Jasper

Music

Moss Amethyst Necklace
• • •

the slow mornings of coffee and newspapers
and evenings of music and scattered bits
of talk like leaves suddenly fallen before
one notices the new season. And they would sit
there alone and soon he would reach across
and lift her hand as if it were the last unbroken
leaf and he would hold her hand in his hand
for a long time and they would look far off
into the music of their lives as they sat alone

from The Dumka by B. H. Fairchild

Feather and Bone

• • •

I sat still
in the five o'clock light
the sun came in through the crack
the floor to your room
was all splinters
and, still,
some are remaining
through skin
and through flesh
cutting in patterns
like diamonds
like needles
down to the bone.

from Feather and Bone by Suzanne Vega

Water-burn

Lotus Trio Bracelet

We should have been galloping on horses, their hoofprints
Splashes of light, divots kicked out of the darkness,
Or hauling up lobster pots in a wake of sparks. Where
Were the otters and seals? Were the dolphins on fire?
Yes, we should have been doing more with our lives.

Water-burn by Michael Longley

The Great Event

photo by Frederick T. Strang, Jr.
• • •

It's going to happen very soon. The great event that will end the horror. That will end the sorrow. Next Tuesday, when the sun does down, I will play the Moonlight Sonata backwards. This will reverse the effects of the world's mad plunge into suffering for the last 200 million years. What a lovely night that will be. What a sigh of relief, as the senile robins become bright red again, and the retired nightingales pick up their dusty tails, and assert the majesty of creation!

The Great Event by Leonard Cohen

St. Elmo's Fire

Labradorite Earrings
• • •

In the medieval night
'Twas love's design
And the sky was open
Like a valentine
All the lacy lights
Where wishes fall
And like Shakespeare's child
I wished on them all

from Looking for You (I Was) by Patti Smith

Blue Moment

Blue Earrings

There comes the strangest moment in your life,
when everything you thought before breaks free--
what you relied upon, as ground-rule and as rite
looks upside down from how it used to be.

Skin's gone pale, your brain is shedding cells;
you question every tenet you set down;
obedient thoughts have turned to infidels
and every verb desires to be a noun.

from There Comes the Strangest Moment by Kate Light

Red

Carnelian, Turquoise and Lotus Bracelet

• • •

Even if I am in love with you
All this to say, what's it to you?
Observe the blood, the rose tatoo
Of the fingerprints on me from you

from Marlene On The Wall by Suzanne Vega

Loss

Come forth from the cloud of unknowing
and kiss the cheek of the moon;
the code of solitude broken,
why tarry confused and alone?
And leave no word of discomfort,
and leave no observer to mourn,
but climb on your tears and be silent
like the rose on its ladder of thorn.

from The Window by Leonard Cohen

Bangles

Hammered Sterling Silver Bangle Bracelets

• • •

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

from A Ritual to Read to Each Other by William Stafford

Green Garnet

Wire Wrapped Grossular Green Garnet Necklace

This Is Just to Say

I have just
asked you to
get out of my
apartment

even though
you never
thought
I would

Forgive me
you were
driving
me insane

Erica-Lynn Gambino

Pearls

Bronze Pearl with 22k Rose Gold Vermeil Heart Necklace
• • •

sometimes you find yourself flying low at night
flying blind and looking for any sign of light
you're cold and scared and all alone
you'd do anything just to make it home

it's a mad mission under difficult conditions
not everybody makes it to the loving cup
it's a mad mission but i got the ambition
mad, mad mission sign me up

Excerpt from Mad Mission by Patti Griffin

Spiral

Pearl and Gold Spiral Necklace

A Door

I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside.

- Rumi

Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

Sheenagh Pugh

Agate Bracelet

Indian Agate and Carnelian Bracelet

Chalcedony

Ocean Chalcedony Necklace

Ocean

Jasper

• • •

Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances.
That's not for human beings. Move within,
but don't move the way fear makes you move.

Move Within by Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks

The Three Goals

Hammered Silver and 14k Gold Pendant Necklace

• • •

The first goal is to see the thing itself

in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
for what it is.

No symbolism, please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.

In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and second goals,
to see the universal and the particular,
simultaneously.

Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

The Three Goals by David Budbill

Again?

Gabby & Jaz

Will you stop for a while, stop trying to pull yourself
together
for some clear "meaning"--some momentary summary?
no one
can have poetry or dances, prayers or climaxes all day,
the ordinary
blankness of little dramatic consciousness is good for the
health sometimes,
only Dostoevsky can be Dostoevskian at such long
long tumultuous stretches;

Excerpt from Moderation Is Not a Negation of Intensity, But Helps Avoid Monotony by John Tagliabue

Mask

Sterling Silver and Amethyst Mask Pendant Necklace

• • •

Body is a thing that you have to leave
eventually. You know that because you have
seen others do it, others who were once like you,
living inside their pile of bones and
flesh, smiling at you, loving you,
leaning in the doorway, talking to you
for hours and then one day they
are gone. No forwarding address.

Excerpt from Living in the Body by Joyce Sutphen

Dia de los Muertos

Perfection Wasted

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market--
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

John Updike

Dia de Todos los Santos

I watched the turtle dwindle day by day,
Get more remote, lie limp upon my hand;
When offered food he turned his head away;
The emerald shell grew soft. Quite near the end
Those withdrawn paws stretched out to grasp
His head in a poignant dying gesture.
It was so strangely like a human clasp,
My heart cracked for the brother creature.

Excerpt from Death and the Turtle by May Sarton

Bats

Black and Grey Agate Bracelet

• • •

A bat is born
Naked and blind and pale.
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
and catches him. He clings to her long fur
By his thumbs and toes and teeth.
And then the mother dances through the night
Doubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting--
Her baby hangs on underneath.
All night, in happiness, she hunts and flies.
Her sharp cries
Like shining needlepoints of sound
Go out into the night, and echoing back,
Tell her what they have touched.

Excerpt from Bats by Randall Jarrell