What the Day Gives

Suddenly, sun. Over my shoulder

in the middle of gray November

what I hoped to do comes back,

asking.

Across the street the fiery trees

hold onto their leaves,

red and gold in the final months

of this unfinished year,

they offer blazing riddles.

In the frozen fields of my life

there are no shortcuts to spring,

but stories of great birds in migration

carrying small ones on their backs,

predators flying next to warblers

they would, in a different season, eat.

Stunned by the astonishing mix in this uneasy world

that plunges in a single day from despair

to hope and back again, I commend my life

to Ruskin’s difficult duty of delight,

and to that most beautiful form of courage,

to be happy.

-- Jeanne Lohmann

Nothing Wants to Suffer

after Linda Hogan

Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind

as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff

being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not want

to suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it.

The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see

their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust.

The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey.

These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth

to take their hunger. An offering, one hopes,

made quickly, and without much suffering.

The chair mourns an angry sitter. The lamp, a scalded moth.

A table, the weight of years of argument.

We know this, though we forget.

Not the shark nor the tiger, fanged as they are.

Nor the worm, content in its windowless world

of soil and stone. Not the stone, resting in its riverbed.

The riverbed, gazing up at the stars.

Least of all, the stars, ensconced in their canopy,

looking down at all of us— their offspring—

scattered so far beyond reach.

-- Danusha Lameris

“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.” 

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” 

The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1951), p. 474

Consecration

Even a song can be an altar,

a place to bring an offering—

as on this anxious day

when I can’t stop giving my heart

to love songs for the broken world.  

And perhaps the breath, too, is an altar

on which the song is placed,

which would mean what is sacred

might be ever flowing through us,

a space where we might meet the divine,

which is exactly what I believe.  

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Neighbors in October

All afternoon his tractor pulls a flat wagon

with bales to the barn, then back to the waiting

chopped field. It trails a feather of smoke.

Down the block we bend with the season:

shoes to polish for a big game,

storm windows to batten or patch.

And how like a field is the whole sky now

that the maples have shed their leaves, too.

It makes us believers—stationed in groups,

leaning on rakes, looking into space. We rub blisters

over billows of leaf smoke. Or stand alone,

bagging gold for the cold days to come.

-- David Baker

From The Truth About Small Towns.

The Clearing

At the center of every fear

is a clearing, and though you must

trudge for miles in the dark woods

to get there, it’s worth the trip:

now you can sit down for a while

among grass and hawkweed, you can

bask in unfiltered light, and see

the heavy clouds shifting overhead.

At the center of every fear,

if felt completely, is an empty

space where the wind tickles

the hairs on your neck, then arcs

an arm around your shoulder,

pulling you closer like a father

at last unafraid to show affection,

here to let you know you’re not alone.

—James Crews

If you know your Creation story,

Then you know from where you have come

And you know where you are going

And what you were meant to become

You'll know how to love your partner

How to raise your babies to be women and men

who'll meet the purpose of their creation

And you can live your life so, too, you can.

If you know who you are, 

and what you must do

Then you’ll know what to say 

When your time is through,

When asked by the ones who have gone before, 

“Did you always love all of the people,

though they may never have loved you back?”

“Did you lift up the ones who had fallen?”

"Did you stand in the way of attack?"

“Did you help those to walk who had stumbled?”

"Did you help them to straighten their back?"

“Did you listen to stories they needed to tell?

...never judging their wrong from their right?“

"Did you make sure they knew you believed them?"

"And to see beyond darkness, some light?"

"Did you share with all those who had nothing?”

“Did you comfort those crying inside?”

“Did you listen to those who were angry?”

“Did you take away pain they were trying to hide?”

“Did you take care of all of Creation?”

“Did you keep it a beautiful place?”

“Did you love all the things that were put here?”

“On the earth, in the sky, and the water that flowed and helped nourish this place?

“Did you hold true to all of your teachings?”

“Were you the best Anishinaabe you could be?” 

"Step forward and tell us your answers

....the Ancestors are anxious to hear and to see.”

                       Mizanagiizhik

--Murray Sinclair

Hope Waits Inside

The day dawned as it always does,

milky light nuzzling the drapes

then leaking through the cracks like love

in a time of grief. I want to meet

this moment with arms swung wide open,

a gate that welcomes everything—

but dread rusts the hinges, and fear keeps

the latch from popping free. As usual,

I’m called to see hope where it seems

there is none, just as I must trust that

inside rain-slick, stripped-bare branches

wait the buds of new leaves, ready to

burst forth, like a happiness that doesn’t

depend on what happens.

