"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-