Invictus

photograph by SHVETS production via Pexels

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow’d.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

— William Ernest Henley


Little Fighter

I’m with you

Russell Lee, “Visitors’ hour at the Cairns General Hospital at the FSA (Farm Security Administration) farmworkers’ community” (1942)

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “A Psalm of Life” (excerpt)
 

“Box of Rain” by Grateful Dead

Blues

cf. Edward Fletcher Stevens, “The American hospital of the twentieth century…” (1918) and
treetreeplant, Vancouver rainstorm August 29 2013 – YouTube

Blues

I sat on the edge of the bed

in the dark

spotlight sheet of rain traveling down the street

I remembered another night

when I looked at the rain

a long time ago

at home

–J.S.