New Year’s Day—

everything is in blossom!

I feel about average.

--Issa

Rain, New Year's Eve

The rain is a broken piano,

playing the same note over and over.

My five-year-old said that.

Already she knows loving the world

means loving the wobbles

you can't shim, the creaks you can't

oil silent--the jerry-rigged parts, 

MacGyvered with twine and chewing gum.

Let me love the cold rain's plinking.

Let me love the world the way I love

my young son, not only when 

he cups my face in his sticky hands,

but when, roughhousing, 

he accidentally splits my lip.

Let me love the world like a mother.

Let me be tender when it lets me down.

Let me listen to the rain's one note

and hear a beginner's song.

--Maggie Smith

The winter of listening

No one but me by the fire,

my hands burning

red in the palms while

the night wind carries

everything away outside.

All this petty worry

while the great cloak

of the sky grows dark

and intense

round every living thing.

All this trying 

to know

who we are

and all this

wanting to know

exactly

what we must do.

What is precious

inside us does not

care to be known by the mind

in ways that diminish

its presence.

What we strive for

in perfection

is not what turns us

to the lit angel

we desire.

What disturbs

and then nourishes

has everything

we need.

What we hate

in ourselves

is what we cannot know

in ourselves but

what is true 

to the pattern

does not need

to be explained.

Inside everyone

is a great shout of joy

waiting to be born…

From ‘The Winter of Listening’

David Whyte : Essentials

Many Rivers Press 2019

 “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

― Melody Beattie

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

- Wendell Berry

"There is a structural lovelessness and powerlessness to the political events of our time. It is easy to feel despair, to want to lose hope. I write - not to tell you to keep hope alive, but to invite you to lean in further to listen to the nuances of your discomfort. In the new year, in the new decade, remember this:

Your discomfort is a holy ally, a redeeming interruption. Where you are most confused, exhausted, distressed and compromised, is where the wild things grow. Where crazy colours, beguiling angels' trumpets, decadent air ferns and wise old spruces sprout with festive abandon. Where the thrumming of frogs, the discourse of cricket limbs, the ambivalence of a nightly mist, and the audience of a delighted moon contrive an unheard score. It's where your primal self, where the unthought, calls to you softly - reminding you that you are not to be easily resolved..."

--Adebayo C. Akomolafe

Empty-handed I entered the world. 

Barefoot I leave it. 

My coming, my going- 

Two simple happenings 

That got entangled.

― Kozan Ichikyo

when the dawn 

is still almost dark

I rise restless

watch the 

morning come

sly slow

movement into light

from shadow play

an unveiling

inside this dark heart

a yearning to live

as nature lives

surrendering all

--bell hooks, from Appalachian Elegy

The most basic activism we can have in our lives is to live consciously in a nation living in fantasies.

--bell hooks

When you meet someone deep in grief

Slip off your needs

and set them by the door.

Enter barefoot 

this darkened chapel

hollowed by loss

hallowed by sorrow

its gray stone walls

and floor.

You, congregation of one

are here to listen

not to sing.

Kneel in the back pew.

Make no sound.

Let the candles speak.

--Patricia Runkle

The Heart's Counting Knows Only One

In Sung China

two monks

friends for sixty years

watched the geese pass.

Where are they going?

That moment's silence continues.

No one will study their friendship

in the koan-books of insight.

No one will remember their names.

I think of them sometimes,

standing, perplexed by sadness,

goose-down sewn into their quilted autumn robes.

Almost swallowed by the vastness of the mountains,

but not yet.

As the barely audible

geese are not yet swallowed;

as even we, my love. will not entirely be lost.

--Jane Hirshfield, The Lives of the Heart

Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.... In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.... We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.... Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

~Viktor E. Frankl

Oh Children

Oh children, will you grow up in a world without birds?

Will there be crickets where you are?

Will there be asters?

Clams, at a minimum?

Maybe not clams.

We know there will be waves.

Not much needed for those.

A breeze, a blow, a cyclone.

Ripples as well.

Stones.

Stones are consoling.

There will be sunsets as long as there is dust.

There will be dust.

Oh children, will you grow up in a world without songs?

Without pines?

Without mosses?

Will you spend your life in a cave?

A sealed cave with an oxygen line, until there's a failure?

Will your eyes blank out like the white eyes of sunless fish?

In there, what will you wish for?

Oh children, will you grow up in a world without ice?

Without mice?

Without lichens?

Oh children, will you grow up?

- Margaret Atwood

Prayer for the morning

Did you rise this morning,

broken and hung over

with weariness and pain

and rage tattered from waving too long in a brutal wind?

Get up, child.

Pull your bones upright

gather your skin and muscle into a patch of sun.

Draw breath deep into your lungs;

you will need it

for another day calls to you.

I know you ache.

I know you wish the work were done

and you

with everyone you have ever loved

were on a distant shore

safe, and unafraid.

But remember this,

tired as you are:

you are not alone.

Here

and here

and here also

there are others weeping

and rising

and gathering their courage.

You belong to them

and they to you

and together,

we will break through

and bend the arc of justice

all the way down

into our lives.

--Audette Fulbright Fulson

Messenger

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—

          equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

          keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

          astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

          and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

          to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is

          that we live forever.

--Mary Oliver

The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering. Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.

https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/478/the-geography-of-sorrow

Francis Weller

When Giving Is All We Have

                                              One river gives

                                              Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.

We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.

We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,

We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,

Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,

But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,

Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.

Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you

What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

--Alberto Ríos - 1952-

Belonging

And if it’s true we are alone,

we are alone together,

the way blades of grass

are alone, but exist as a field.

Sometimes I feel it,

the green fuse that ignites us,

the wild thrum that unites us,

an inner hum that reminds us

of our shared humanity.

Just as thirty-five trillion

red blood cells join in one body

to become one blood.

Just as one hundred thirty-six thousand

notes make up one symphony.

Alone as we are, our small voices

weave into the one big conversation.

Our actions are essential

to the one infinite story of what it is

to be alive. When we feel alone,

we belong to the grand communion

of those who sometimes feel alone—

we are the dust, the dust that hopes,

a rising of dust, a thrill of dust,

the dust that dances in the light

with all other dust, the dust

that makes the world.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Enough

Enough. These few words are enough.

If not these words, this breath.

If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to life

we have refused

again and again

until now.

Until now.

--David Whyte, from Where Many Rivers Meet

A Word on Statistics

Out of every hundred people

those who always know better:

fifty-two.

Unsure of every step:

almost all the rest.

Ready to help,

if it doesn't take long:

forty-nine.

Always good,

because they cannot be otherwise:

four—well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy:

eighteen.

Led to error

by youth (which passes):

sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with:

forty and four.

Living in constant fear

of someone or something:

seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness:

twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone,

turning savage in crowds:

more than half, for sure.

Cruel

when forced by circumstances:

it's better not to know,

not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight:

not many more

than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life except things:

thirty

(though I would like to be wrong).

Doubled over in pain

and without a flashlight in the dark:

eighty-three, sooner or later.

Those who are just:

quite a few at thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand:

three.

Worthy of empathy:

ninety-nine.

Mortal:

one hundred out of one hundred—

a figure that has never varied yet.

 

--Wislawa Szymborska

The edge you carry with you

You know 

so very well 

the edge 

of darkness

you have

always

carried with you.

You know 

so very well,

your childhood legacy:

that particular, 

inherited 

sense of hurt,

given to you 

so freely

by the world 

you entered.

And you know 

too well 

by now

the body’s 

hesitation

at the invitation 

to undo

everything

others seemed 

to want to 

make you learn.

But your edge 

of darkness

has always 

made 

its own definition 

secretly

as an edge of light

and the door

you closed

might, 

by its very nature

be 

one just waiting

to be leant against 

and opened.

And happiness 

might just

be a single step away,

on the other side

of that next 

unhelpful

and undeserving 

thought.

Your way home,

understood now,

not as an achievement,

but as a giving up,

a blessed undoing,

an arrival

in the body 

and a full rest 

in the give

and take 

of the breath.

This living

breathing body

always waiting 

to greet you

at the door,

always prepared 

to give you 

the rest you need,

always,

no matter

the long 

years away,

still

wanting you, 

to come home.

…

From ‘The Edge You Carry With You’

in ‘Still Possible’ David Whyte

Many Rivers Press Dec 1st 2021

How to Be a Poet

(to remind myself)

i   

Make a place to sit down.   

Sit down. Be quiet.   

You must depend upon   

affection, reading, knowledge,   

skill—more of each   

than you have—inspiration,   

work, growing older, patience,   

for patience joins time   

to eternity. Any readers   

who like your poems,   

doubt their judgment.   

ii   

Breathe with unconditional breath   

the unconditioned air.   

Shun electric wire.   

Communicate slowly. Live   

a three-dimensioned life;   

stay away from screens.   

Stay away from anything   

that obscures the place it is in.   

There are no unsacred places;   

there are only sacred places   

and desecrated places.   

iii   

Accept what comes from silence.   

Make the best you can of it.   

Of the little words that come   

out of the silence, like prayers   

prayed back to the one who prays,   

make a poem that does not disturb   

the silence from which it came.

-- Wendell Berry

Choosing

It’s not the meteor shower

with its wild arcs of light

that unzip the velvet dark—

what moves me is the one star

that manages to shine

through the thick atmosphere,

a lone light in this giant dome,

not more than a speck,

yet it persists, constant.

There are many ways to shine,

it seems to say, its tiny glint

winking against midnight.

And the dark is deep and long.

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Keep Going: The Art of Perseverance

“…the difference between a small effort and no effort can be gigantic…lack of effort, doing nothing, accomplishes nothing. It is the absence of hope, and it empowers the problem. Lack of effort is also self-betrayal. When we do nothing, we become our own worst enemy…no matter how useless we think it would be in the face of overwhelming odds to take one more step, we must. The least that can happen is that seemingly useless effort can inspire yet another step. And if we can take one step, no matter how slow or no matter how small, chances are we can take another. Eventually one of those steps will make the difference…”

- Joseph Marshall

Of The Empire

We will be known as a culture that feared death

and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity

for the few and cared little for the penury of the

many. We will be known as a culture that taught

and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke

little if at all about the quality of life for

people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All

the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a

commodity. And they will say that this structure

was held together politically, which it was, and

they will say also that our politics was no more

than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of

the heart, and that the heart, in those days,

was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

© 2008 by Mary Oliver

From her 2008 collection, Red Bird, p. 46

Published by Beacon Press 2008

Begin

Begin again to the summoning birds

to the sight of the light at the window,

begin to the roar of morning traffic

all along Pembroke Road.

Every beginning is a promise

born in light and dying in dark

determination and exaltation of springtime

flowering the way to work.

Begin to the pageant of queuing girls

the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal

bridges linking the past and future

old friends passing though with us still.

