Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse. Some years, the vine

faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,

sometimes someone aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;

elect someone honest, decide they care

enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.

Some people become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go

amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

-- Sheenagh Pugh

from “Selected Poems”, 1990

Brooding

Winter,

rising from mature darkness,

offers its faithful bidding

for brooding reflection…

a time to pause

for deep stories to find my lips,

a time to gather

around a hearth of friendship,

a time to surrender,

fully exposed,

to the north light of winter.

Curiously,

I find myself longing

for this blackness of Solstice,

for the peace it brings.

I am raw with musing,

searching deep understandings;

my life’s autumn is complete,

like a last chapter’s page

damp with ink,

drying…

ready to turn for the next.

What shards of light

are found in darkness?

What stunning stories

will a final season bring?

l sigh into deep pause,

I quiet…

my soul waits to be heard,

as I draw in replenishment

with brooding renewal,

taking in this clean, pristine

breath of my winter.

--Marilyn Loy Every, from Tending the Heart

Blackberries

In the early morning an old woman

is picking blackberries in the shade.

It will be too hot later

but right now there's dew.

Some berries fall: those are for squirrels.

Some are unripe, reserved for bears.

Some go into the metal bowl.

Those are for you, so you may taste them

just for a moment.

That's good times: one little sweetness

after another, then quickly gone.

Once, this old woman

I'm conjuring up for you

would have been my grandmother.

Today it's me.

Years from now it might be you,

if you're quite lucky.

The hands reaching in

among the leaves and spines

were once my mother's.

I've passed them on.

Decades ahead, you'll study your own

temporary hands, and you'll remember.

Don't cry, this is what happens.

Look! The steel bowl

is almost full. Enough for all of us.

The blackberries gleam like glass,

like the glass ornaments

we hang on trees in December

to remind ourselves to be grateful for snow.

Some berries occur in sun,

but they are smaller.

It's as I always told you:

the best ones grow in shadow.

--Margaret Atwood

When I Am Among The Trees

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

--Mary Oliver

I Am Standing

I am standing

on the dunes

in the heat of summer

and I am listening

to mockingbird again

who is tonguing

his embellishments

and, in the distance,

the shy

weed loving sparrow

who has but one

soft song

which he sings

again and again

and something

somewhere inside

my own unmusical self

begins humming:

thanks for the beauty of the world.

Thanks for my life.

--Mary Oliver

Antidotes to fear of death

Sometimes as an antidote

To fear of death,

I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,

I suck them from the quenching dark

Til they are all, all inside me,

Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself

Into a universe still young,

Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,

The light of all the not yet stars

Drifting like a bright mist,

And all of us, and everything

Already there

But unconstrained by form.

And sometime it’s enough

To lie down here on earth

Beside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fields

Of our discarded skulls,

Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,

Thinking: whatever left these husks

Flew off on bright wings.

--Rebecca Elson

One Day I Decided

One day I decided to not grow any older

lots of luck I said to myself

(my joking self)        then I looked up at the sky

which is wide       its blueness    its whiteness

low on my left    the steamy sun rose    moved

I placed my hand against it    my whole hand

which is broad from pinky to thumb   no   my

two hands   I bared my teeth to it    my teeth

are strong   secure on their gold posts   I breathed

deeply   I held my breath    I stood on my toes    ah

then I was taller   still the clouds sailed

through me   around me    it’s true    I’m just

like them   summertime water that the sun

sips and spits into this guzzling earth

Grace Paley (2000)

The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found 

a hedgehog jammed up against the blades,

Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world

Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the new absence

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind

While there is still time.

--Philip Larkin

Winter Morning

When I can no longer say thank you

for this new day and the waking into it,

for the cold scrape of the kitchen chair

and the ticking of the space heater glowing

orange as it warms the floor near my feet,

I know it’s because I’ve been fooled again

by the selfish, unruly man who lives in me

and believes he deserves only safety

and comfort. But if I pause as I do now,

and watch the streetlights outside flashing

off one by one like old men blinking their

cloudy eyes, if I listen to my tired neighbors

slamming car doors hard against the morning

and see the steaming coffee in their mugs

kissing chapped lips as they sip and

exhale each of their worries white into

the icy air around their faces—then I can

remember this one life is a gift each of us

was handed and told to open: Untie the bow

and tear off the paper, look inside

and be grateful for whatever you find

even if it is only the scent of a tangerine

that lingers on the fingers long after

you’ve finished peeling it.

--James Crews

Notes on survival

You are allowed to break. Everything does.

The stars grow tired and fall.

The waves crash against rocks and shores.

Trees fall for both storms and the wind, leaving behind seeds

and saplings so a version of them can grow again.

Stormclouds part for the rain

and then part again for the sun to come through.

Night must break for the day and the day for the night.

The world is made of broken things piecing themselves back together

--this is what gives us the most resilient stories.

So why do you think that you were built any differently 

than the night and the stormclouds? 

You know how to put yourself back together again too,

just as well as they do.

Take heart. You have managed to rebuild yourself 

a thousand times over from every bad day.

That is no small thing.

--Nikita Gill

 “The only way to bury the past so that it will stay buried is to regard it with gratitude; otherwise it will come back to haunt us. Hatred binds us, gratitude frees us. And doubt is a form of self-hatred. Don’t doubt yourself. Regard your past with gratitude and give it a decent burial.”

—Kaz Iwaasa

November

Is there anything left to be said

about the blaze of autumn leaves --

the way they let go with such graciousness,

how they dance on the wind

and crunch under the feet and glow

in the afternoon light?

Maybe just this:

The colours fade. They turn sodden as

milky cereal in the gutters and sidewalk.

The trees look tattered, and then

vulnerable and exposed. It turns out 

that loss is really loss. Which is every bit

as much a part of the story as 

autumn's glamour. Listen.

You are not obliged to be beautiful.

You don't have to shine.

Blooming will happen when it happens.

If you can be still for a moment.

you might notice that

the roots that feed you

are still reaching silently through the dark. 

--Lynn Ungar November 18, 2020

Look out

your window.

Every falling 

autumn leaf 

is a tiny kite 

with a string 

too small to see

held by the part 

of you in charge 

of making beauty 

out of grief.

--Andrea Gibson

Hope

To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart.

-- Rebecca Solnit

Do not be distracted

Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time. Do not be distracted by emotions like anger, envy, resentment. These just zap energy and waste time. So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great good fortune.

-- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Time machine

Regret

is a time machine 

to the past.

Worry 

is a time machine 

to the future. 

Gratitude 

is a time machine 

to the present.

No one books

my travel for me.

