There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.

Sylvia Plath

I have just said

Something

Ridiculous to you

And in response,

Your glorious laughter.

 

These are the days

The sun

Is swimming back

To the east

And the light on the water

Gleams

As never, it seems, before.

 

I can’t remember

Every spring,

I can’t remember

Everything-

 

So many years!

Are the morning kisses

The sweetest

Or the evenings

Or the inbetweens?

All I know

Is that “thank you” should appear

Somewhere.

 

So, just in case

I can’t find

The perfect place-

“Thank you, thank you.”

Mary Oliver

Let me begin by telling you that I was in love. An ordinary statement, to be sure, but not an ordinary fact, for so few of us learn that love is tenderness, and tenderness is not, as a fair proportion suspect, pity; and still fewer know that happiness in love is not the absolute focusing of all emotion in another: one has always to love a good many things which the beloved must come only to symbolize.

Truman Capote

in time of daffodils (who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so (forgetting seem)

in time of roses (who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek (forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

e.e. cummings

Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ ‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.

E.B. White