Begin to the loneliness that cannot end

since it perhaps is what makes us begin,

begin to wonder at unknown faces

at crying birds in the sudden rain

at branches stark in the willing sunlight

at seagulls foraging for bread

at couples sharing a sunny secret

alone together while making good.

Though we live in a world that dreams of ending

that always seems about to give in

something that will not acknowledge conclusion

insists that we forever begin.

— From The Essential Brendan Kennelly

Merit

Why me? What did I do

to deserve this?

A blue September sky

and the scent of late-blooming 

honeysuckle and roses,

the maple just starting 

to flash red and --who knew--

a second crop of raspberries

starting to ripen on the vine.

What have I ever done that merits

the generosity of rain

and the way the world opens 

into green? I mean, I have tried 

to be kind, but not like the 

cherry tomatoes, blushing

and turning sweet and 

giving themselves away 

by the handful.  Of course

I don't deserve this, any more

than you deserve fire or flood 

or sickness or heartache. There is no

math for this, no equation

that balances the equal sign.

Only this outpouring 

of all that is, the waterfall

we stand under, and drink from,

and try not to drown.

--Lynn Ungar

Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking

On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star

would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons.

The equivalent weight of how much railway

it would take to get a third of the way to the sun.

It’s the collective weight of every animal

on earth. Times three.

Six billion tons sounds impossible

until I consider how it is to swallow grief—

just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed

a neutron star. How dense it is,

how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.

How difficult it is to move then.

How impossible to believe that anything

could lift that weight.

There are many reasons to treat each other

with great tenderness. One is

the sheer miracle that we are here together

on a planet surrounded by dying stars.

One is that we cannot see what

anyone else has swallowed.

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Savasana

Once again, the field rehearses how to die.

Some of the grass turns golden first. Some

simply fades into brown. Just this morning,

I, too, lay in corpse pose, practicing

how to let myself be totally held by the earth

without striving, how to meet the day

without rushing off to do the next necessary

or beautiful thing. Soon, the grass will bend

or break, molder or disintegrate. Every year,

the same lesson in how to join

the darkness, how to be unmade, how quietly

we might lean into the uncertainty

of whatever comes next.

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Love, Love

If sorrow is how we learn to love,

then let us learn.

Already enough sorrow’s been sown

for whole continents to erupt

into astonishing tenderness.

Let us learn. Let compassion grow rampant,

like sunflowers along the highway.

Let each act of kindness replant itself

into acres and acres of widespread devotion.

Let us choose love as if our lives depend on it.

The sorrow is great. Let us learn to love greater—

riotous love, expansive love,

love so rooted, so common

we almost forget

the world could look any other way.

~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Gratitude

Gratitude, it happens,

needs less room to grow

than one might think—

is able to find purchase

on even the slenderest

of ledges, is able

to seed itself

in even the poorest of soils.

Just today, I marveled

as a small gratitude

took root

in the desert of me—

like a juniper tree

growing out of red rock.

If I hadn’t felt it myself,

I might not

have believed it—

but it’s true,

one small thankfulness

can slip into an arid despair

and with it comes

a change in the inner landscape,

the scent of evergreen. 

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Gift

            I’m sure there’s a blossom in here somewhere

And if all I can give you is silence,

then let it be the most beautiful silence,

a silence perfumed with mint and sage,

a silence that brings a quiet shine

to everything it touches.

Let it be the kind of silence

that opens into a deeper silence,

the kind that knows golden petals and sunshine

and the scent of rain unfolding in the meadow—

a silence that holds you so lightly,

the way candlelight might hold you 

inside the dark. May it find you

in the morning, be waiting for you

before you rise. May you find it behind

and between every word you say,

the way sky supports the dark cursive 

of starlings. And may you hear it, really hear it,

the deep silence. Like your favorite

song playing over and over again.

-    Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (2020)

 "I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver." -- Maya Angelou

A Speech at the Lost and Found

I lost a few goddesses on my way from south to north,

as well as many gods on my way from east to west.

Some stars went out on me for good: part for me, O sky.

Island after island collapsed into the sea on me.

I’m not sure exactly where I left my claws,

who wears my fur, who dwells in my shell.

My siblings died out when I crawled onto land

and only a tiny bone in me marks the anniversary.

I jumped out of my skin, squandered vertebrae and legs,

and lost my senses many many times.

Long ago I closed my third eye to it all,

waved it off with my fins, shrugged my branches.

Scattered by the four winds to a place that time forgot,

how little there remains of me surprises me a lot,

a singular being of human kind for now,

who lost her umbrella in a tram somehow.

--Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Joanna Trzeciak

What Can I Say

What can I say that I have not said before?

So I'll say it again.

The leaf has a song in it.

Stone is the face of patience.

Inside the river there is an unfinishable story

and you are somewhere in it

and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the

chamber of commerce

but take it also to the forest.

The song you heard singing in the leaf when you

were a child

is singing still.

I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,

and the leaf is singing still.

--Mary Oliver, from Swan

The Joins

What's between us

seems flexible as the webbing

between forefinger and thumb.

Seems flexible but isn't;

what's between us

is made of clay

like any cup on the shelf.

It shatters easily. Repair

becomes the task.

We glue the wounded edges

with tentative fingers.

Scar tissue is visible history

and the cup is precious to us

because

we saved it.

In the art of kintsugi

a potter repairing a broken cup

would sprinkle the resin

with powdered gold.

Sometimes the joins

are so exquisite

they say the potter

may have broken the cup

just so he could mend it.

