How does anyone make it together

for fifteen years? she asked.

I told her what I know.

That the best way is by leaping together

into the deepest black water.

The best way is by putting it all on the table.

Risking more than we can stand to lose.

Do that, and life throws you a party in your honor.

Throw aside dark fears

and lay your most shameful secrets

into the hand of your lover.

Then river otters will slip and slide

down delicious muddy banks,

wetly singing songs of praise.

Accept with gratitude

the weakness and the beauty

of the sacred fool you love,

and writers in Amsterdam and Topeka

will suddenly know the perfect

ending for their story.

Do these things, and Brazilian schoolgirls

will break into spontaneous sambas

across hot cement playgrounds.

Do this, and ranchers in the lower valley

will bring home all lost calves

well  before nightfall.

~ Victory Lee Schouten

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

~Rabindranath Tagore