When I die, I want your hands on my eyes:
I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me once more:
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.
I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.
I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you
to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,
to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.
I want what I love to continue to live,
and you whom I love and sang above everything else
to continue to flourish, full-flowered:
so that you can reach everything my love directs you to,
so that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
so that everything can learn the reason for my song.
-Pablo Neruda
(photos of peace cranes sent in from around the world taken at Tribute World Trade Center and the cemetery at St. Paul's Chapel – the place where recovery workers went to recover themselves, although the graves are not of 9/11 victims – bottom 3 smallest images are of the Ground Zero site itself, from my trip this past March)
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
** Come back on Monday for our 20th Poetry Party! **
Christine,
The colors of the cranes were great inspiration as I prepared for my craft fair.Very touching story, as well.
Hope you are getting through all your projects!!!
These are superbly beautiful.
Thanks Suz, I am feeling a bit more caught up and grounded today!
Thanks so much davis and welcome to this space.
fabulous colors! see you soon
What an uplifting progression of color and symbolism. Thank you for sharing your artistic perspective, I am enriched.