There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

As the tide rises, the closed mollusc Opens a fraction to the ocean's food, Bathed in its riches. Do not ask What force would do, or if force could. A knife is of no use against a fortress. You might break it to pieces as gulls do. No, only the rising tide and its slow progress Opens the shell. Lovers, I tell you true. You who have held yourselves closed hard Against warm sun and wind, shelled up in fears And hostile to a touch or tender word— The ocean rises, salt as unshed tears. Now you are floated on this gentle flood That cannot force or be forced, welcome food Salt as your tears, the rich ocean's blood, Eat, rest, be nourished on the tide of love. By May Sarton

Love is a place & through this place of love move (with brightness of peace) all places yes is a world & in this world of yes live (skillfully curled) all worlds

love is thicker than forget more thinner than recall more seldom than a wave is wet more frequent than to fail it is most mad and moonly and less it shall unbe than all the sea which only is deeper than the sea love is less always than to win less never than alive less bigger than the least begin less littler than forgive it is most sane and sunly and more it cannot die than all the sky which only is higher than the sky. Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are by somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn, a human being.

Big heart, wide as a watermelon, but wise as birth, there is so much abundance in the people I have: Luke, Micah, Jordan, Josh, jacob, mom, daddy, Becky and Dorothy, Elizabeth, matt, Jeff. and all in their short lives give to me repeatedly, in the way the sea places its many fingers on the shore, again and again and they know me, they help me unravel, they listen with ears made of conch shells, they speak back with the wine of the best region. They comfort me. They hear how the artery of my soul has been severed and soul is spurting out upon them, bleeding on them, messing up their clothes, dirtying their shoes. And God is filling me, though there are times of doubt as hollow as the Grand Canyon, still God is filling me. He is giving me the thoughts of simple beings, the spider in its intricate web, the sun in all its amazement, and those slain in tragedy that is the glory, the mystery of great cost, and my heart, which is very big, I promise it is very large, a monster of sorts, takes it all in-- all in comes the fury of love. Anne Sexton

The axe rings in the wood And the children come, Laughing and wet from the river; And all goes on as it should. I hear the murmur and hum Of their morning, forever. The water ripples and slaps The white boat at the dock; The fire crackles and snaps. The little noise of the clock Goes on and on in my heart, Of my heart parcel and part. O happy early stir! A girl comes out on the porch, And the door slams after her. She sees the wind in the birch, And then the running day Catches her into its way. — Janet Lewis

I WENT out on an April morning      All alone, for my heart was high,   I was a child of the shining meadow,      I was a sister of the sky.   There in the windy flood of morning      Longing lifted its weight from me,   Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,      Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.