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Posts from the ‘Poetry’ Category

Oct 11

Keep Looking

“Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.”― Mary Oliver

“Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for your eyes.

It’s more than bones.
It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It’s more than the beating of a single heart.
It’s praising.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life- just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
Still another…

And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.”
― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

Steadfast and curious
Sun and blade of grass
Telescope and microscope
Look again and again
To see the same differently
When too close pull back
When too far move in
The dance of presence, attention, grace.

“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”― Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

Aug 17

Dancing with Daffodils

“Wisdom is oft-times nearer when we stoop
Than when we soar.”― William Wordsworth, The Excursion 1814

“I wandered lonely as a clouds. That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”
― William Wordsworth, I Wander’d Lonely as a Cloud

Floating
Hovering
Rest
Reflection
Joy in presence
Attention rooted in this day alone
Dancing with daffodils.

“Rest and be thankful.”― William Wordsworth

May 31

Altar of this Day

“Ô, Sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on Earth.”― Roman Payne

“I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Waves of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.”
– John O’Donohue, A Morning Offering, To Bless the Space Between Us

Interrupted by beauty.
Delayed by awe.
Tripped up by wonder.
Distracted by gratitude.
Detoured by grace.
Disturbed and changed.
To be made new.
And never go back.
Holy, reverent, sacred ground.
Beneath our feet.
On this and each day.
To fear no more.
Awakened soul.
Grateful heart.
Love alive and well.
Attention required.

“Dawn opens as the sky in spring and sunset as the banquet in heaven. But only the awakened souls can sense the feast.”― Jayita Bhattacharjee

Apr 24

Silky Attention

“Poetry’s work is the clarification and magnification of being.”― Jane Hirshfield

“Much of beauty, both in art and in life, is a balancing of the lines of forward-flowing desire with those of resistance — a gnarled tree, the flow of a statue’s draped cloth. Through such tensions, physical or mental, the world in which we exist becomes itself. Great art, we might say, is thought that has been concentrated in just this way: honed and shaped by a silky attention brought to bear on the recalcitrant matter of earth and of life. We seek in art the elusive intensity by which it knows.”― Jane Hirschfield

Connection
Meshing
Weaving
Binding
Unraveling
Putting down
Picking up
Bypassing
The dance of being
The song of the day
The poetry of clarity
Silky attention to see beauty in all
Magnified.

“Do not follow the ancient masters, seek what they sought.”― Jane Hirshfield, The Heart of Haiku

Feb 23

1 Comment

in the way of beauty

“There’s always a sunrise and always a sunset and it’s up to you to choose to be there for it… put yourself in the way of beauty.”— Cheryl Strayed

“… poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”― Audre Lorde

To aim
Direct
Guide
Lean
Pursue
Choose
To put yourself in the way of beauty everyday
Sunrise, sunset, flowers, smiles, kindness, generosity, attention, color, laughter, connection, curiosity, joy
Poetry of life
To be made new
Fresh legs to walk out ordinary days
In extraordinary reverence, grace and gratitude

“It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road.”― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

Nov 22

Slow Steps

“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.” – Henry Van Dyke

The Poet Dreams of the Mountain

by Mary Oliver

“Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountain, slowly, taking
the rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
that we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
and peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.”

Widen the space between stimulus and response.
Forethought rather than afterthought.
Choose your words well.
They matter.
Observe your thoughts.
They matter.
Actions rooted in love.
They matter.
Slow steps, soft heart, light spirit, refreshed soul.
Cast light, love, kindness, generosity, grace.

“Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.” – Epicurus

Aug 5

1 Comment

Filled, Emptied, Filled Again

“It is, of course, we who house poems as much as their words, and we ourselves must be the locus of poetry’s depth of newness. Still, the permeability seems to travel both ways: a changed self will find new meanings in a good poem, but a good poem also changes the shape of the self. Having read it, we are not who we were the moment before…. Art lives in what it awakens in us… Through a good poem’s eyes we see the world liberated from what we would have it do. Existence does not guarantee us destination, nor trust, nor equity, nor one moment beyond this instant’s almost weightless duration. It is a triteness to say that the only thing to be counted upon is that what you count on will not be what comes. Utilitarian truths evaporate: we die. Poems allow us not only to bear the tally and toll of our transience, but to perceive, within their continually surprising abundance, a path through the grief of that insult into joy.”― Jane Hirshfield

Standing Deer

“As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like the great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.

Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken from us.
I have disappointed.
I am sorry. I knew no better.

A root seeks water.
Tenderness only breaks open the earth.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.”― Jane Hirshfield

Everything is still possible.
Write the prose of your life.
The poetry of presence.
Surprising abundance.
Spill into joy.

Jul 27

1 Comment

Perch a Bit

“We live in the world when we love it.”― Rabindranath Tagore

“So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.

And live
your life.”
― Mary Oliver, Red Bird

Perch a bit.
Pause.
Look around.
Rest.
Delight with what already is.
Amidst the ordinary, extraordinary awaits.

“Let the world
have its way with you,
luminous as it is with mystery
and pain—
graced as it is
with the ordinary.”
― Mary Oliver, Red Bird

Apr 19

2 Comments

In the Layers

“When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgment of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself… That work is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitude for the gift of life.”― Stanley Kunitz

The Layers by Stanley Kunitz, The Collected Poems

“I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.”

Word spilling to the next.
Sentence by sentence.
Day to day.
Writing life in ordinary days, the story unfolds.
Not done.
Transformation in drips to waves.
Keep writing your story.
Fresh eyes, open heart, beautiful soul.
Live the layers.

Dec 23

A Burst of Joy

“Be a burst of joy.”― A.D. Posey

A Voice from I Don’t Know Where by Mary Oliver

It seems you love this world very much.
“Yes, I said. “This beautiful world.”

And you don’t mind the mind, that keeps you
busy all the time with its dark and bright wonderings?
“No, I’m quite used to it. Busy, busy,
all the time.”

And you don’t mind living with those questions,
I mean the hard ones, that no one can answer?
“Actually, they’re the most interesting.”

And you have a person in your life whose hand
you like to hold?
“Yes, I do.”

It must surely, then, be very happy down there
in your heart.
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”

May beauty that resides alongside and within overtake you often.
Shifting into wonder, delight, gratitude, peace.
An ease, slowing and receiving
A heart full, overflowing.
“Yes” your first response.
A burst of joy, color, swirls.
May awe be your guide today.

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