Sententiae

“Aloneness is alienation, solitude communion.”

“Solitude is the companionable presence of God.”

The Anchorite (1881) by Franz Ejsmond

The Short of It (more)

I listen to broken grass…

I listen to broken grass

Dried out by summer

Popping underfoot like

Frozen grass in winter.

***

Forbearance is silence…

Forbearance is silence,

Virtue of the meek.

Silence is complicity,

Oppression of the weak.

***

I like my coffee hot and black...

I like my coffee hot and black—

hot hornet stings,

black squid ink—

heady broth of

bitter cumin,

red pine smoke,

dusky forests,

blue lightning.

***

I like my tea hot and sweet...

I like my tea hot and sweet—

hot thermal blooms,

sweet billowing mists—

suffusing beverage of

crow-black herbs,

white-petal clouds,

distilled memories,

prophetic dreams.

***

THE JEWELER

Afternoon is a jeweler

Setting hours in gold,

As silver glinting waves

Slap the garnet shore.

Scottish shortbread fingers

Odds and Ends

This blog is a personal journal for public consumption:

https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/

Seated Figure (1989) by Ang Kiukok

The Short of It

You are the reflection...

You are the reflection on the pavement of a rainy day,

Mirror of the sky painted briefly by shadows of a bustling world.

Where is my soul but in your image?
Eternity will reveal your beauty glistening in the memory of water.

***

How dark the sky...

How dark the sky,

Bright the water

When silver fish

Reflect the moon.

Aphorisms

APHORISMS

A theory works until you try it out.

A theory corrected by experience is no longer a theory.

Wisdom is life experience applied to well-considered judgment.

Darkness arises from the absence or deficiency of light, obscurity from its excess.

Religion is a hat the devil wears to cover his horns.

Tinker to tamper is but one small step.

Do not surrender one handhold until you have grasped another.

When a pot fails to boil, turn up the heat.

The social sciences are like the straight edge of a ruler that guides the creative pencil of the humanities.

He who builds the future without regard for the past is like one who looks into the mirror and promptly forgets what he sees.

Populism is an incomplete and degenerate form of democracy.

Under a tyranny the law is misused as an instrument of injustice, persecution, repression, and oppression.

Correctly construed, the rule of law protects and upholds human rights and our God-given freedoms.

The rule of law creates, builds, and sustains just societies.

Originally published in The Penmen Review (October 16, 2017)