I decide where

I want to go.

--Andrea Gibson 

The boundary between us and the rest of the world is so fluid. So I think of myself as a song the universe is singing.

-- Rebecca Henderson 

Something Like This, Anyway

If I prayed, which I don’t, 

then we could say that I asked 

god to open every door that I 

had shut, every door I did not 

know was there. 

Why I asked this, well, 

this will make sense to you 

or it won’t, but every closed 

door I was aware of 

had became a point of suffering. 

And with every open door, 

I could feel congruence, 

the world rushing in to create 

more space in me. 

And god said to me, though 

we could not say that it was a voice, 

god said, Open even the door with people jeering 

on the other side, their faces twisted 

in hate? Even the door to an entire 

forest of sorrow? And because 

this conversation was not really 

happening, we could not say that 

I said yes to the questions, but 

we could say, perhaps, that 

the yes began to root in me 

and it was not so much a matter 

of someone opening the doors 

but that the doors more or less 

dissolved. And what I had thought 

could separate me from anything else 

was shown to be nothing at all. 

I would like to tell you that I felt grace 

in the opening, but the truth

is I felt such terrible ache. 

And god did not come put a hand 

on my cheek and tell me 

everything would be okay. 

In fact, if anything, the voice 

I did not hear told me 

there are no promises. 

But I felt it, the invitation 

to keep opening doors, 

to not close my eyes, 

to not turn away. 

And though I do not pray, 

I said thank you, thank you. 

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Sky

The sky is where we should have started.

A window without a windowsill, without a frame, without a pane.

An opening wide open, with nothing

beyond it.

I don’t have to wait for a starry night,

nor crane my neck,

to look at the sky.

I have the sky behind me, and close at hand and on my eyelids.

It is the sky that wraps me tight

and raises me from underneath.

The highest mountains

are no closer than the deepest valleys

to the sky.

No place has any more of it

than any other place.

A cloud is as thoroughly

crushed by the sky as a grave.

A mole is as high, sky high

as an owl beating its wings.

Whatever falls into an abyss,

falls from sky to sky.

Friable, fluid, rocky,

flammable, volatile stretches

of sky, crumbs of sky,

gusts of sky, heaps of sky.

Sky is omnipresent,

even in darkness under the skin.

I eat the sky, I excrete the sky.

I’m a trap in a trap,

an inhabited inhabitant,

an embrace embraced,

a question that answers a question.

Dividing earth and sky

is not the right way

to think about this wholeness.

It only allows one to live

at a more precise address—

were I to be searched for

I’d be found much faster.

My distinguishing marks

are rapture and despair.

—Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Joanna Trzeciak

“the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” 

--David Graeber, 1961-2020

This is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.

--Frederick Buechner

On the last day of the world

On the last day of the world, I would want to plant a tree.    ~W. S. Merwin

On the last day of the world, I would want

to feed you. Raspberries. Thin slices of apple.

Peaches so ripe they drip down our chins,

down our necks. I would want to sit with you

beneath a tree, no we’ll climb a tree, no

we’ll plant a tree, yes all of these. On the last

day of the world, I want to give myself permission

to feel exactly what I feel, to be exactly who I am,

to shed every layer of should and meet you

that way. Knowing we have only hours left,

could we put down our arguments with ourselves

and each other and find no energy to pick them up again?

On that day, I want us to write the last poem

together and let the writing undo us, let it teach us

how to get out of the way, how to obey what emerges.

Let’s run outside, no matter the weather, and praise

the light till the light is gone, and then praise the dark.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer 

Directions

First you'll come to the end of the freeway.

Then it's not so much north on Woodland Avenue

as it is a feeling that the pines are taller and weigh more,

and the road, you'll notice,

is older with faded lines and unmown shoulders.

You'll see a cemetery on your right

and another later on your left.

Sobered, drive on.

                             Drive on for miles

if the fields are full of hawkweed and daisies.

Sometimes a spotted horse

will gallop along the fence. Sometimes you'll see

a hawk circling, sometimes a vulture.

You'll cross the river many times

over smaller and smaller bridges.

You'll know when you're close;

people always say they have a sudden sensation

that the horizon, which was always far ahead,

is now directly behind them.

At this point you may want to park

and proceed on foot, or even

on your knees.

--Connie Wanek

The Well (Excerpt)

…But the miracle had come simply 

from allowing yourself to know 

that you had found it, that this time

someone walking out into the clear air 

from far inside you had decided not to walk 

past it any more; the miracle had come

at the roadside in the kneeling to drink 

and the prayer you said, and the tears you shed

and the memory you held and the realization 

that in this silence you no longer had to keep 

your eyes and ears averted from the place 

that could save you, that you had been given 

the strength to let go of the thirsty dust laden 

pilgrim-self that brought you here, walking 

with her bent back, her bowed head 

and her careful explanations…

From Pilgrim: Poems by David Whyte

Invisible Work

Because no one could ever praise me enough,

because I don't mean these poems only

but the unseen

unbelievable effort it takes to live

the life that goes on between them,

I think all the time about invisible work.

About the young mother on Welfare

I interviewed years ago,

who said, "It's hard.

You bring him to the park,

run rings around yourself keeping him safe,

cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,

and there's no one

to say what a good job you're doing,

how you were patient and loving

for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."

And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself

because I am lonely,

when all the while,

as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried

by great winds across the sky,

thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,

the slow, unglamorous work of healing,

the way worms in the garden

tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe

and bees ransack this world into being,

while owls and poets stalk shadows,

our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers

for everything, and the sea

is a mother too,

whispering and whispering to us

long after we have stopped listening.

I stopped and let myself lean

a moment, against the blue

shoulder of the air. The work

of my heart

is the work of the world's heart.

There is no other art. 

—Alison Luterman

 We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

--Herman Melville

Perhaps the World Ends Here

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

--from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo.

Why I Smile at Strangers

In difficult times, carry something beautiful in your heart.

—Blaise Pascal

And so today, I walk the streets

with vermillion maple leaves inside me,

and the deep purple of late-blooming larkspur

and the lilting praise of meadowlark.

I carry with me thin creeks with clear water

and the three-quarters moon

and the spice-warm scent of nasturtiums.

And honey in the sunlight.

And words from Neruda and

slow melodies by Erik Satie.

It is easy sometimes to believe

that everything is wrong.

That people are cruel and the world

destroyed and the end of it all

imminent. But there is yet goodness

beyond imagining—the creamy

white flesh of ripe pears

and the velvety purr of a cat in my lap

and the white smear of milky way—

I carry these things in my heart,

more certain than ever that one way

to counteract evil is to ceaselessly honor what’s good

and share it, share it until

we break the choke hold of fear

and at least for a few linked moments,

we believe completely in beauty,

growing beauty, yes, beauty.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Night. O you whose countenance, dissolved

in deepness, hovers above my face.

