Share a book or a poem that is especially meaningful to you.

I was living (existing) with chronic pain, wen I was introduced to the little book "The Way Out" by Alan Gordon and Alon Zev. It taught me new ways to view and manage my pain, and led me to Pain Rehab Clinic. There I learned many coping and pain reduction strategies, got counseling and found (non-opioid) medication to help reduce it. It was a lot of hard work, but it changed my life.

Poet Laureate

The Bible!

For your tenderness
is what tethers you
to the exquisite
terrors of living, and living’s
all there is. Keep on, keep on.
The smallest voice you have speaks
your most important things.
Are you there?
If you’re listening, I think it’s all right
to take a breath now. If you’re there,
I think it’s all right.

~Excerpt from the poem Someday I’ll Love by Leila Chatti

Wow! @shmerdloff

So beautiful. @triciaot

"The Power of Now" Eckhart Tolle

I love the poem about the pathless woods written by Lord Byron in 1700. It shows you how beautiful and peaceful the woods and nature must have been in those days. It is also rather sad because today there are no more pathless woods. We have developed them all one way or another.
Perhaps with God's help we will one day get back to that kind of beauty.
Enjoy the poem!
PML

There Is Pleasure In The Pathless Woods

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

The Power of the Dog, by Rudyard Kipling

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie—
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find—it’s your own affair—
But… you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!).
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone—wherever it goes—for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ’em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long—
So why in—Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

And while we're on the subject of Byron, here's a poem of his that I learned (the hard way, of course) during my wild bachelor days:

Remember thee! remember thee!
Till Lethe quench life's burning stream
Remorse and shame shall cling to thee,
And haunt thee like a feverish dream!

Remember thee! Aye, doubt it not.
Thy husband too shall think of thee:
By neither shalt thou be forgot,
Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!