New Year's Eve

You must give birth to your images.
They are the future waiting to be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth,
for the hour
of the new clarity.
– Rainier Maria Rilke

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.
— Thich Nhat Hanh

Deck the walls and all

Solstice Wisdom

Ice mountain melted ages ago 
and made this ridge.
this place of changes

Now we are rooted in it,
we of the old ones,
we of the new ones from afar,
oatgrass meadow, douglas fir thicket,
we are rooted in the ridge of changes
in the time of changes.

The winds carry strange smells,
this is a day of change.

Great ones above and below, bless us!

O shining One above, feed us with your light!
O soft ones, sky darkeners, wash us with your raindrops!
O powers above, bless us with your gifts,
for we reach to you,
branching wood and sap.

O Earthmother from who we grow,
sandy gravel into whom our roots branch wood
and sap deep down,
bless us in our night-sleep, in our death and decay,.

Bless us, dark earth as we give back
that which we have received
as we make a forest of blessing a ridge of blessing
for the future to grow upon.
– Chinook Psalter

revisiting

A Blessing

By James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness   

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.   

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.   

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me   

And nuzzled my left hand.   

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

James Wright, “A Blessing” from Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose. Copyright 1990 by James Wright. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.