--Chana Block

 The water in your body is just visiting. It was a thunderstorm a week ago. It will be the ocean soon enough. Most of your cells come and go like morning dew. We are more weather pattern than stone monument. Sunlight on mist. Summer lightning. Your choices outweigh your substance.

https://twitter.com/cryptonature/status/1038534797105291265?lang=en 

Today It Occurs To Me

Not all journeys require leaving the house.

  Just this morning, I followed the hummingbird

    as it circled the feeder, then flew to the flowerbed

      and slipped its long beak into red nasturtiums.

And last night I wandered the garden rows,

  pulling long carrots and thick round beets,

    attending to the slow journey of ripening.

And all summer I follow the thin trail of loss,

  how it leads me from one sorrow to another

    my heart breaking open and then more open

      then impossibly more open.

And all this sheltered summer, I navigate moments of beauty—

  when I laugh at dinner until I fall off my chair,

    mornings when the river runs startlingly clear,

      the blue of larkspur, double rainbow over the drive,

        the tender silence inside the shouting—

          follow these moments like cairns in the wilderness,

            that lead always to exactly where I am.

-Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

 “…one must say Yes to life and embrace it whenever it is found — and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is…

…For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

James Baldwin ~ “The Fire Next Time” (1963)

A Prayer Among Friends

Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive

with one another, we walk here

in the light of this unlikely world

that isn't ours for long.

May we spend generously

the time we are given.

May we enact our responsibilities

as thoroughly as we enjoy

our pleasures. May we see with clarity,

may we seek a vision

that serves all beings, may we honor

the mystery surpassing our sight,

and may we hold in our hands

the gift of good work

and bear it forth whole, as we

were borne forth by a power we praise

to this one Earth, this homeland of all we love.

--John Daniel, from Of Earth. © Lost Horse Press, 2012.

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

Let this darkness be a bell tower

and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change.

What is it like, such intensity of pain?

If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,

be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,

the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,

say to the silent earth: I flow.

To the rushing water, speak: I am.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Joanna Macy

 In the beginning, nothing came. In the middle, nothing stayed. In the end, nothing left. -- Milarepa

Attention--a poem for Sunday

All day, the world makes its demands. There’s so much of it, world,

begging to be noticed. Two seconds past dreaming, the cat’s there kneading

claws into my chest, a truck outside coughs, and a buzz alerts me to the newest

dispatch of love. The beginning of devotion, the poet said, and I devote myself to  

everything, I try to be

fair—to the kettle’s fussy squall, and the eggs’ expiration date, the amassed

garbage and mail in domiciliary limbo by the door, I espy the top

headlines, the top of my feed, trending topics and the occasion for today’s

irascible flock, injudiciously I devote myself to a grade-school acquaintance’s Facebook

jeremiad, the entirety of a former paramour’s mawkish engagement shoot, cringey

katzenjammer of a comments section, and then an insurgence of morning

lacquers my screen, vagary of sun, with lapidary clarity

motes glistering by the window, water illumed in a jar, I

note the branches’ meek wave, flag of the leaves, the jays jostling at the feeder like boys

obvious in their need to be seen, the squirrels’ and shadows’ territorial

performances, petunias and progeny in yards vibrant as advertisements, even the sky turning

quintessentially bluer when observed—but I can’t keep up, my own body

raucous for acknowledgment, pruritic and palpitating, frenetic, ultrawhelmed

sensorium, my self  

taxed with being a self, brimming with living’s rowdy mechanics and disruptions

unremitting, a thought flits by, then another (an unpaid bill, a jingle’s tenacious refrain)—and,

votary of the sublunary, the proximate, any moment’s evanescent

welter, I attend, as best I can, neophytic  

exalter of the ordinary and all-around, henotheist  

yielding to the most persuasive god, the most recent, to each thing I say Yes? Yes!—

zealot of whatever calls me next.

--Leila Chatti

Leila Chatti is the author of the poetry collection Deluge and the chapbooks Ebb and Tunsiya/Amrikiya.

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   

is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   

who smile while crossing streets,   

sticky children in grocery lines,   

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do.

-- Naomi Shihab Nye

Fall

And every year there is a brief, startling moment

When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and

Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless

Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:

It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;

It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

- Edward Hirsch, closing lines to “Fall,” The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2010 

my brain and

heart divorced

a decade ago

over who was

to blame about

how big of a mess

I have become.

eventually,

they couldn't be 

in the same room

with each other.

now my head and heart 

share custody of me.

I stay with my brain 

during the week

and my heart 

gets me on weekends.

they never speak to one another

    - instead, they give me

the same note to pass

to each other every week:

"This is all your fault!"

on Sundays

my heart complains

about how my 

head has let me down

in the past

and on Wednesday

my head lists all

of the times my 

heart has screwed

things up for me 

in the future.

there's been a lot

of yelling - and crying

so,

    lately, I've been

spending a lot of 

time with my gut.

most nights, I sneak out of the

window in my ribcage

and slide down my spine

and collapse on my 

gut's plush leather chair

~ and I just sit sit sit sit

until the sun comes up.

last evening, 

my gut asked me

if I was having a hard

time being caught 

between my heart

and my head.

I nodded.

I said I didn't know

if I could live with 

either of them anymore.

