The grass as bristly and stout as chives and me wondering when the ground will break and me wondering how anything fragile survives
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the resilience of fragile things in nature amidst tough conditions.
In this quote, Anne Sexton uses vivid imagery to ponder the strength and fragility of life. The comparison of the grass to chives conveys a sense of harsh resilience, prompting the speaker to reflect on the delicate balance of survival within a seemingly unforgiving environment.
In practice
In a discussion about environmental resilience during a presentation.
The Witch's Life" When I was a child there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story window from behind the wrinkled curtains and sometimes she would open the window and yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp and a voice like a boulder. I think of her sometimes now and wonder if I am becoming her.
Do you like me?” No answer. Silence bounced, fell off his tongue and sat between us and clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust. It tore cigarettes out of my mouth. We exchanged blind words, and I did not cry, I did not beg, but blackness filled my ears, blackness lunged in my heart, and something that had been good, a sort of kindly oxygen, turned into a gas oven.
Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone.
Abundance is scooped from abundance yet abundance remains.
I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year’s cupful and downward into a decade’s quart and downward into a lifetime’s ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman’s float.
I am your dwarf. I am the enemy within. I am the boss of your dreams. See. Your hand shakes. It is not palsy or booze. It is your Doppelganger trying to get out. Beware...Beware...
I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we control the external world, but every time there's a snowstorm or drought, we know our fate is tied to the world around us
Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.
'The Creation' presents an argument for saving biological diversity on Earth. Most of the book is for as broad an audience as possible.
Come when the rains_x000D_ _x000D_ Have glazed the snow and clothed the trees with ice,_x000D_ _x000D_ While the slant sun of February pours_x000D_ _x000D_ Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach!_x000D_ _x000D_ The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps_x000D_ _x000D_ And the broad arching portals of the grove_x000D_ _x000D_ Welcome thy entering.
It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
...if we want to meet the obligations of our civilization and our culture which are to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment as the communities that our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting that infrastructure; the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the landscapes that enrich us.
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