You who are the heaviest counterweight

to my astounding contemplation.

Night, that trembles as reflected in my eyes,

but in itself strong;

inexhaustible creation, dominant,

enduring beyond the earth's endurance;

Night, full of newly created stars that leave

trails of fire streaming from their seams

as they soar in inaudible adventure

through interstellar space:

how, overshadowed by your all-embracing vastness,

I appear minute! --

Yet, being one with the ever more darkening earth,

I dare to be in you.

  --  Rainer Maria Rilke

In the Evening We Shall Be Examined on Love

“In the evening we shall be examined on love.”

 - St. John of the Cross

And it won’t be multiple choice,

though some of us would prefer it that way.

Neither will it be essay, which tempts us to run on

when we should be sticking to the point, if not together.

In the evening there shall be implications

our fear will change to complications. No cheating,

we’ll be told, and we’ll try to figure the cost of being true

to ourselves. In the evening when the sky has turned

that certain blue, blue of exam books, blue of no more

daily evasions, we shall climb the hill as the light empties

and park our tired bodies on a bench above the city

and try to fill in the blanks. And we won’t be tested

like defendants on trial, cross-examined

till one of us breaks down, guilty as charged. No,

in the evening, after the day has refused to testify,

we shall be examined on love like students

who don’t even recall signing up for the course

and now must take their orals, forced to speak for once

from the heart and not off the top of their heads.

And when the evening is over and it’s late,

the student body asleep, even the great teachers

retired for the night, we shall stay up

and run back over the questions, each in our own way:

what’s true, what’s false, what unknown quantity

will balance the equation, what it would mean years from now

to look back and know

we did not fail.

--Thomas Centolella

So Much Happiness

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.

With sadness there is something to rub against,

a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.

When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,

something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.

It doesn’t need you to hold it down.

It doesn’t need anything.

Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,

and disappears when it wants to.

You are happy either way.

Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house

and now live over a quarry of noise and dust

cannot make you unhappy.

Everything has a life of its own,

it too could wake up filled with possibilities

of coffee cake and ripe peaches,

and love even the floor which needs to be swept,

the soiled linens and scratched records . . .

Since there is no place large enough

to contain so much happiness,

you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you

into everything you touch. You are not responsible.

You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit

for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,

and in that way, be known.

--Naomi Shihab Nye

Directions

You know the brick path in back of the house,

the one you see from the kitchen window,

the one that bends around the far end of the garden

where all the yellow primroses are?

And you know how if you leave the path

and walk up into the woods you come

to a heap of rocks, probably pushed

down during the horrors of the Ice Age,

and a grove of tall hemlocks, dark green now

against the light-brown fallen leaves?

And farther on, you know

the small footbridge with the broken railing

and if you go beyond that you arrive

at the bottom of that sheep’s head hill?

Well, if you start climbing, and you

might have to grab hold of a sapling

when the going gets steep,

you will eventually come to a long stone

ridge with a border of pine trees

which is as high as you can go

and a good enough place to stop.

The best time is late afternoon

when the sun strobes through

the columns of trees as you are hiking up,

and when you find an agreeable rock

to sit on, you will be able to see

the light pouring down into the woods

and breaking into the shapes and tones

of things and you will hear nothing

but a sprig of birdsong or the leafy

falling of a cone or nut through the trees,

and if this is your day you might even

spot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geese

driving overhead toward some destination.

But it is hard to speak of these things

how the voices of light enter the body

and begin to recite their stories

how the earth holds us painfully against

its breast made of humus and brambles

how we who will soon be gone regard

the entities that continue to return

greener than ever, spring water flowing

through a meadow and the shadows of clouds

passing over the hills and the ground

where we stand in the tremble of thought

taking the vast outside into ourselves.

Still, let me know before you set out.

Come knock on my door

and I will walk with you as far as the garden

with one hand on your shoulder.

I will even watch after you and not turn back

to the house until you disappear

into the crowd of maple and ash,

heading up toward the hill,

piercing the ground with your stick.

--Billy Collins

The Weighing (extract)

So few grains of happiness

measured against all the dark

and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us

only the strength we have and we give it.

Then it asks more, and we give it.

--Jane Hirshfield

Advice from Me to Myself

Listen up, old bad-karma Patrul,

You dweller-in-distraction.

For ages now you’ve been

Beguiled, entranced, and fooled by appearances.

Are you aware of that? Are you?

Right this very instant, when you’re

Under the spell of mistaken perception

You’ve got to watch out.

Don’t let yourself get carried away by this fake and empty life.

Your mind is spinning around

About carrying out a lot of useless projects:

It’s a waste! Give it up!

Thinking about the hundred plans you want to accomplish,

With never enough time to finish them,

Just weighs down your mind.

You’re completely distracted

By all these projects, which never come to an end,

But keep spreading out more, like ripples in water.

Don’t be a fool: for once, just sit tight. . . .

If you let go of everything—

Everything, everything—

That’s the real point!

--Patrul Rinpoche (19th-century wandering Dzogchen master)

The Wild Iris

At the end of my suffering

there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death

I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.

Then nothing. The weak sun

flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive 

as consciousness 

buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being

a soul and unable

to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth

bending a little. And what I took to be

birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember 

passage from the other world

I tell you I could speak again: whatever

returns from oblivion returns

to find a voice:

from the center of my life came

a great fountain, deep blue

shadows on azure seawater.

--Louise Gluck

Walking

We need to walk

to know sacred places.

 

Healthy feet feel the heartbeat

of our Mother Earth,

Sitting Bull said long ago.

Walt Whitman knew that, too.

 

When we go by wheel

we roll over the land

as if it were nothing

but miles left behind.

 

When we go by air

we cut off our vision

and even our spirits

may take so long

to catch up to our bodies

that our eyes will be empty

of all but flight.

 

We need to walk

to remember the songs,

not only our own

but those of the birds,

those kept in the arms

of the hills and the wind.

 

We need to walk

to know sacred places

those around us

and those within.