"my heart is always sad about

something that happened yesterday

while my head is always worried

about something that may happen tomorrow," 

I lamented.

my gut squeezed my hand and said:

"in that case, 

you should 

go stay with your 

lungs for a while.

if you are exhausted by

your heart's obsession with

the fixed past and your mind's focus

on the uncertain future,

your lungs are the perfect place for you.

there is no yesterday in your lungs

there is no tomorrow there either

there is only now

there is only inhale

there is only exhale

there is only this moment

there is only breath

and in that breath

you can rest while your

heart and head work 

their relationship out."

this morning,

while my brain

was busy reading

tea leaves

and my heart was staring

at old photographs 

I packed a little

bag and walked

to the door of 

my lungs.

before I could even knock

she opened the door

with a smile and as

a gust of air embraced me

she said

"what took you so long?"

~ john roedel (johnroedel.com)

Dark hours

I love the dark hours of my being.

My mind deepens into them.

There I can find, as in old letters,

the days of my life, already lived,

and held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes: I can open

to another life that's wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree

rustling over a gravesite

and making real the dream

of the one its living roots

embrace:

a dream once lost

among sorrows and songs.

Rainer Maria Rilke 

Trans. Anita Burrows & Joanna Macy

I don't feel good

therefore I am bad

therefore no one loves me.

I feel good

therefore I am good

therefore everyone loves me.

I am good

You do not love me

therefore you are bad. So I do not love you.

I am good

You love me

therefore you are good. So I love you.

I am bad

You love me

therefore you are bad.

-RD Laing, Knots

First of all

First of all nothing will happen

and a little later

nothing will happen again

A family will pass by in the night

speaking of the children’s bedtime 

That will be the signal

for you to light a cigarette

Then comes a delicate moment 

when the backwoods men

gather around the table 

to discuss your way of life

Dismiss them with a glass of

cherry juice 

Your way of life has been over 

for many years 

The moonlit mountains

surround your heart 

and the Anointed One

with his bag and stick

can be picked out on a path

He is probably thinking of what

you said

in the schoolyard 100 years ago

This is a dangerous moment 

that can plunge you into silence 

for a million years 

Fortunately the sound of clarinets 

from a wandering klezmer

ensemble

drifts into the kitchen 

Allow it to distract you

from your cheerless meditation 

The refrigerator will go into

second gear 

and the cat will climb onto the 

windowsill

For no reason at all 

you will begin to cry

Then your tears will dry up

and you will ache for a companion

I will be that companion

At first nothing will happen to us

and later on

it will happen to us again

--Leonard Cohen

We're all stories in the end

 I'll be a story in your head. But that's OK: We're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know, it was the best. And the times we had, eh? Would've had. Never had. In your dreams, they'll still be there. 

--Doctor Who

The Middle

When I remember bygone days

I think how evening follows morn;

So many I loved were not yet dead,

So many I love were not yet born.

-- Ogden Nash

The Long Voyage

Not that the pines were darker there,   

nor mid-May dogwood brighter there,   

nor swifts more swift in summer air;

    it was my own country,

having its thunderclap of spring,   

its long midsummer ripening,   

its corn hoar-stiff at harvesting,

    almost like any country,

yet being mine; its face, its speech,   

its hills bent low within my reach,   

its river birch and upland beech

    were mine, of my own country.

Now the dark waters at the bow

fold back, like earth against the plow;   

foam brightens like the dogwood now

    at home, in my own country.

--Malcolm Cowley

Fear not suffering, the sadness—

Give it back to the weight of the earth.

The mountains are heavy, heavy the oceans.

Ah, but the breezes, ah, but the spaces—

--Rilke

 Trees do not preach learning and precepts. They preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life

- Hermann Hesse

Rebus

You work with what you are given,

the red clay of grief,

the black clay of stubbornness going on after.

Clay that tastes of care or carelessness,

clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.

Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live,

each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table.

There are honeys so bitter

no one would willingly choose to take them.

The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity,

honey of cruelty, fear.

This rebus - slip and stubbornness,

bottom of river, my own consumed life -

when will I learn to read it

plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire?

Not to understand it, only to see.

As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty,

we become our choices.

Each yes, each no continues,

this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup.

The ladder leans into its darkness.

The anvil leans into its silence.

The cup sits empty.

How can I enter this question the clay has asked?

~Jane Hirshfield

Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it--that is your punishment--but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing--an actor, a writer--I am a person who does things--I write, I act--and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.

--Stephen Fry

 To use the world well, to be able to stop wasting it and our time in it, we need to relearn our being in it.

- Ursula Le Guin

 Tradition is the handing down of fire and not the veneration of ashes

—Gustav Mahler

The times are urgent; let us slow down.

--Dr. Bayo Akomolafe https://greendreamer.com/podcast/dr-bayo-akomolafe-the-emergence-network 

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

-- Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

 People aren’t made to float through the air. Unless we know the weight of our bodies, unless we feel the force of gravity, we’ll forget what we are, we’ll lose ourselves without even noticing.

— Madeleine Thien

The Deepest Peace: Contemplations from a Season of Stillness

Many times I have testified of my suffering and written at length on race, gender, sexual orientation, and homelessness. Before I die, I must speak of peace. Life has not been all torment in this dark and mysterious body. And yet torment and peace are not separate. They come together in a world that pulls you toward violence and bends you down to pray for peace. Peace is there all along. In awakening to peace, the teachings of the earth have been beneficial for me…

[I walk in nature.] I see half-eaten birds and the dried bones of an animal unknown to me. It’s clear, in this peaceful desert, that peace is not the opposite of violence. Peace is in violence. It can only be seen by the open eyes of awareness...The experience of peace I’m discovering in the desert had always been with me in the city. I hadn’t let it in. I had made efforts at making peace. But “making peace” requires an idea and then action upon that idea. It’s not the same peace I speak of here. The peace being expressed in these writings doesn’t come from the mind, the lips, or from gentle actions. It doesn’t come from legislation made by governments or peacemaking movements. 

