Memory Sack

That first cry opens the earth door. 

We join the ancestor road. 

With our pack of memories 

Slung slack on our backs 

We venture into the circle 

Of destruction, 

Which is the circle 

Of creation 

And make more-

--Joy Harjo

Some Questions You Might Ask

Is the soul solid, like iron?

Or is it tender and breakable, like

the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?

Who has it, and who doesn’t?

I keep looking around me.

The face of the moose is as sad

as the face of Jesus.

The swan opens her white wings slowly.

In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.

One question leads to another.

Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?

Like the eye of a hummingbird?

Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?

Why should I have it, and not the anteater

who loves her children?

Why should I have it, and not the camel?

Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?

What about the blue iris?

What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?

What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?

What about the grass?

--Mary Oliver

 Death is love's sister, the sister with the shadowed face. 

— Ursula K. Le Guin

Before spring

Bless the buds that have yet to open,

the bare branches turning red.

Bless the green noses of bulbs

as they push through the soil,

and the raucous starlings 

in their tree conventions.

Bless the quince that blooms early--

no one wants its fruit. Bless

the days of rain and the days of fog,

the mud and the mess of it.

Bless the first dandelions, raising

brave, unwelcome, golden heads.

Bless this time when the world

is not yet beautiful, but you

can smell change in the air.

--Lynn Ungar

I don’t ask for the sights in front of me to change, 

only the depth of my seeing.

– Mary Oliver

It is said that before entering the sea

a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,

from the peaks of the mountains,

the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,

she sees an ocean so vast,

that to enter

there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.

The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.

To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk

of entering the ocean

because only then will fear disappear,

because that’s where the river will know

it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,

but of becoming the ocean.

-- Kahlil Gibran

My grandma was a seamstress 

before she left this world.

Now she stitches together stars

that long to be

part of a constellation.

In the right moonlight

I can spot her up there

mending all the loneliness

in the universe.

--Andrea Gibson

Beginners

Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

“From too much love of living,

Hope and desire set free,

Even the weariest river

Winds somewhere to the sea -“

But we have only begun

To love the earth.

We have only begun

To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?

- so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?

- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,

only begun to envision

how it might be

to live as siblings with beast and flower,

not as oppressors.

Surely our river

cannot already be hastening

into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot

drag, in the silt,

all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet -

there is too much broken

that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other

that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know

the power that is in us if we would join

our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must

complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

--Denise Levertov

 No story can contain you.

--Ivan M. Granger

Evening

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors

which it passes to a row of ancient trees. You look,

and soon these two worlds both leave you,

one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,

leaving you, not really belonging to either,

not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,

not so unswervingly given to the eternal as

that thing that turns to a star each night and climbs-

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads) 

your own life, timid and standing high and growing, 

so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out, 

one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly

Original German:

Der Abend wechselt langsam die Gewänder,

die ihm ein Rand von alten Bäumen hält;

du schaust: und von dir scheiden sich die Länder,

ein himmelfahrendes und eins, das fällt;

und lassen dich, zu keinem ganz gehörend,

nicht ganz so dunkel wie das Haus, das schweigt,

nicht ganz so sicher Ewiges beschwörend wie das,

was Stern wird jede Nacht und steigt -

und lassen dir (unsäglich zu entwirrn) dein Leben

bang und riesenhaft und reifend, so daß es,

bald begrenzt und bald begreifend, abwechselnd 

Stein in dir wird und Gestirn.

There is deep beauty in not averting our gaze. No matter how hard it is, no matter how heartbreaking it can be. It is about presence. It is about bearing witness.

- Terry Tempest Williams

Thank You

If you find yourself half naked 

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing, 

again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says 

you are the air of the now and gone, that says 

all you love will turn to dust, 

and will meet you there, do not 

raise your fist. Do not raise 

your small voice against it. And do not 

take cover. Instead, curl your toes 

into the grass, watch the cloud 

ascending from your lips. Walk 

through the garden’s dormant splendor. 

Say only, thank you. 

Thank you. 

From Against Which. Copyright © 2006 by Ross Gay.

Whoever now makes himself bigger, freer and more human in his own existence, is doing his part toward peace, — as yet it must be worked at in an inward direction, not until a few have it all big and ready within them can it let itself be brought into the world.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters, 1892-1910