Jul 12
“One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began” – Mary Oliver
“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
Good morning sunshine
Begin
And keep beginning
Again and again
New paths
Travel lightly
Grounded on grace
Sunrise to sunset
Abundance and awe.
“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems
“Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.” – Marcus Aurelius
“Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. – Mrs. Whatsit”― Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Made new each morning.
Minute, hour for the taking.
With a shift in thought.
A tilt of the head.
Listening, abiding, reverence.
Write your sonnet.
Of today.
“Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.”― Madeleine L’Engle, Swiftly Tilting Planet
“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” — Henry Miller
The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
“Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
In the details, such beauty
The pause, immensity
The gaze, discovery
The stillness, symphony
The witnessing, amazement
The idleness, expansion
Holy, sacred ground we stand
Ordinary days, brimming with life
In wonder, reverence, goodness, grace
“God is in the details.” – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
“When one flower blooms spring awakens everywhere”― John O’Donohue
“As Spring rain softens the Earth with surprise
May your Winter places be kissed by light.
As the ocean dreams to the joy of dance
May the grace of change bring you elegance.
As day anchors a tree in light and wind
May your outer life grow from peace within.
As twilight fills night with bright horizons
May Beauty await you at home beyond.”― John O’Donohue
Early bloomers.
Daffodils, first flowers to arrive
To announce, welcoming newness of spring
Poetry dressed in yellow
Winter bids adieu
Fresh start, new day
Outside and within.
“Within the grip of winter, it is almost impossible to imagine the spring…Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bud opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible.” – John O’Donohue
“Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.”― Seamus Heaney, Death of a Naturalist
“So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.”
― Seamus Heaney
Poetry of this day.
What will you read?
What will you write?
The pen is in your hands.
Signatures of your own frequency.
Cures and healing wells, deep and wide.
Shores to reach.
“You lose more of yourself than you redeem
doing the decent thing. Keep at a tangent
When they make the circle wide, it’s time to swim
Out on your own and fill the element
with signatures on your own frequency.”
― Seamus Heaney, Station Island
“If self is a location, so is love:
Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points,
Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance,
Here and there and now and then, a stance.”― Seamus Heaney, District and Circle
“Awake! arise! the hour is late!
Angels are knocking at thy door!
They are in haste and cannot wait,
And once departed come no more.
Awake! arise! the athlete’s arm
Loses its strength by too much rest;
The fallow land, the untilled farm
Produces only weeds at best.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Winter, spring
Spring, winter
Wintering rest
Spring rising
Fallow to fertile
Cardinal points
New creation unfolding
Within first, moving out anew.
“If you feel like you don’t fit into the world you inherited it is because you were born to help create a new one.”― Ross Caligiuri, Dreaming in the Shadows
“We sat in silence, letting the green in the air heal what it could.”― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper
“May you be capable of absurd joy,
ridiculous love,
audacious risk,
and even fear,
as your heart stretches to hold
this gloriously messy yes…and today.” – Kate Bowler
Melting into spring.
Slow and bumpy.
Sunday well.
Time out and off.
Hard stop.
Sit. Stay.
Up. Out.
Wander and wonder.
Absurd joy.
Love woven through it all.
Fresh meaning.
“Bless the poets, the workers for justice,
the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache,
the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh
meaning—We will all make it through,
despite politics and wars, despite failures
and misunderstandings. There is only love.”
― Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems
“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”― Pema Chödrön
“If you can’t find hope
Borrow mine tonight
I’ve been lost too, just trying to get it right
The sun still rises even when you’re tired of the fight
If you can’t see the road, walk by borrowed light
We’re all just healing in real time
If you can’t find hope, borrow mine…
We’re just passing it down the line
‘Til the dark runs out of time” – Able Heart, lyrics – song
Hope, joy, kindness, enthusiasm
Resistance to succumb to chaos, noise, comparison, counting
Daily work, discipline, commitment
Often found in rest, reflection, deep breath, long gaze, communion
To stay soft, to care, to listen
Gratitude, grace, delight
The dark always runs out of time.
How we spend our time in the waiting defines our life.
Given or borrowed
Cast Light! Some brilliant color too.
Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
By William Shakespeare
“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”
Gratitude by Mary Oliver
“What did you notice?
The dew-snail;
the low-flying sparrow;
the bat, on the wind, in the dark;
big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance;
the soft toad, patient in the hot sand;
the sweet-hungry ants;
the uproar of mice in the empty house;
the tin music of the cricket’s body;
the blouse of the goldenrod.
What did you hear?
The thrush greeting the morning;
the little bluebirds in their hot box;
the salty talk of the wren,
then the deep cup of the hour of silence.
When did you admire?
The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit;
the carrot, rising in its elongated waist;
the onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the pale green wand;
at the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid beauty of the flowers;
then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost.
What astonished you?
The swallows making their dip and turn over the water.
What would you like to see again?
My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness,
her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue,
her recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness,
her strong legs, her curled black lip, her snap.
What was most tender?
Queen Anne’s lace, with its parsnip root;
the everlasting in its bonnets of wool;
the kinks and turns of the tupelo’s body;
the tall, blank banks of sand;
the clam, clamped down.
What was most wonderful?
The sea, and its wide shoulders;
the sea and its triangles;
the sea lying back on its long athlete’s spine.
What did you think was happening?
The green beast of the hummingbird;
the eye of the pond;
the wet face of the lily;
the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;
the red tulip of the fox’s mouth;
the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve of the first snow—
so the gods shake us from our sleep.”
Notice
Hear
Admire
Astonishment
Tenderness
Most wonderful
To be present, shaken awake.
“Holy unanticipated occurrences!”― Kate DiCamillo, Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures
“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”― E.M. Forster, A Room With A View
Detachment and distancing
Emergence and embrace
Deepening and weaving
Leaning in and leaning back
Grief and grace
Color and hue
Gratitude and gravity
Reverence and awe
Metaphor and paradox
Dance of poetry
Beauty in motion.
“Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.”― W.H. Auden, New Year Letter