It’s a peace that appears without effort. Like the desert filling up my eyes. It appears like snow, wind, or rain. Peace arrives on its own if I don’t resist it. During years of chanting and meditation, the habit of fighting against what was in front of me rose and dissolved like waves in an ocean. There were times when I asked questions, critiqued, and took action. And there were times when confusion took over, the mind doubled down on itself. The only thing to do during those times was to breathe and be still. The body knows when to do this. Stillness is inherent. After suffering and resistance, the only thing left is contemplation of life and after contemplation, stillness, and after stillness, peace.

--Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.

--JRR Tolkein, The Fellowship of the Ring

attentiveness

This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.

- Mary Oliver

beauty

People often say that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have not dared to look, including inside ourselves.

--Salma Hayek

"I believe in the God of Spinoza."

 http://yesteethatsme.com/2019/09/substance-of-god.html

There's a post that's been floating around facebook with muddled attribution--some people make it sound like either Spinoza told people to pat their dogs, or that Einstein did so quoting Spinoza. The whole piece is lovely but it's 100% recent.

When I stand before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing. 

 - Rabindranath Tagore

Watching the moon

at dawn,

solitary, mid-sky,

I knew myself completely,

no part left out.

― Izumi Shikibu

It takes a long time not to feel like an alien, a long time to search out and discover who you are. But if you go all the way with that exploration it takes you beyond race, beyond colour, beyond class, beyond every kind of category, and you discover you belong to humanity. And that's who you are. If you go all the way with that search, it takes you beyond property, beyond lumber, fish, furs, metal, oil, beyond "resource" industry, beyond commercial food production to where you find you belong to the land. And that's who you are. And when you are that, there is no foreign land. Wherever you are is home. And the earth is paradise and wherever you set your feet is holy land.

--Wilfred Peltier

Wilfred Pelletier (also Peltier), or Baibomsey, meaning "traveller," Odawa wise man, philosopher, author (b on Wikwemikong Reserve, Manitoulin I, Ont 16 Oct 1927; died at Ottawa 2 Jul 2000). https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/wilfred-pelletier 

Fresh

To move

Cleanly.

Needing to be

Nowhere else.

Wanting nothing

From any store.

To lift something

You already had

And set it down in

A new place.

Awakened eye

Seeing freshly.

What does that do to

The old blood moving through

Its channels?

--Naomi Shihab Nye

Take Love for Granted

Assume it’s in the kitchen,

under the couch, high

in the pine tree out back,

behind the paint cans

in the garage. Don’t try

proving your love

is bigger than the Grand

Canyon, the Milky Way,

the urban sprawl of L.A.

Take it for granted. Take it

out with the garbage. Bring

it in with the takeout. Take

it for a walk with the dog.

Wake it every day, say,

“Good morning.” Then

make the coffee. Warm

the cups. Don’t expect much

of the day. Be glad when

you make it back to bed.

Be glad he threw out that

box of old hats. Be glad

she leaves her shoes

in the hall. Snow will

come. Spring will show up.

Summer will be humid.

The leaves will fall

in the fall. That’s more

than you need. We can

love anybody, even

everybody. But you

can love the silence,

sighing and saying to

yourself, “That’ s her.”

“That’s him.” Then to

each other, “I know!

Let’s go out for breakfast!”

--Jack Ridl

Insomnia

All over the world, people can’t sleep.

In different time zones, they are lying awake,

Bodies still, minds trudging along like child laborers.

They worry about bills.

They worry whether the shoes they just bought are really too small.

One’s husband died, her son left for college, and she doesn’t know how to program the VCR.

Another was beaten by her husband.

One is planning a getaway.

One holding stolen goods.

One’s on the plaid couch in ICU.

His daughter, it turned out, actually does have a brain tumor even though the doctor said they’d do the MRI just to rule it out.

The woman on the other couch is snoring — which is strangely soothing — evidence that people do sleep.

Some are lying on Charisma sheets.

Some in hammocks.

Some in jail.

Some under bridges.

One is at the North Pole studying the impact of pollution.

A man in Massachusetts thinks about a lover he once had in Dar es Salaam and the jasmine blossoms she strung along the shaft of a silver pin, fastened in her hair at night.

Coincidentally, the lover, now in Rome, remembers looking out the window over the sink when she was washing dishes and seeing him reading in the lawn chair.

And she thought how, perhaps for the first time, she wasn’t lonely.

They’re all up.

Some are too cold.

Some too hot.

Some hungry.

Some in pain.

Some are in hotels listening to people have sex in the next room.

Some are crying.

One the cat woke up and now she’s worried about the rash she noticed in the evening and wonders if her daughter, who’s afraid to swim, should be pushed.

Some get up.

Others stay in bed.

They eat Oreos.

Or drink wine.

Or both.

Many read.

A few make Halloween costumes.

Some check their email.

They try sleep tapes, hypnosis, drugs.

They listen to their clocks tick, smartly as a woman in high heels.

Those who can, cling to their mates, an ear pressed to those neighbouring lungs like a stethoscope, hoping to catch a ride on the steady sleep breath of the other. To be carried like a seed on the body of the one who is able.

Right now, in Japan, dawn is coming.

