Emily Dickinson, "I dwell in possibility" (#657)

 

I dwell in Possibility--
A fairer House than Prose--
More numerous of Windows--
Superior--for Doors--

Of Chambers as the Cedars--
Impregnable of Eye--
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky--

Of Visitors--the fairest--
For Occupation--This--
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise--

 To make life a little better for people less fortunate than you.
That's what I think a meaningful life is.
One lives not just for oneself, but for one's community.
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

 Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

—— Rainer Maria Rilke, “Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29”
.

 

 

 

For the Sleepwalkers 

Tonight  I want to say something wonderful for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith in their legs, so much faith in the invisible    arrow carved into the carpet, the worn path that leads to the stairs instead of the window, the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror.    I love the way that sleepwalkers are willing to step out of their bodies into the night, to raise their arms and welcome the darkness,    palming the blank spaces, touching everything. Always they return home safely, like blind men who know it is morning by feeling shadows. And always they wake up as themselves again. That's why I want to say something astonishing like:  Our hearts are leaving our bodies. Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs flying through the trees at night, soaking up the darkest beams of moonlight, the music    of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches. And now our hearts are thick black fists flying back to the glove of our chests. We have to learn to trust our hearts like that. We have to learn the desperate faith of sleep- walkers who rise out of their calm beds and walk through the skin of another life. We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness and wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised.    ~ Edward Hirsch ~

under the bench

 

 What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
- Jane Goodall

 

 You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing
that is more than your own.
Let it brush your cheeks
as it divides and rejoins behind you.

Blessed ones, whole ones,
you where the heart begins:
you are the bow that shoots the arrows
and you are the target.

Fear not a pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

—— Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Sonnets to Orpheus” as translated by Joanna Macy

 Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.
- The Buddha

 

"We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us."

~Joseph Campbell

“My dear,
In the midst of strife, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was within me, an invincible calm.
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me, there lay, an invincible summer. And, that makes me happy.
For it says, that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger…”
~ Albert Camus

 “Giving ourselves over to the act of art-making is one way we find this moment of eternity, or even better, how we allow the moment to find us.”

--- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD

 

 People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life.  I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. - Joseph Campbell

 All that is sweet, delightful, and amiable in this world, in the serenity of the air, the
fineness of seasons, the joy of light, the melody of sounds, the beauty of colors, the
fragrancy of smells, the splendor of precious stones, is nothing else but Heaven
breaking through the veil of this world.
- William Law

Under the Harvest Moon

 

Under the harvest moon, 
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker, 
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses 
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories, 
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

Carl Sandburg 

 Awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own
presence.
- John O’Donohue

 God requires a faithful fulfillment of the merest trifle given us to do, rather than
the most ardent aspiration to things to which we are not called.
- St. François de Sales

                                                                    I breathe slowly in,

I breathe slowly out. My breath

is a pathway of peace

moving softly through me.

Each day I can breathe and be.

 

This is My Wish for You

That the spirit of beauty
may continually hover about you
and fold you close within
the tenderness of her wings.

That each beautiful
and gracious thing in life
May be unto you as a symbol
of good for your soul’s delight.

That sun-glories
and star-glories,
Leaf-glories and bark-glories,
Flower-glories
and glories that lurk
in the grasses of the field . . . .
Glories of mountains and oceans,
of little streams of running waters
Glories of song
of poesy,
of all the arts. . .

May be to you as sweet
abiding influences
That will illumine your life
and make you glad.

That your soul may be
as an alabaster cup
Filled to overflowing
With the mystical wine
of beauty and love.

That happiness may
put her arms around you,
And wisdom make
your soul serene.

This is my wish for you.

By Charles Livingston Snell (1914)

 You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyone—any person or any force—dampen, dim or diminish your light. Study the path of others to make your way easier and more abundant. Lean toward the whispers of your own heart, discover the universal truth, and follow its dictates. […] Release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won. Choose confrontation wisely, but when it is your time don't be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice. And if you follow your truth down the road to peace and the affirmation of love, if you shine like a beacon for all to see, then the poetry of all the great dreamers and philosophers is yours to manifest in a nation, a world community, and a Beloved Community that is finally at peace with itself.
― John Lewis

 

Okakura Kakuzo: "Let us have a sip of tea. The 
afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling 
with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream 
of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things."

 

“The purest and most thoughtful minds

 are those which love color the most.”

