But Longing Is Momentum In Disguise: Its Active, Not Passive; Touched With The Creative, The Tender,

“But longing is momentum in disguise: It’s active, not passive; touched with the creative, the tender, and the divine. We long for something, or someone. We reach for it, move toward it. The word longing derives from the Old English langian, meaning ‘to grow long,’ and the German langen—to reach, to extend. The word yearning is linguistically associated with hunger and thirst, but also desire. In Hebrew, it comes from the same root as the word for passion. The place you suffer, in other words, is the same place you care profoundly—care enough to act.”

— Susan Cain, from Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole (Crown, 2022)

“someone I love is praying in another language / I don’t know all the words but I know / what it means—”

— Linnette Reeman, from “The New Jersey Devil Considers Parallels,” The New Jersey Devil Washes the Blood Off (and other vignettes) (L'Éphémère Review micro-chapbook, 2018)

“Poems are nearer to prayers than to stories, but in poetry there is no one behind the language being prayed to. It is the language itself which has to hear and acknowledge. For the religious poet, the Word is the first attribute of God. In all poetry words are a presence before they are a means of communication.”

— John Berger, My Heart, Brief as Photos

Untitled piece from Shirin Neshat’s Soliloquy series, Iran 1999.

“The thyme and rosemary rubbing against your clothes, the smell of too many illusions—I went back but I didn’t stay.”

— Louise Glück, from Sunrise

“Orange blossoms blowing over Castile children begging for coins. I met my love under an orange tree or was it an acacia tree or was he not my love?… Bells of San Miguel ringing in the distance his hair in the shadows blond-white”

— Louise Glück, Castile