[Image: “Butterfly Splash,” by Alex Koloskov. For more information, including an “e-videobook” tutorial on creating this sort of effect, see the photographer’s site, which is where I found it.]
From whiskey river (italicized portion):
Poem Holding Its Heart In One Fist
Each pebble in this world keeps
its own counsel.Certain words — these, for instance —
may be keeping a pronoun hidden.
Perhaps the lover’s you
or the solipsist’s I.
Perhaps the philosopher’s willowy it.The concealment plainly delights.
Even a desk will gather
its clutch of secret, half-crumpled papers,
eased slowly, over years,
behind the backs of drawers.Olives adrift in the altering brine-bath
etch onto their innermost pits
a few furrowed salts that will never be found by the tongue.Yet even with so much withheld,
so much unspoken,
potatoes are cooked with butter and parsley,
and buttons affixed to their sweater.
Invited guests arrive, then dutifully leave.And this poem, afterward, washes its breasts
with soap and trembling hands, disguising nothing.
(Jane Hirshfield)
…and:
I had a discussion with a great master in Japan, and we were talking about the various people who are working to translate the Zen books into English, and he said, “That’s a waste of time. If you really understand Zen, you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because the sound of the rain needs no translation.”
(Alan Watts)
…and:
In the end, writing is like a prison, an island from which you will never be released but which is a kind of paradise: the solitude, the thoughts, the incredible joy of putting into words the essence of what you for the moment understand and with your whole heart want to believe.
(James Salter)