 

 --Joseph Bruchac

from No Borders, Holy Cow Press

Born in 1942, Joseph Bruchac is a storyteller and poet whose work often reflects his Abenaki Indian ancestry and his lifelong interest in American Indian history and culture.  He has a B.A. from Cornell University, a Master’s degree in Literature from Syracuse, and a Ph.D. in Comparative literature from the Union Institute of Ohio.  He spent three years as a volunteer teacher in Ghana, West Africa, eight years directing a college program in a maximum security WBAprison and has taught at Skidmore College, SUNY/Albany, Hamilton College, and Columbia University.  Winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, his poems, stories, and essays have appeared in hundreds of publications from American Poetry Review to National Geographic.  Bruchac is the author of over 120 books. 

Birdfoot's Grampa

The old man

must have stopped our car

two dozen times to climb out

and gather into his hands

the small toads blinded

by our lights and leaping, 

live drops of rain. 

The rain was falling,

a mist about his white hair

and I kept saying

you can't save them all

accept it, get back in

we've got places to go.

 

But, leathery hands full

of wet brown life

knee deep in the summer

roadside grass

he just smiled and said

they have place to go

too.

 --Joseph Bruchac

from Entering Onondaga, Cold Mountain Press

Near the mountains

NEAR THE MOUNTAINS

Near the mountains

footsteps on the ground

sound hollow

as if to remind us

this earth is a drum.

We must watch our steps closely

to play the right tune.

--Joseph Bruchac

from Near the Mountains, White Pine Press

no handbook

there’s no handbook

for any of this 

there are no hard and 

fast rules for times

like these 

you’re doing the best you can

holding things together

while the world falls apart 

in this age of fear and fret

you don’t need to be perfect; 

you just need to be gentle 

with yourself and everyone else 

because that’s all you

can really control, isn’t it? 

yes, things might unravel a

bit more before this is

all done 

you might as well

and it’s okay if 

you do 

while the world

is resetting

its router 

we can take turns

deciding who gets

to cry on the couch 

we can take turns becoming 

a balm for one another 

we can take turns yelling

up into the silent sky 

we can take turns 

having insomnia 

we can take turns being 

confessionals for one another 

we can take turns brushing

the tears off of each other’s face 

don’t worry about getting

all of this right 

you won’t 

don’t worry about making

mistakes 

you will 

~ you’re doing the best you can 

there is only one great commandment for 

enduring a storm - and it’s this: 

go easy,

my love,

go easy

--john roedel

I go down to the shore

I go down to the shore in the morning

and depending on the hour the waves

are rolling in or moving out,

and I say, oh, I am miserable,

what shall —

what should I do? And the sea says

in its lovely voice:

Excuse me, I have work to do.

--Mary Oliver

You must forgive those who hurt you, even if whatever they did to you is unforgivable in your mind. You will forgive them not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because you don’t want to suffer and hurt yourself every time you remember what they did to you.

—Don Miguel Ruiz

What I know about living is the pain

is never just ours.

Every time I hurt I know

the wound is an echo, so I keep listening

for the moment when the grief

becomes a window,

when I can see what I couldn’t see before.

Through the glass of my most bartered dream

I watched a dandelion lose its mind

in the wind and when it did,

it scattered a thousand seeds.

-- Andrea Gibson

The song had finished, and people were looking around sheepishly at one another, but Nanny Ogg’s boot was already making the table rock. ‘Dance, dance, the shaking of the sheets. Dance, dance, when you hear the piper playing,’ she sang.

Tiffany thought, Is this the right song for a funeral? And then she thought, Of course it is! It’s a wonderful tune and it tells us that one day all of us will die but — and this is the important thing — we are not dead yet.

--Terry Pratchett, "I shall wear midnight"

The practice of creativity

 It's hard being a human being. There's a lot to it. There really is. So I want to say, let's all agree to accept the reality that we are not going to be able to do a very good job of this. There's too much to do! Isn't it a relief to know that it's not going to work out? And you can just forget about that to start with. So you're not gonna get it right right, you're not gonna get it perfect. 

The worst possible outcome of my saying these things [about creativity] today would be for everybody to walk out of the room and think: "Oh God, now i have to take up art!"

"I gotta brush my teeth, I gotta go to the cleaners, I got my family, I got children, I got aging parents, I'M aging, I gotta go to doctor appointments, and now I gotta do art on top of all that! How am I gonna do that?"

Well, don't worry, just remember that there's no hope. 

You're not going to be able to get it all done, it's not going to work out. 

But the important thing is, recognizing and embracing this reality, don't worry about finishing the job or doing it perfectly, cause it's not gonna happen. 

But start. 

You see? Start and Continue. This is the thing.

You can really trust that if you will start, and if you will continue with commitment, that will be enough.

That will be enough.

- Norman Fischer 

My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears

My grandmother puts her feet in the sink of the bathroom at Sears
to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer, wudu,
because she has to pray in the store or miss
the mandatory prayer time for Muslims
She does it with great poise, balancing
herself with one plump matronly arm
against the automated hot-air hand dryer,
after having removed her support knee-highs
and laid them aside, folded in thirds,
and given me her purse and her packages to hold
so she can accomplish this august ritual
and get back to the ritual of shopping for housewares
Respectable Sears matrons shake their heads and frown
as they notice what my grandmother is doing,
an affront to American porcelain,
a contamination of American Standards
by something foreign and unhygienic
requiring civic action and possible use of disinfectant spray
They fluster about and flutter their hands and I can see
a clash of civilizations brewing in the Sears bathroom
My grandmother, though she speaks no English,
catches their meaning and her look in the mirror says,
I have washed my feet over Iznik tile in Istanbul
with water from the world's ancient irrigation systems
I have washed my feet in the bathhouses of Damascus
over painted bowls imported from China
among the best families of Aleppo
And if you Americans knew anything
about civilization and cleanliness,
you'd make wider washbins, anyway
My grandmother knows one culture—the right one,
as do these matrons of the Middle West. For them,
my grandmother might as well have been squatting
in the mud over a rusty tin in vaguely tropical squalor,
Mexican or Middle Eastern, it doesn't matter which,
when she lifts her well-groomed foot and puts it over the edge.
"You can't do that," one of the women protests,
turning to me, "Tell her she can't do that."
"We wash our feet five times a day,"
my grandmother declares hotly in Arabic.
"My feet are cleaner than their sink.
@orried about their sink, are they? I
should worry about my feet!"
My grandmother nudges me, "Go on, tell them."
Standing between the door and the mirror, I can see
at multiple angles, my grandmother and the other shoppers,
all of them decent and goodhearted women, diligent
in cleanliness, grooming, and decorum
Even now my grandmother, not to be rushed,
is delicately drying her pumps with tissues from her purse
For my grandmother always wears well-turned pumps
that match her purse, I think in case someone
from one of the best families of Aleppo
should run into her—here, in front of the Kenmore display
I smile at the midwestern women
as if my grandmother has just said something lovely about them
and shrug at my grandmother as if they
had just apologized through me
No one is fooled, but I
hold the door open for everyone
and we all emerge on the sales floor
and lose ourselves in the great common ground
of housewares on markdown.