― John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

Faith is better understood as a verb than a noun,
 as a process than a possession.
 It is an on-again, off-again rather than once-and-for-all.
Faith is not sure where you’re going, but going anyway.
— Frederick Buechner

Invitation

 Oh do you have time

to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude –
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

Mary Oliver, “Invitation,” A Thousand Mornings (New York: Penguin Books, 2013).

The Word

“You can say anything you want, yessir, but it’s the words that sing, they soar and descend…I bow to them…I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down…I love words so much…the unexpected ones…the ones I wait for greedily or stalk, until suddenly, they drop…Vowels I love…they glitter like colored stones, they leap like silver fish, they are foam, thread, metal, dew…I run after certain words…They are so beautiful that I want to fit them all into my poem…I catch them in mid flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them.  I set myself in front of the dish.  They have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, oil, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives…and then I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, I let them go…I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves…Everything exists in the word…”

          by Pablo Neruda

Just Thinking

Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile. Some dove somewhere.

Been on probation most of my life. And
the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments
count for a lot--peace, you know.

Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.

This is what the whole thing is about. 

by William Stafford

Pandemic

In the beginning,
when we all stayed in,
the birds came to sing to us,
now that the drone of traffic and jets
all silenced.
The earth gave a great sigh of relief
as the air cleared
and the mountains reappeared.
And in our time of pausing,
great beauty was revealed
to give us solace,
as we waited
for our world
to come
to an end.

Starfish

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to 
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a 
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have 
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman 
down beside you at the counter who say, Last night, 
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological 
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old 
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it 
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the 
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you 
were born at a good time. Because you were able 
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And 
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland, 
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel, 
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

Eleanor Lerman 

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
 and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. 
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”
 ~ Kahlil Gibran

Butterflies

Some days her main job seems to be

to welcome back the Red Admiral

as it lights on a leaf of the yellow

forsythia. It is her duty to stop & lean

over to take in how it folds & opens

its wings. Then, too, there is the common

Tiger Swallowtail, which seems to her

entirely uncommon in how it moves

about the boundaries of this clearing

we made so many years ago. If she leaves

the compost bucket unwashed to rescue

a single tattered wing from under the winter

jasmine or the blue flowers of the periwinkle

& then spends a whole afternoon at our round

oak table surrounded by field guides

& tea until she is sure—yes—that it belongs to

a Lorquin's Admiral, or that singular

mark is one of the great cat's eyes

of a Milbert's Tortoiseshell, then she is

simply practicing her true vocation

learning the story behind the blue beads

of the Mourning Cloak, the silver commas

of the Satyr Anglewing, the complex shades

of the Spring Azure, moving through this life

letting her sweet, light attention land

on one luminous thing after another.

 

Poem copyright ©2017 by Samuel Green, "Butterflies."  

I do my best to deliver an engaging and Deliberate telling of the good story of our beeing as I choose to say It
and how I Like Beeing among all the rest of you as you be
and I truly hope that Someday your being will want to Bee with me in our Beeing kind of world
And we can all expand our breathe along with the universe as it expands and breathes Within us and without us
and regardless of what we have to say about it.
And I talk about the Buddha and sometimes he is on the side of the road and sometimes she is upside down
and I am here to tell you that life can be strange and wonderful at the same time
and I write about Melanie and her help with my finding reality again
and my trip to the Yucatan with my two boys
and going to the movies as a ten year old
and the girls in my teen age life
and my father being tough as nails and stinging me with that
and my mother being so very vulnerable and leaving me with that
and then there is me learning how to Bee
in the here and now kind of moment and the alive kind of moment
and I do not want to leave out the music in my life and Miles Davis
and the Mayan Kings and a girl dressed in a Nurses outfit
And mostly I wrote this book to reveal myself to my wife and to my family and to anyone who Reads this book really
and I really want all of you to enjoy your beeing in the alive kind of world and of the right now in this moment kind of world.

Charles H. Grimes

Ann Arbor 2014

Militants to Certain Other Women

You who pass coldly by when the police rush upon us,
When they wrench away our banners,
(Beautiful banners whose colors cry a demand for liberty)
You who criticize or condemn
(Declaring you “believe in suffrage,
Worked for it in your state, and your mother
knew Susan B. Anthony”)
Can you think in terms of a nation?
Could you die, (or face ridicule) for your belief?
For the freedom of women, for your freedom,
we are fighting; 
For your safety we face danger, bear torture;
For your honor endure untellable insult.
To win democracy for you we defend the banners of democracy
Till our banners and our bodies
Are flung together on the pavement,
Waiting at the gates of government,
We have made of our weariness a symbol
Of women’s long wait for justice.
We have borne the hunger and hardship of prison,
To open people’s eyes
To men’s determination to imprison the power of women.
You women who pass coldly by,
Do you imagine your freedom is coming
As a summer wind blows over fields?
Slowly it has advanced by a sixty-years’ war,
(Those who have fought in it have not forgotten)

