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

A River Runs Through Us

The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.
― John Muir

Having Come This Far

I've been through what my through was to be

I did what I could and couldn't

I was never sure how I would get there

 

I nourished an ardor for thresholds

for stepping stones and for ladders

I discovered detour and ditch

I swam in the high tides of greed

I built sandcastles to house my dreams

I survived the sunburns of love

No longer do I hunt for targets

I've climbed all the summits I need to

and I've eaten my share of lotus

Now I give praise and thanks

for what could not be avoided

and for every foolhardy choice

I cherish my wounds and their cures

and the sweet enervations of bliss

My book is an open life

I wave goodbye to the absolutes

and send my regards to infinity

I'd rather be blithe than correct

Until something transcendent turns up

I splash in my poetry puddle

and try to keep God amused.

 

~ James Broughton ~