-- Mohja Kahf

 So, if you are

too tired to speak, 

sit next to me,

because I, too, 

am fluent in silence.

- R. Arnold

Still

 I have nowhere to go

And nowhere to go when I get back from there.

--A.R. Ammons

the vantage point of death

 If you can see a thing whole, it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives.... But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death. 

- Ursula K Le Guin

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.

----

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.

----

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

--James Baldwin

patience with questions

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Choice of Diseases

Now that I'm sick & have
all this time to contemplate
the meaning of the universe,
Father said, I understand why
I never did it before. Nothing
looks good from a prone position.
You have to walk around to appreciate
things. Once I get better I don't
intend to get sick for a while. But
if I do I hope I get one of those diseases
you can walk around with.

--Hal Sirowitz

The wide belt of the universe has no need for finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance.

-- Zora Neale Hurston

wonders

Human beings must always be on the watch for the coming of wonders.

--E.B. White

I confess

I stalked her
in the grocery store: her crown
of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip,
her erect bearing, radiating tenderness,
the way she placed yogurt and avocados in her basket,
beaming peace like the North Star.
I wanted to ask, "What aisle did you find
your serenity in, do you know
how to be married for fifty years, or how to live alone,
excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to posessess
some knowledge that makes the earth burn and turn on its axis-"
But we don't request such things from strangers
nowadays. So I said, "I love your hair."

-- Alison Luterman

What Gorgeous Thing

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.

--Mary Oliver

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you down like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

--Ellen Bass

No beyond

There is no beyond, there is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present.

-- Iris Murdoch

Comes the Dawn

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today,
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans,
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong,
And you really do have worth.
And you learn and learn…
With every goodbye you learn.

--Veronica Shoffstall

reverence

In order to become attentive to beauty, we need to rediscover the art of reverence. Our world seems to have lost all sense of reverence. We seldom even use the word any more. The notion of reverence is full of riches that we now need desperately. Put simply, it is appropriate that a human being should dwell on this earth with reverence.

-– John O’Donohue

waves

When the waves close over me, I dive down to fish for pearls.

--Masha Kaleko

Who is "me"?

"Here is a story to believe. Once we were blobs in the sea, and then fishes, and then lizards and rats and then monkeys, and hundreds of things in between. This hand was once a fin, this hand once had claws! In my human mouth I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and the chisel teeth of a rabbit and the grinding teeth of a cow! Our blood is as salty as the sea we used to live in! When we're frightened the hair in our skins stands up, just like it did when we had fur. We are history! Everything we've ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are. I'm made up of the memories of my parents and grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the colour of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who is "me"?"

--Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

Boredom

"Do you know what it feels like to be aware of every star, every blade of grass? We have done it for eternity. No sleep, no rest, just endless, endless experience, endless awareness. Of everything. All the time. How we envy you, envy you. Lucky humans, who can close your minds to the endless cold deeps of space! You have this thing you call boredom. That is the rarest talent in the universe. You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your minds and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming!...

You humans are so good at ignoring things. You are almost blind, almost deaf. You look at a tree and see just a tree, a stiff weed. You don't see its history, feel the pumping of the sap, hear every insect in the bark, sense the chemistry of the leaves, notice the hundred shades of green, the tiny movements to follow the sun, the subtle growth of the wood..."

--Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

Mother's body

Perhaps when Mother made me⠀⁠
⠀⁠
She kept me short⠀⁠
and heavy⠀⁠
⠀⁠
so I would stay closer to the ground⠀⁠
be closer to the Earth⠀⁠
stay closer to Her⠀⁠
⠀⁠
So She could keep Her eye on me⠀⁠
like a mother watches over children playing nearby⠀⁠
⠀⁠
So the vibration of my moving feet on the soil could bring Her joy – like the joy I felt as my baby kicked in my womb.⠀⁠
⠀⁠
So She could wrap me in Her love, as I sink into the softness of Her mossy hair, in the muddy thickness of Her thighs, in the warm wet sand of Her arms.⠀⁠
⠀⁠
The more mass a thing has, the more gravitational pull it has.⠀⁠
⠀⁠
Perhaps She gave me size because She knew my work would ⠀⁠
be heavy⠀⁠
need roots⠀⁠
require grounding⠀⁠
⠀⁠
knew I would hold⠀⁠
motherhood, womanhood⠀⁠
community⠀⁠
healing⠀⁠
growth⠀⁠
love⠀⁠
like orbiting planets⠀⁠
⠀⁠
Perhaps every pound, every inch was intentional.⠀⁠
⠀⁠⠀⁠
Perhaps my body is exactly as Hers is:⁠⠀⁠
like Mother's.⁠⠀⁠
⠀⁠

--Kendra Coupland

One Version of Events

If indeed we were allowed to choose,
we must have been mulling things over for a long time.

The bodies offered us were uncomfortable
and wore out dreadfully.

The means of satisfying hunger
sickened us.
The passive inheritance of traits
and the tyranny of organs
put us off.

A world that was meant to surround us,
was in endless decay.
The effects of causes wreaked heavy havoc on it.

Of all those fates
given to us for inspection
most we rejected
in sorrow and horror.

Questions arose such as these:
what use is there in the painful delivery
of a dead child?
And why be a sailor
who never reaches port?

We agreed to death
but not in every form.
Love attracted us,
sure, but a love
that kept its word.

The fickleness of judgments
and impermanence of masterpieces
scared us off
from the service of art.

Everyone wanted a homeland without neighbors
and to live their entire lives
in the interval between wars.

None of us wanted to seize power
or be subject to it,
none of us wanted to fall victim
to our own delusions or anyone else’s.
There were no volunteers
for tight crowds, parades,
and even less so for vanishing tribes;
but without them, history
never would have been able to march on
through centuries foreseen.

Meanwhile a goodly number
of lighted stars
had gone out and grown cold.
It was high time for a decision.

After many reservations
there finally appeared a few candidates
for discoverers and healers,
for philosophers without acclaim,
for several anonymous gardeners,
musicians, and conjurers

—though for want of other submissions
even these lives
couldn’t be fulfilled.

The whole thing
had to be rethought yet again.

We were offered
a package tour,
a journey from which we’d return
fast and for certain.

A chance to remain outside eternity,
which is, after all, monotonous
and ignorant of the concept of passing,
might never have come again.

