born in Kalamazoo, Michigan (1935). She said: "No one expected much from little girls growing up in the 1930s in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Mine was a family of high-aspirers, but they gave up on me [...] I was left pretty much alone. I look at today's youngsters with their enrichment programs, after-school lessons and activities, busily building résumés so that they can get into Harvard and realize I was given a wonderful gift — a happy childhood of my own making. I climbed trees and sat in the tops of them for long, long periods of time. I made exquisite little villages under an old pinoak tree by the edge of a lake. I read a lot in a random sort of way. I wondered a lot because the things I was most interested in seldom were on teachers' agenda. And so I asked a lot of questions. Asking questions wasn't a good preparation for any respectable career."

She became a journalist, a bookstore manager, and a librarian at Brown University, where her husband, Paul, taught. But they weren't satisfied with their lives, and they quit their jobs and bought 99 acres in the Ozarks in southern Missouri and took up beekeeping. After 30 years of marriage, the couple divorced, and she found herself alone, middle-aged, living on a big farm, producing honey. And she started to write down her own story. She said: "I was writing for myself, and what I put on paper over the next couple of years was unlike anything I had written before. I traced the natural history of my hilltop from one springtime to the next, discovering by the second spring that I was in a new place and understanding the value of where I was. That book was A Country Year: Living the Questions (1986). Her other books include A Book of Bees (1998), Waiting for Aphrodite (1999), and From Here to There and Back Again (2004).

Never Give Up

From: Inspiration Peak <dailymessage@inspirationpeak.com>
To: pepstar27@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2012 12:46 PM
Subject: You've done well...

You've done well. You've made great stuff happen, and you will make more great stuff happen. You've been scared and you overcame. You've been knocked down and you rose. And you've been lost, or so you thought, only to discover it was just the calm before another storm of creativity, love, and fun. Mike Dooley (Slightly Adapted) Inspirational Author, Speaker and Friend

Laugh and The World Laughs With You

"A day without laughter is a day wasted." - Charlie Chaplin

Success

Success is:   "... Having the courage to follow your heart and intuition...as they somehow already know what you truly want to become."          

Steve Jobs

From My Missionary Friends in Ireland

Miracle Story

After taking Kaleb to Dublin airport, Jeff spent the  day in Dublin since he had an evening appointment in Dublin anyway.

Sometime during the afternoon, he heard a popping sound. He didn’t
think much more about it. After his appointment that evening he drove
the three hours home.  The next morning, he found his front right tire
completely flat. (Remember, that would be the driver’s side over
here.) He took off the tire and took it to the tire shop to have it
checked.  After filling it with air, the man at the shop just barely
touched the valve cap and the entire valve shot out and fell to
pieces. 

After thinking about it, Jeff is quite certain that that was
the popping sound that he heard the day before in Dublin. The valve
remained intact and the tire filled for the entire three hour trip
home!  We believe that God protected him and kept him from having a
blowout on the way home late at night. (After being awake since 2:00
AM to make it to the airport.) God is so good!  We praise Him for His
protection!

Let Us All Carry One Another

Shoulders

by Naomi Shihab Nye

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.

We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

"Shoulders" by Naomi Shihab Nye, from Red Suitcase