And everyone who’s been up all night is relieved.

They can stop trying.

In Guatemala though, the insomniacs are just getting started and they have the whole night ahead of them.

It’s like a wave at the baseball stadium, hands around the world.

So here’s a prayer for the wakeful,

for the souls who can’t rest:

As you lie with eyes open or closed,

may something comfort you — a mockingbird, a breeze, the smell of crushed mint, Chopin’s nocturnes, your child’s birth, a kiss, or even me — at 3 am, in my chilly kitchen with my coat over my nightgown — thinking of you.

--Ellen Bass

Skin Tight

The internal organs were growling

According to them

They did all of the work while

Skin got all of the attention

He’s an organ just like us

They groused

Even the heart, which, a

Century ago, was the Queen

Of metaphors, but now

Was reduced to the greetings

Cards section of CVS,

Chimed in

They decided to call skin

On the carpet.

Skin arrived from Cannes

Where he’d been the subject

Of much fuss as actresses

Fed him luxurious skin

Food prepared by Max Factor

Estée Lauder, L’Oreal,

And Chanel

They

Caressed him daily

Sometimes for hours before

They made the red carpet

Shine

He was petted

And preened

Others

Pleaded with him

To erase wrinkles to

Make them look younger

To tighten their chins

Skin tried to appease the

Critics, greeting them with

His familiar “give me some skin”

But his gesture went unheeded

Brain did all the talking

Brain said, “Here’s the skinny

Why do you get

All of the press

Your color

Your texture discussed

Endlessly

Nicole Kidman never

Did an ad about us

Cole Porter never

Wrote a song about us

Nor were we mentioned

In a Thornton Wilder novel

You’ve given us no

Skin in the game”

“What about the nasty

Things they say about

Me,” skin replied

“What about skin deep

For superficiality

Or

Skin trade

To denote something

Unsavory

How would you

Like acne rashes

Eczema

Boils

Pellagra

Leprosy

And

Conditions

That astonish

Even dermatologists

I wear my blemishes

In public while you guys

Hide yours”

“Without me and heart

You’d be nothing,” the brain said

“That’s not true,” protested

The liver, “without me he’d

Be nothing”

“No,” the kidney said

“It’s me who keeps the

Body functioning”

The bladder and

The kidney began

To quarrel with

Gallbladder

The lung twins spoke

Up

“Without us

He couldn’t breathe”

Even the esophagus

And the thyroid

And the pancreas

Joined the outbreak

“What about us?”

The eyes said

“Without eyes you

Can’t see”

Their squabble distracted

Them

When they looked

Up from their dust up

Skin’s

Helicopter was up

He was scheduled to

Address a convention of

Plastic surgeons at

The Beverly Hills

Hotel

Escaping by the skin

Of his teeth

His opponents gave

Chase

But above the roar

Of the chopper

They heard him say

“Don’t worry fellas

I got you covered”

--Ishmael Reed

 If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. 

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

--John O’Donohue

One of the Butterflies

The trouble with pleasure is the timing

it can overtake me without warning

and be gone before I know it is here

it can stand facing me unrecognized

while I am remembering somewhere else

in another age or someone not seen

for years and never to be seen again

in this world and it seems that I cherish

only now a joy I was not aware of

when it was here although it remains

out of reach and will not be caught or named

or called back and if I could make it stay

as I want to it would turn to pain.

--W. S. Merwin

A Spiritual Journey

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,

no matter how long,

but only by a spiritual journey,

a journey of one inch,

very arduous and humbling and joyful,

by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,

and learn to be at home.

--Wendell Berry

I have been to the end of the earth, I have been to the end of the waters, I have been to the end of the sky, I have been to the end of the mountains; I have found none that are not my friends.

- Navajo [Dine] Proverb

As if to Demonstrate an Eclipse

I pick an orange from a wicker basket

and place it on the table

to represent the sun.

Then down at the other end

a blue and white marble

becomes the earth

and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.

I get a glass from a cabinet,

open a bottle of wine,

then I sit in a ladder-back chair,

a benevolent god presiding

over a miniature creation myth,

and I begin to sing

a homemade canticle of thanks

for this perfect little arrangement,

for not making the earth too hot or cold

not making it spin too fast or slow

so that the grove of orange trees

and the owl become possible,

not to mention the rolling wave,

the play of clouds, geese in flight,

and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.

Then I fill my glass again

and give thanks for the trout,

the oak, and the yellow feather,

singing the room full of shadows,

as sun and earth and moon

circle one another in their impeccable orbits

and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.

--Billy Collins

 "It will be alright," he says. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.

--Madeline Miller, from "Circe"

Commencement speech delivered to a herd of walrus calves

Young walruses, we all must adapt! For example, 

some of your ancestors gouged the world 

with four tusks, but you can grow only two. 

It’s hard to say what evolution plans for your kind, 

but if given a choice,

you should put in a request for thumbs. 

Anyway, congratulations! You’re entering 

a world that’s increasingly hostile and cruel 

and full of people who’ll never take you seriously

though that will be a mistake on their end. 

You are more tenacious than they know. 

You’ll be a fierce and loyal defender 

of those you love. You will fight polar bears 

when they attack your friends and sometimes you’ll win.

Of course, odds always favor the polar bear, 

but that’s not the point. The point is courage.

The point is bravery. The point is you are all fighters

even when the fight in which you find yourself

ensures unpleasant things will happen to you. 