We were riddled with doubt
whether, knowing it all beforehand,
we indeed knew it all.

Is such a premature choice
any choice at all?
Wouldn’t it be better
to let it pass?
And if we are to choose,
to make the choice there?

We took a look at Earth.
Some adventurers were living there already.
A feeble plant
was clinging to a rock
with reckless trust
that the wind would not uproot it.

A smallish animal
was crawling out of its nook
with an effort and a hope that surprised us.

We found ourselves too cautious,
small-minded, and ridiculous.

Anyway, soon our numbers began to fade.
The least patient ones went off somewhere.
Theirs was a trial by fire
—that much was clear.
Indeed, they were lighting one
on the steep bank of a real river.

Several
were already heading back.
But not our way.
And as if they were carrying the spoils? Of what?

By Wislawa Szymborska, Translated by Joanna Trzeciak

Mercy

She asked me to kill the spider
Instead, I got the most
peaceful weapons I can find

I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away

If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong place, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,

I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy.

- Rudy Francisco

For the Anniversary of My Death

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day 
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

--W. S. Merwin

Today

Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word
I’m letting all the demons of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.

--Mary Oliver

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
This one time upon the earth,
let's not speak any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.
The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.
What I want shouldn't be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.
If we weren't unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,
if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.
Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I'll go.

--Pablo Neruda

Poem Of The One World

This morning
the beautiful white heron
was floating along above the water

and then into the sky of this
the one world
we all belong to

where everything
sooner or later
is a part of everything else

which thought made me feel
for a little while
quite beautiful, myself.

-- Mary Oliver

A Thank-You Note

I owe a lot
to those I do not love.

Relief in accepting
others care for them more.

Joy that I am not
wolf to their sheep.

Peace be with them
for with them I am free
––love neither gives
nor knows how to take these things.

I don't wait for them
from window to door.
Almost as patient
as a sun dial,
I understand
what love never could.
I forgive
what love never would.

Between rendezvous and letter
no eternity passes,
only a few days or weeks.

Our trips always turn out well:
concerts are enjoyed,
cathedrals toured,
landscapes in focus.

And when seven rivers and mountains
come between us,
they are the rivers and mountains
found on any map.

The credit's theirs
if I live in three dimensions,
in a non-lyrical and non-rhetorical space,
with a real, ever-shifting horizon.

They don't even know
how much they carry in their empty hands.

"I owe them nothing,"
love would have said
on this open topic.

-- Wislawa Szymborska
Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak

Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you , see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.

In beauty.

--Joy Harjo

And

When summer comes
the cicadas
sing again.
Fireworks
freeze
in my memory.
Distant countries are dim
but the universe
is right in front of your nose.
What a blessing
that people
can die
leaving behind
only the conjunction
"and".

-- Shuntarō Tanikawa
Translated from the Japanese by William I Elliott and Kazuo Kawamure

For The Traveler

Every time you leave home,
another road takes you
into a world you were never in.
New strangers on other paths await.
new places that have never seen you
will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that you know well
will pretend nothing
changed since your last visit.
When you travel, you find yourself
alone in a different way,
more attentive now
to the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
you abroad; and how what meets you
touches that part of the heart
that lies low at home:
How you unexpectedly attune
to the timbre in some voice,
opening a conversation
you want to take in
to where your longing
has pressed hard enough
inward, on some unsaid dark,
to create a crystal of insight
you could not have known
you needed
to illuminate
your way.
When you travel,
a new silence
goes with you,
and if you listen,
you will hear
what your heart would
love to say.
A journey can become a sacred thing:
make sure, before you go,
to take the time
to bless your going forth,
to free your heart of ballast
so that the compass of your soul
might direct you toward
the territories of spirit
where you will discover
more of your hidden life,
and the urgencies
that deserve to claim you.
May you travel
in an awakened way,
gathered wisely
into your inner ground;
that you may not waste
the invitations which
wait along the way
to transform you.
May you travel safely,
arrive refreshed,
and live your time away
to its fullest;
return home more enriched,
and free to balance
the gift of days
which call you.

--John O'Donohue

Exercise

First forget what time it is
for an hour
do it regularly every day

then forget what day of the week it is
do this regularly for a week
then forget what country you are in
and practice doing it in company
for a week
then do them together
for a week
with a few breaks as possible

follow these by forgetting how to add
or to subtract
it makes no difference
you can change them around
after a week
both will help you later
to forget how to count

forget how to count
starting with your own age
starting with how to count backward
starting with even numbers
starting with Roman numerals
starting with fractions of Roman numerals
starting with the old calendar
going on to the old alphabet
going on to the alphabet
until everything is continuous again

go on to forgetting elements
starting with water
proceeding to earth
rising in fire 


forget fire

-- W. S. Merwin

Mindful

Every day
 I see or I hear
  something
   that more or less

kills me
 with delight
  that leaves me
   like a needle.

in the hay stack
 of light.
  It is 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

It Happens To Those Who Live Alone

It happens to those
who live alone
that they feel sure
of visitors
when no one else
is there,

until the one day
and one particular
hour
working in the
quiet garden,

when they realize
at once, that all along
they have been
an invitation
to everything
and every kind of trouble

and that life
happens by
to those who inhabit
silence

like the bees
visiting
the tall mallow
on their legs of gold,
or the wasps
going from door to door
in the tall forest
of the daisies.

I have my freedom
today
because
nothing really happened

and nobody came
to see me.
Only the slow
growing of the garden
in the summer heat

and the silence of that
unborn life
making itself
known at my desk,

my hands
still
dark with the
crumbling soil
as I write
and watch

the first lines
of a new poem,
like flowers
of scarlet fire,
coming to fullness
in a new light.

-- David Whyte

The Turn of the Century

It was supposed to be better than the rest, our twentieth century,
But it won't have time to prove it.
Its years are numbered,
its step unsteady,
its breath short.

Already too much has happened
that was not supposed to happen.
What was to come
has yet to come.

Spring was to be on its way,
and happiness, among other things.

Fear was to leave the mountains and valleys.
The truth was supposed to finish before the lie.

Certain misfortunes
were never to happen again
such as war and hunger and so forth.

The defenselessness of the defenseless,
was going to be respected.
Same for trust and the like.

Whoever wanted to enjoy the world
faces an impossible task.

Stupidity is not funny.
Wisdom is not cheerful.

Hope
is no longer the same young girl
et cetera. Alas.

God was at last to believe in man:
good and strong,
But good and strong
are still two different people.

How to live--someone asked me in a letter,
someone I had wanted
to ask the very same thing.

