2011-01-03

Love-Drenched Rhyme

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty/that is all
ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." 

. ~ John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn, 1884

Literary warriors like Keats had it right.
The poet must fight
and he must write

The truth is here
We hold so dear
Yet throw it away
In meaningless ways

Pick up your pen
You women and men
Who write from the heart
As if it were art

And before you depart

Will offer your life

One day at a time

The courage to find

The best of yourself.

And offering it up
In love-drenched rhyme

~Adam Stuart
January 3, 2011

Grateful to have taken the time to get to know a spirit such as Keats, and find out they shared the same Spanish Steps in Rome before they died.

2011-01-01

So Long As I Have This

Thinking of Sofia
Missing of Sofia

Found myself watching this clip
Remembering watching it with her before she went on her trip

Feelings of happiness tap tapping in my heart
Then waking up with a jolting start

These two dancing are really she and I
With her for me Heaven is brought down from the sky


Life isn't about trying to become famous and rich
It's about being internally rich while making this life-long trip

And when I'm holding Sofia underneath the same sky

We are both more rich than any money can buy






This has special meaning to me because I've been approached with an opportunity to become a writer for a new television show and make a salary in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This would require I leave teaching and possibly not being able to see and have Sofia in my everyday life.

The truth is......I already am rich and famous.

Every morning when I pick her up for school I am rich in the love the two of us share for each other.

When she puts her hand in mine crossing the parking lot I am famously alive and happy.

Breakfast in my classroom before school starts is time reserved just for her, and right now all this 8-year old wants is time with her Dad.

And every love note signed, "Love, Dadddy" she finds in her classroom mailbox means more to her than seeing his name up in lights for the rest of the world to see.

And then there's the day spent seeing every student for all the good they already are and all the great things they can so easily be.



As teens and adults we spend so much time searching for and chasing success and happiness. It's always out there in the future when something outside ourselves is achieved or happens.

As children we simply are happy and successful. We are richly and famously alive in the here and now, fully appreciating and treasuring the moments we are in.

And it is in this pure appreciation of each moment that we powerfully become the truest and highest versions of our selves.


We live and die in the blink of an eye
We can choose to use it to say, "I'm going to get mine"

Or we can choose to be our most powerful selves
Jumping up and pulling Heaven down from the sky

Sharing it with others
And telling the world of limits, "Goodbye!"



I haven't said yes.
I haven't said no

The events of 2010
have left me broke and alone

Unable to trust others
and more-or-less homeless

A friend's free spare bedroom
my few possessions rest


But by refusing to be broken and developing my gifts

2011 has arrived offering to make me famous and rich

I haven't said yes
I haven't said no

But the real meaning of life
Is what I truly know

So long as I have love
And love has me

Together we have it all

And after all...

This love is what gives life
and lasting meaning to thee