For example, the bear will gnaw apart your skull 

or neck until you stop that persistent twitching; 

it will eat your skin, all of it, then blubber, then muscle, 

then the tears of your loved ones, in that order; 

it will savor every bite, and you will just 

suffer and suffer until the emptiness can wash over you. 

The good news is: things change! 

For example: the environment. 

Climate change, indeed, is bad for you, 

but it’s worse for polar bears whose conservation status 

is now listed as “vulnerable” which is one step removed 

from “endangered” which is one step removed 

from “extinct” which is a synonym 

for Hooray! None of you get eaten! 

I suppose this will make some people sad. 

Even now, they’re posting pictures

of disconsolate polar bears on melting ice floes 

drifting toward a well-deserved oblivion. 

They say, We need to stop this! 

They say, We need to do something, now!

These people are not your friends. 

One cannot be on both Team Walrus and Team Polar Bear 

at the same time. I’m not saying these people are evil; 

I’m saying, it’s time to choose a side. 

I’m saying sharpen your tusks, young calves; 

your enemies are devious. You need to train 

yourself to do what they won’t expect. 

For example: use computers, invest 

in renewable energies, read Zbigniew Herbert. 

Unrelatedly: your whiskers make you appear 

to have mustaches, which, seeing as you’re 

not even toddlers, is remarkably unsettling. 

Babies that look like grown men freak me out.

Like those medieval paintings by so-called masters

where they’d make the face of little baby Jesus

look like an ancient constipated banker.  

If that’s what God really looks like, 

it’s no wonder we’ve done what we’ve done to the Earth.    

Maybe you can repair what we spent lifetimes taking apart. 

Replace some screws. Oil some hinges. 

This might sound impossible, but have you ever 

looked at yourselves? Seriously—take a quick look 

and tell me how a walrus face is possible; 

everything about it defies the laws of physics. 

You will exist beyond the reach of nature.

You will learn to slow your own heartbeat to preserve oxygen 

while diving to depths of over 900 feet. 

You will stay awake for up to three consecutive days 

while swimming on the open sea.  

And when the ocean is too rough—

so terrible with longing, so ruptured with heartache—

you’ll find a small island of stone or ice offering refuge. 

It will be difficult to climb from the water, 

but because there’s hope for us all, 

you will hoist yourself up,

using only your front teeth to drag your body 

onto the shore.

--Matthew Olzmann

Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?

There are things you can’t reach. But

But you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

The snakes slides away, the fish jumps, like a little lily,

out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing

from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around

as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come, some

shining coil of wind,

or a few leaves from any old tree —

they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth.

Everything in the world

comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.

Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold

fluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.

--Mary Oliver

Sadness

Sooner or later it comes to everyone:

the beautiful prom queen who has lost a breast,

the Don Juan of the tenth grade who has

turned up impotent, the fleet chiropodist

who has developed a limp. Sooner or later it comes,

and you are never prepared for it quite yet,

you who had hoped to be spared through another epoch

of your rightful happiness, you who had always

given to charity. Like a gargantuan tackle

lumbering toward you, it comes and comes,

and—though you may double lateral all you wish,

though you may throw a perfect spiral

up the middle to some ecstatic receiver

and be blessed blue-green some night

by the ministrations of strangers—it will not

spare you. It comes and comes, inevitable

as sunrise, palpable as longing,

and we must go on

laughing it right in the face

until it learns to sing again.

--Michael Blumenthal

...the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, "Letters to a young poet"

Death Comes Knocking at My Door

When I saw Death standing at my doorstep

I thought of the speech I long prepared.

“Why did you take them away, why so many?

Did you have to take Keith and Bill and Frederic

and Mahlon and Tim and Hunter and Kerry –

I could go on with the names all day.”

Sometimes when I compose this long rehearsed

speech, I also ask, “Why them and not me?”

All these words hung in the air unspoken

as I watched how tired Death looked.

Death's bones bowed with weariness.

“So, do you want to come in?” I asked.

Death gave no answer but walked in

and sat in my living room chair.

I dropped over the tired bones my favorite

afghan quilt knitted by my grandma.

I almost said, you are now wrapped by the

love of one more you stole, but held my tongue.

I made Death a cup of tea, who took it

gratefully. And we sat. In silence.

The strangeness of Death sitting in

my living room, covered by my grandma's

wool afghan, sipping tea wore off.

We were not strangers to each other.

Then Death stood, handed me the tea cup,

the afghan dropping to the chair.

As Death crossed my threshold I said,

“I suppose I will see you again one day.”

--Michael Kiesow Moore

From The Song Castle. Nodin Press © 2019.

Remember

Remember the sky that you were born under,

know each of the star's stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is.

Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the

strongest point of time. Remember sundown

and the giving away to night.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled

to give you form and breath. You are evidence of

her life, and her mother's, and hers.

Remember your father. He is your life, also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:

red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth

brown earth, we are earth.

Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their

tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,

listen to them. They are alive poems.

Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the

origin of this universe.

Remember you are all people and all people

are you.

Remember you are this universe and this

universe is you.

Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.

Remember language comes from this.

Remember the dance language is, that life is.

Remember.

--Joy Harjo

From SHE HAD SOME HORSES by Joy Harjo, copyright © 2008 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

One day I was born. Then everything bothered me. And that brings us up to date.

Instructions on Not Giving Up

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out

of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s

almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving

their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate

sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees

that really gets to me. When all the shock of white

and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave

the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,

the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin

growing over whatever winter did to us, a return

to the strange idea of continuous living despite

the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,

I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf

unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

Ada Limón - 1976-