what laughing chains the water wove and threw!
i learned to catch the trout's moon whisper; i
drifted how many hours i never knew.
but, watching, saw that fleet young crescent die,---

and one star; swinging, take its place, alone,
cupped in the larches of the mountain pass---
until, immortally, it bled into the dawn.
i left my sleek boat nibbling margin grass...

a larch is a tree and this poem is talking about trees on a mountainside they cup a star that hangs suspended in the sky somewhere between heaven and earth they hold it and shelter it protect it never knowing quite where it belongs or where to go it lies there vaguely swinging back and forth...humming a little...

What's it worth?

Every once in a while it gets pounded into my brain that I’m not worth very much. I know that I’m worth nothing in the grand scheme of things. I am just a servant, sent to serve my neighbor. But is it wrong to want to feel like I’m worth something to somebody? Anybody? Is it wrong to want to feel like I am useful to someone? But this seems to contradict my knowledge that I am nothing. Maybe I’m just trying to hide from the fact that I can never really be worth anything to anybody except God. He is the only one who would be willing to pay anything for me.

Maybe I just want people to affirm my sense of self all the time. I can believe that I am that selfish. I have always wanted friends. I just thought that it was because I didn’t want to be lonely or so I could have someone to talk to. Well, God has blessed me with friends, but I can’t talk to any of them. I know that it is mostly my fault when it comes to that. I hide behind the excuse that I don’t know how to talk to people about personal things. I get scared because I think that they will either use it against me or that they will see what kind of person I really am and then leave me.

I am caught in this paradox. I don’t want to be alone. Just the thought of people leaving me sends me into despair. But I also can’t connect with the people that are around me. And the worst part is that it’s my fault. I stick to my pride like a barnacle to a rock. I can’t discuss things that would embarrass me because then I would be exposed and taking the risk that people would really see who I am: a dirty cripple, blackened by sin. And no matter how much I tell myself or am told that all people are that way…I still feel like I am the worst and that real people wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me.

The clincher is that on good days I will be feeling like things are going ok, but then something will just hit me like a freight train. It could be anything, but it speaks out to me and says that I am just an insignificant little speck in the universe and why would people even want to know me? What have I to contribute to their lives? I would like to think that I could have an impact on someone’s life, but that’s just not going to happen. But that is precisely the problem. I want it to be all about me. There are way too many I’s in the way I think. My selfishness wants to turn people into objects so that they can make me feel important. I mean…look at all the people out there who are suffering bodily danger every day and here’s me worrying about whether I matter or not. But is any of this even making sense anymore? I better quit ranting.