* No my soul is not asleep. It is awake, wide awake. It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches, its clear eyes open, far-off things, and listens at the shores of the great silence. — Antonio Machado Photo: Chicago. December 2024

* The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Photo: Uptown, Chicago. Christmas. December 2024

* “Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night." — Virginia Woolf Photo: Wrigleyville, Chicago. December 2024

* Why does time stand eternally still and motionless in one place, and rush headlong by in another? ― W.G. Sebald, ‘Austerlitz’ Photo: Pilsen, Chicago. 2024

* To your eyes I sing my tired songs, from them I gather meaning, and in their depths I am lost. - Tayseer al-Sboul Photo: Bronzeville, Chicago. 2024

* We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious. — W.G. Sebald, ‘Austerlitz’ Photo: South Loop, Chicago. January 2025

* Had I told the sea What I felt for you, It would have left its shores, Its shells, Its fish, And followed me. ― Nizar Qabbani Photo: Montrose Harbor, Chicago. January 2025

* What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence. ― David Whyte Photo: Art Institute of Chicago. 2024

* Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us, even in the leafless winter, even in the ashy city. I am thinking now of grief, and of getting past it. - Mary Oliver, ‘Starlings in Winter’ Photo: Art Institute of Chicago. January 2025

* The faint shadow of the morning moon? Nay, the snow falling on the earth. The mist of blossoming flowers? Nay, poetry smiling up the sky. - Yone Noguchi Photo: Art Institute of Chicago. January 2025

* South are swallows gone, and south And sunward from my heart the village Shelters in past weather's peace: Now winter's words are on the mouth. - Kenneth Gee, ‘Winter’ Photo: Art Institute of Chicago. January 2025

* Is this universe a shade of something out of sense? What are we if not particles and waves? I wonder! - Nazim ZarSinner, ‘I Wonder’ Photo: Millennium Park, Chicago. 2024

* Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness (?) – Keats Photo: Grant Park, Chicago. February 2025

* In this primordial quiet, every sound is an awakening that soothes and invites one to savour the hidden magic of a new beginning. — David Passarelli Photo: Belmont Harbor, Chicago. February 2025

* Something subtle and profound happens when you turn and look back at the road you have traveled. The road where you left no footprints, where all of life was left behind. - Dulce María Loynaz Photo: Eureka, Illinois. February 2025

* Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood . . . Everything is new and old in the surrounding luster . . . — Pablo Neruda Photo: Argyle Street, Chicago. February 2025

* Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea But sad mortality o’er-sways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? - William Shakespeare, ‘Sonnet 65’ Photo: Old Town, Chicago. February 2025

* To be human is to be broken and broken is its own kind of beautiful. — Robert M. Drake Photo: Chicago. 2025

* As we walk through the secretive doors of our remembrance, looking for forgotten benchmarks of our history, we can find unexpected escape hatches opening into valuable answers to great expectations. — Erik Pevernagie Photo: Nichols Bridgeway, Chicago. 2024

* We are captives, even if our wheat grows over the fences and swallows rise from our broken chains. We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are. — Mahmoud Darwish Photo: Argyle Street, Chicago. February 2025