Again and as always,
and as seen above
there are no questions more urgent
than the naive ones.

-- Wislawa Szyborska
Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak

Nothing

I ask a student how I can help her. Nothing is on her paper.
It’s been that way for thirty-five minutes. She has a headache.
She asks to leave early. Maybe I asked the wrong question.
I’ve always been dumb with questions. When I hurt,
I too have a hard time accepting advice or gentleness.
I owe for an education that hurt, and collectors call my mama’s house.
I do nothing about my unpaid bills as if that will help.
I do nothing about the mold on my ceiling, and it spreads.
I do nothing about the cat’s litter box, and she pisses on my new bath mat.
Nothing isn’t an absence. Silence isn’t nothing. I told a woman I loved her,
and she never talked to me again. I told my mama a man hurt me,
and her hard silence told me to keep my story to myself.
Nothing is full of something, a mass that grows where you cut at it.
I’ve lost three aunts when white doctors told them the thing they felt
was nothing. My aunt said nothing when it clawed at her breathing.
I sat in a room while it killed her. I am afraid when nothing keeps me
in bed for days. I imagine what my beautiful aunts are becoming
underground, and I cry for them in my sleep where no one can see.
Nothing is in my bedroom, but I smell my aunt’s perfume
and wake to my name called from nowhere. I never looked
into a sky and said it was empty. Maybe that’s why I imagine a god
up there to fill what seems unimaginable. Some days, I want to live
inside the words more than my own black body.
When the white man shoves me so that he can get on the bus first,
when he says I am nothing but fits it inside a word, and no one stops him,
I wear a bruise in the morning where he touched me before I was born.
My mama’s shame spreads inside me. I’ve heard her say
there was nothing in a grocery store she could afford. I’ve heard her tell
the landlord she had nothing to her name. There was nothing I could do
for the young black woman that disappeared on her way to campus.
They found her purse and her phone, but nothing led them to her.
Nobody was there to hold Renisha McBride’s hand
when she was scared of dying. I worry poems are nothing against it.
My mama said that if I became a poet or a teacher, I’d make nothing, but
I’ve thrown words like rocks and hit something in a room when I aimed
for a window. One student says when he writes, it feels
like nothing can stop him, and his laugher unlocks a door. He invites me
into his living.

Copyright © 2020 by Krysten Hill.

About the poem:

“Just as poems are spaces for discovery, for me, poems have also been spaces to document what I am unlearning. I thought a lot about poet and activist Audre Lorde when I was writing this. This poem addresses that there are whole histories and complicated truths in the things that I swallow daily for the comfort of others. Silence is its own kind of hell. Inaction can be its own harmful protection. As a black woman, there are ways I’ve been taught, directly or indirectly, to mask my feelings into a response like ‘It’s nothing’ when, in fact, everything is wrong. Something is very much on fire. When truths come to surface, they are their own kind of ugly-beautiful. They are not ‘nothing.’ There is something very much living inside of them. They are necessary.”

​​​​​​​—Krysten Hill

About the poet:

Krysten Hill is the author of How Her Spirit Got Out (Aforementioned Productions, 2016), which received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. The recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award and 2020 Mass Cultural Council Poetry Fellowship, she received her MFA in poetry from University of Massachusetts Boston, where she currently teaches.

Thanks

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is

--W.S. Merwin, from Migration: New and Selected Poems. 

Tree

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

--Jane Hirshfield

The Word

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,
between "green thread"
and "broccoli," you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."
Resting on the page, the word
is beautiful. It touches you
as if you had a friend
and sunlight were a present
he had sent from someplace distant
as this morning—to cheer you up,
and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing
that also needs accomplishing.
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds
of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder
or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue,
but today you get a telegram
from the heart in exile,
proclaiming that the kingdom
still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,
—to any one among them
who can find the time
to sit out in the sun and listen.

-- Tony Hoagland

Today

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

--Billy Collins

What Have I Learned

What have I learned but
the proper use for several tools?

The moments
between hard pleasant tasks

To sit silent, drink wine,
and think my own kind
of dry crusty thoughts.

—the first Calochortus flowers
and in all the land,
it's spring.
I point them out:
the yellow petals, the golden hairs,
to Gen.

Seeing in silence:
never the same twice,
but when you get it right,

you pass it on.

-- Gary Snyder

attention as a form of ethics [excerpt]

We are mired in matter until we are not
— Ralph Lemon

I thought we were an archipelago
each felt under our own finessed and gilded wing
let’s make an assumption
let’s make an assumption that the lake has a bottom
let’s make an assumption that everyone will mourn
let’s sack a hundred greenbacks
for the sake of acknowledging they mean something
what does it mean to have worth?
who would dream to drain a lake?
I spent my days staring into the eye of the Baltic
it’s because I am also a body of water
it’s not that onerous
I’ve built a muscle memory
it’s not that heavy
let’s talk about erasure I mean
that’s easy
start with a word that you don’t like
start with a people you didn’t know
start with a neighborhood, rank
start with any miasma dispersed
let’s talk about burden
let’s talk about burden for the weight
it lends us
let’s talk about supplication
about my palms — uplift, patience


let’s celebrate our substance
subsistence in
amber rivulets of stilllife
constellations how you molded me
country how we became it
the longitude is a contested border
my longest muscle I named familiar

Copyright © 2020 by Asiya Wadud.

About the poem:
“I wrote this poem while listening to a talk Simone White gave in the spring of 2018 at Savvy Contemporary called ‘Erotic Power/Erotic Punishment.’ I’d also been listening to a performance-lecture that Ralph Lemon gave at UC Berkeley in 2012, and make a conversation of them because they both are filled with stillness and quiet electricity. Okwui Okpokwasili's ‘Poor People’s TV Room’ was also rattling around my head, somewhere (everywhere). I often think about what it means to give any act undivided attention, and what emerges in the space where we enact this kind of seeing. I like to think in threes and thirds and triptychs and trilogies and I try to translate the extension and duration of performance onto the page.”
—Asiya Wadud

About the poet:
Asiya Wadud is the author of Syncope (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019). She teaches poetry to children at Saint Ann's School and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow
we are
bones and ash,
the roots of weeds
poking through
our skulls.

Today,
simple clothes,
empty mind,
full stomach,
alive, aware,
right here,
right now.

Drunk on music,
who needs wine?

Come on,
Sweetheart,
let's go dancing
while we still
have feet.

-- David Budbill

Lightly

It's dark because you are trying too hard.
Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you're feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days.
Lightly, lightly -- it's the best advice ever given me
So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you,
sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into
fear and self-pity and despair.

That's why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly, my darling.