And that war is not won.
Strongly entrenched, the foe sits plotting.
Close to his lines our banners fly,
Signalling where to direct the fire,
Greater forces are needed, reserves and recruits.
Are you for winning or for waiting,
Women who watch the banners go down?
Women who say, “Suffrage is coming,”
While suffrage goes by you into Prussia?
Case to be content with applauding speeches, and praising politicians.
Patience is shameful.
Awake, rise, and act. 

Katharine Rolston Fisher - 1871-1949

This poem is in the public domain.

[we are]

we are
prayer in the long boat
                                               a rhizomatic scream
                                               surrounded by the dark dagger
                                                                        of the ocean
                         scripture
                         in its entirety
                         is anticipation of the lilt
                                                   and yet
there is no word
for the rhythm
             we endure
             across this dirtless moment
                                                    antibird, we sing like birds
                                                    textured and untrained
             rugged the love
             that claps
in the chasm of our black palms

Copyright © 2019 by Quenton Baker. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 28, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

Great Bear

When the day pours down in a silken glaze    the great bear walks up       and up each milk-white step of noon leaving the restless woods    and her green cave of weeds       emptying her pockets of berries, roots, and grubs climbing past the crows in the lemony air    above the hornbeam and chestnut oak       between cloud and mountain. She slowly shakes aside the heavy rug of her fur    and muscle of her body       letting go memories of grievous winters    boom and howl of the wind and weight       of each cub, before it was born wending up the stairs of the night chorus    into the embrace of grandmother sky,       with bones as light and fierce as polished suns. I tell you this so you won't be surprised    if the scent of pine sap drifts down       with milkweed, and memories of wild fat summers — if you too    are stretched out in the field watching       for the rise of the great mother. Remember your enchantment:    every day is a doorway       every moment is the world revealing itself. Death is not waiting at the end,    but is here, vibrating with promises       of wider horizons and songs in different languages. We are not waiting, but are    constant and becoming as we climb       listening for learning what the river wants    and how the plants became healers —       letting go of our bodies slowly, carrying nothing else into    the black and silver night       but the great shining we came from, and are.

Watched by crows and friend to salamanders, Lisa Creech Bledsoe is a hiker, beekeeper, and writer living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She is the author of two full-length books of poetry, Appalachian Ground (2019), and Wolf Laundry (2020), and she has new poems out or forthcoming in American Writers Review, The Main Street Rag, Jam & Sand, The Writer’s Cafe Magazine, Cabinet of Heed, and Front Porch Review, among others.

Gwendolyn Brooks, "truth" from Blacks

And if sun comes How shall we greet him? Shall we not dread him, Shall we not fear him After so lengthy a Session with shade? Though we have wept for him, Though we have prayed All through the night-years— What if we wake one shimmering morning to Hear the fierce hammering Of his firm knuckles Hard on the door? Shall we not shudder?— Shall we not flee Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter Of the familiar Propitious haze? Sweet is it, sweet is it To sleep in the coolness Of snug unawareness. The dark hangs heavily Over the eyes.

Today is the birthday of the poet Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000).

If you would rise, then rise like the dawn sky
golden light seeping into your dreams, molasses slow and syrupy sweet
dawn rises in your chest like summer
blowing copal scented breath into your lungs
And painting your eyes in amber and gold
If you would dance, then dance with the morning
Twirl with the barely visible spirits that dance in flickers of flame and foxfire
Sing with the birdsong that ripples across the sky
Tell your memories to the eastern winds, carrying the stories of dawn
If you must invoke, then invoke the knowledge of the Eastern wind
To the knowledge, that once learned, changes everything
Invoke the light that calls the seed to unfurl, the flower to unfurl
If you must pray, then pray the prayers of sunflowers
Feet planted in black earth and face ever following the light
If you would enchant, then start with longing,
Drown under the song of the sirens and let longing seep from your skin like perfume
If you would be cleansed, then come at dawn and listen
For the sunrise is the song that renews, and illuminates
And all shadows must fall away from its rays
Until the night settles her skirts over the earth again

- The Green Witch's Homestead

Kahlil Gibran on Joy & Sorrow

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater thar sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

What Issa Heard

Two hundred years ago Issa heard the morning birds
singing sutras to this suffering world.

I heard them too, this morning, which must mean,

since we will always have a suffering world,
we must also always have a song.

by David Budbill

Mr. Darcy

In the end she just wanted the house

               and a horse not much more what

       if  he didn’t own the house or worse

                       not even a horse how do we

separate the things from a man the man from

               the things is a man still the same

       without his reins here it rains every fifteen

                       minutes it would be foolish to

marry a man without an umbrella did

               Cinderella really love the prince or

       just the prints on the curtains in the

                       ballroom once I went window-

shopping but I didn’t want a window when

               do you know it’s time to get a new

       man one who can win more things at the

                       fair I already have four stuffed

pandas from the fair I won fair and square

               is it time to be less square to wear

       something more revealing in North and

                       South she does the dealing gives him

the money in the end but she falls in love

               with him when he has the money when

       he is still running away if the water is

                       running in the other room is it wrong

for me to not want to chase it because it owns

               nothing else when I wave to a man I

       love what happens when another man with

                       a lot more bags waves back

by Victoria Chang

“The Good News” by Thich Nhat Hanh

They don’t publish
the good news.
The good news is published
by us.
We have a special edition every moment,
and we need you to read it.
The good news is that you are alive,
and the linden tree is still there,
standing firm in the harsh Winter.
The good news is that you have wonderful eyes
to touch the blue sky.
The good news is that your child is there before you,
and your arms are available:
hugging is possible.
They only print what is wrong.
Look at each of our special editions.
We always offer the things that are not wrong.
We want you to benefit from them
and help protect them.
The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wondrous smile,
singing the song of eternity.
Listen! You have ears that can hear it.
Bow your head.
Listen to it.
Leave behind the world of sorrow
and preoccupation
and get free.
The latest good news
is that you can do it.
– Thich Nhat Hanh

Instructions on Not Giving Up

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

 

By Ada Limón From Ten Poems for Difficult Times

Thirteen Ways to Love the Rain (after Wallace Stevens)

I
Moss profusion dangling from branches
II
mist’s dew-faced gleam
III
bucketing, lashing, mizzling, a whole vocabulary
IV
sun’s glimmer on wet stones
V
the way a broken umbrella dances, urban tumbleweed
VI
walking home that night so soaked I no longer cared
VII
moodiness of rain, defying perpetual optimism
VII
splashing puddles in wellies, like we did as children
VIII
curling up to read by rain-splattered windows
IX
fat drops falling slowly, then gaining momentum
X
the ferocity of storms, wind blowing you sideways
XI
arcs of color crossing the sky
XII
birds huddled on quiet city streets,
XIII
how it keeps me inside with you.

Christine Valters Paintner

Cutting Loose

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.
 

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past trouble.
 

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path — but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on earth, again and again.

 

by William Stafford, from 10 Poems for Difficult Times

 

MYSTERIES, YES

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.”

― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

[love is more thicker than forget]

love is more thicker than forget

more thinner than recall

more seldom than a wave is wet

more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly

and less it shall unbe

than all the sea which only

is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win

less never than alive

less bigger than the least begin

less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly

and more it cannot die

than all the sky which only

is higher than the sky

E.E. Cummings, “[love is more thicker than forget]” from Complete Poems 1904-1962, edited by George J. Firmage. Copyright 1926, 1954, 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1985 by George James Firmage. Reprinted with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love—
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live

Lynn Ungar

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
― W. H. Auden

Mindful

 Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Mary Oliver

A Blessing

 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.

by James Wright 

But it’s so old,
this grand, often told story —
that we are dust and return to dust —
We are an instance of star in story
of rocks, glaciers, carbon-based creatures, stars.
We become the metaphor
and in this metaphor
we are all old
souls, stuff of ancient stars
singing our story
and whatever it says
about our mixture of spirit and dust.
We are the metaphor for the story
old souls swirling in the wind tunnel of time,
spirit and star and dust.
― Judith Roche

For A New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart, Where your thoughts never think to wander, This beginning has been quietly forming, Waiting until you were ready to emerge. For a long time it has watched your desire, Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, Noticing how you willed yourself on, Still unable to leave what you had outgrown. It watched you play with the seduction of safety And the gray promises that sameness whispered, Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, Wondered would you always live like this. Then the delight, when your courage kindled, And out you stepped onto new ground, Your eyes young again with energy and dream, A path of plenitude opening before you. Though your destination is not yet clear You can trust the promise of this opening; Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life’s desire. Awaken your spirit to adventure; Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will be home in a new rhythm, For your soul senses the world that awaits you.   ~ John O'Donohue