--Aldous Huxley, Island

Fear and love

Inhale small fears they turn into doubts into words into ideas
into anger into hatred into violence.

Exhale large fears and large words they tumble back onto you
it’s easy to get buried by our own mirrors.

Inhale small fears and they whisper and travel to your mind
observe them and thank them for trying to protect you.

Exhale acknowledgement of the beauty within your instincts
and the courage to love small fears.

Inhale hard love suck in the smell and reward reap eat chew
swallow devour all the goodness and love that is given to you.

Exhale calmness in acknowledgement of the beauty within the
courage it takes to not fear love.

--Tanya Tagaq
Split Tooth, Viking, Penguin Canada, 2018, p. 10.

If You Knew

What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.

A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

--Ellen Bass

Report of the Fourteenth Subcommittee on Convening a Discussion Group

This is how things begin to tilt into change,
how coalitions are knit from strands of hair,
of barbed wire, twine, knitting wool and gut,
how people ease into action arguing each inch,
but the tedium of it is watching granite erode.

Let us meet to debate meeting, the day, the time,
the length.  Let us discuss whether we will sit
or stand or hang from the ceiling or take it lying
down.  Let us argue about the chair and the table and
the chairperson and the motion to table the chair.

In the room the fog gathers under the ceiling and thickens
in every brain.  Let us form committees spawning
subcommittees all laying little moldy eggs of reports.
Under the grey fluorescent sun they will crack
to hatch scuttling lizards of more committees.

The Pliocene gathers momentum and fades.
The earth tilts on its axis.  More and more snows
fall each winter and less melt each spring.
A new ice age is pressing the glaciers forward
over the floor.  We watch the wall of ice advance.

We are evolving into mollusks, barnacles
clinging to wood and plastic, metal and smoke
while the stale and flotsam-laden tide of rhetoric
inches up the shingles and dawdles back.
This is true virtue:  to sit here and stay awake,

to listen, to argue, to wade on through the muck
wrestling to some momentary small agreement
like a pinhead pearl prized from a dragon-oyster.
I believe in this democracy as I believe
there is blood in my veins, but oh, oh, in me

lurks a tyrant with a double-bladed axe who longs
to swing it wide and shining, who longs to stand
and shriek, You Shall Do As I Say, pig bastards.
No more committees but only picnics and orgies
and dances.  I have spoken.  So be it forevermore.

--Marge Piercy

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

My beloved child,
Break your heart no longer.
Each time you judge yourself, you break your own heart.
You stop feeding on the love which is the wellspring of your vitality.
The time has come, your time
to live, to celebrate and to see the goodness that you are…
Let no one, no thing, no idea or ideal obstruct you.
If one comes, even in the name of “Truth,” forgive it for its unknowing
Do not fight.
Let go.
And breathe – into the goodness that you are.

--Bapuji

breathe back the breath

“I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.”

― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Other Wind

in passing

how swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:

as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost and become precious

--Lisel Mueller

Ecstasy

You do not need to
leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table
and listen.
Do not even listen,
simply wait.
Do not even wait,
be quite still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself
to you unmasked, it has no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy
at your feet.

--Franz Kafka

When you fail

When you fail
Don’t be so quick
To dust yourself off
With pep talks
Meant to get you
To rise up triumphantly
And exclaim
I am not giving up!
Don’t be triumphant
Instead
Give up
Yes that’s right
Give up
Not forever
But just for now
Just for a moment, at least
Just
Give
Up
Give it all up
You will be tempted
To comfort yourself
With spiritual concepts
Meant to assure you
This is all for the best
This is all part of a grand plan
To cleanse you
Purify you
Make you triumphant
Glorious
Heroic
No
Don’t do this
Don’t be a hero
But also do not be devoured
By shame by self hatred
This is just the same game played
Backwards
No
Just give up
Just for a moment
Just stay low
Low to the ground
Your false self
Shattered
Breathe the grass
Taste the dew
Inhale the soil
You failed
You broke
Life broke
Kiss the brokenness
And receive
Your true self is hidden
In the spaces in between

--Maya Luna

Spring

In the north country now it is spring and there
Is a certain celebration. The thrush
Has come home. He is shy and likes the
Evening best, also the hour just before
Morning; in that blue and gritty light he
Climbs to his branch, or smoothly
Sails there. It is okay to know only
One song if it is this one. Hear it
Rise and fall; the very elements of you should
Shiver nicely. What would spring be
Without it? Mostly frogs. But don’t worry, he
Arrives, year after year, humble and obedient
And gorgeous. You listen and you know
You could live a better life than you do, be
Softer, kinder. And maybe this year you will
Be able to do it. Hear how his voice
Rises and falls. There is no way to be
Sufficiently grateful for the gifts we are
Given, no way to speak the Lord’s name
Often enough, though we do try, and
Especially now, as that dappled breast
Breathes in the pines and heaven’s
Windows in the north country,
Now spring has come,
Are opened wide.

-- Mary Oliver

Waving Goodbye

Why, when we say goodbye
at the end of an evening, do we deny
we are saying it at all, as in We'll
be seeing you, or I'll call, or Stop in,
somebody's always at home? Meanwhile, our friends,
telling us the same things, go on disappearing
beyond the porch light into the space
which except for a moment here or there
is always between us, no matter what we do.
Waving goodbye, of course, is what happens
when the space gets too large
for words – a gesture so innocent
and lonely, it could make a person weep
for days. Think of the hundreds of unknown
voyagers in the old, fluttering newsreel
patting and stroking the growing distance
between their nameless ship and the port
they are leaving, as if to promise I'll always
remember, and just as urgently, Always
remember me. Is it loneliness, too,
that makes the neighbor down the road lift
two fingers up from his steering wheel as he passes
day after day on his way to work in the hello
that turns into goodbye? What can our own raised
fingers to for him, locked in his masculine
purposes and speeding away inside the glass?
How can our waving wipe away the reflex
so deep in the woman next door to smile
and wave on her way into her house with the mail,
we'll never know if she is happy
or sad or lost? It can't. Yet in that moment
before she and all the others and we ourselves
turn back to our disparate lives, how
extraordinary it is that we make this small flag
with our hands to show the closeness we wish for
in spite of what pulls us apart again
and again: the porch light snapping off,
the car picking its way down the road through the dark.

--Wesley McNair

blessing the boats

(at St. Mary’s)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

--Lucille Clifton

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

--Margaret Atwood

School Prayer

In the name of daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder
as an architect of peace.
In the name of the sun and its minors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons of the firefly
and the apple, I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

--Diane Ackerman