—James Crews

Inviting Spaciousness

Today when the heart is a small, tight knot,

I do not try to untangle it. I don’t tug on the strings

in a desperate attempt to unravel it.

I don’t even wonder at how it got so snarled.

Instead, I imagine cradling it, cupping it

with my hands like something precious,

something wounded, a bird with a broken wing.

I cradle my heart like the frightened thing it is.

I imagine all the other frightened hearts

and imagine them all being held in love.

And I breathe. I breathe and feel

how the breathing invites a spaciousness.

I breathe and let myself be moved by the breathing

as I open and soften. Open and soften.

And nothing changes. And everything changes.

The heart, still a knot, remembers

it knows how to love. It knows it is not alone.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing

Now all the truth is out,

Be secret and take defeat

From any brazen throat,

For how can you compete,

Being honor bred, with one

Who were it proved he lies

Were neither shamed in his own

Nor in his neighbors' eyes;

Bred to a harder thing

Than Triumph, turn away

And like a laughing string

Whereon mad fingers play

Amid a place of stone,

Be secret and exult,

Because of all things known

That is most difficult.

-W.B. Yeats

When people say,

"we have made it

through worse before"

all I hear is the wind slapping against the gravestones

of those who did not make it, those who did not

survive to see the confetti fall from the sky, those who

did not live to watch the parade roll down the street.

I have grown accustomed to a lifetime of aphorisms

meant to assuage my fears, pithy sayings meant to

convey that everything ends up fine in the end. There is no

solace in rearranging language to make a different word

tell the same lie. Sometimes the moral arc of the universe

does not bend in a direction that will comfort us.

Sometimes it bends in ways we don't expect & there are

people who fall off in the process. Please, dear reader,

do not say I am hopeless, I believe there is a better future

to fight for, I simply accept the possibility that I may not

live to see it. I have grown weary of telling myself lies

that I might one day begin to believe. We are not all left

standing after the war has ended. Some of us have

become ghosts by the time the dust has settled.

- Clint Smith

Lumbricus terrestris (The Earthworm)

On a day when the world is weighty,

dark and dense with need,

I want to be the earthworm

that gives itself over to tunneling,

its every movement an act

of bringing spaciousness.

And when minutes feel crushed by urgency,

I want to meet the world wormlike,

which is to say grounded,

consistent, even slow.

No matter how desperate the situation,

the worm does not tunnel faster

nor burrow more.

It knows it can take decades

to build fine soil.

To whatever is compacted,

the worm offers its good worm work,

quietly bringing porosity

to what is trodden, compressed.

So often, in my rush to repair,

I end up exhausted.

Let my gift to the world be

my constancy, a devotion to openness,

my willingness to be with what is.

Let my gift to myself be patience

as I tend what is dense and dark.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, from THE UNFOLDING (Wildhouse Poetry, 2024)

Love Letter Sent Back in Time to Myself Three Years Ago

Your worst fears will happen,

will happen soon. And you

will crumple. Will wail.

Will not know how to say hello.

Will somehow remember

how to stand. How to open

a door. How to sit on a chair

and listen to the swallows,

the relentlessly sweet chickadees.

You will have no words, but you will have

your attention, your willingness,

your stubbornness, your

devotion to life.

Your heart, though wrecked,

will not be erased. It will beat,

will beat on, will beat on.

And though I do not understand

how this happens, you live.

You not only live, you’re remade,

just as rivers are remade by rain,

just as wind is refashioned

by the cool of the night. Just as

bones become stronger

after the break. Just as

a story resists The End.

Just as the notes of a song

can be reused to compose

a new song. Oh sweetheart,

you will not only sing

the new song—a song

equal parts haunting and beautiful—

you will be the new song

and the silence that holds it.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Only Love

Only love is big enough to hold all the pain of this world.

-Sharon Salzberg

And so I imagine the entire earth

as one beating heart held in the space

of this universe, inside a larger body

we can't fathom, filling with enough

love to lead each of us out of the cave

of our personal pain and into the light-

enough love to lead all humans as one

out of collective fear, rage, and hate

into a place of peace that is found only

within our own hearts, beating in sync

with the pulse of this planet we were

born to inhabit, despite the daily storms

which overtake us and make us forget

we are the lifeblood pumped into these

veins, every particle of love we generate

running into rivers, lakes, and creeks,

evaporating into the air we breathe,

give back, and breathe again.

--James Crews

Blessing for peace

As the fever of day calms towards twilight

May all that is strained in us come to ease.

We pray for all who suffered violence today,

May an unexpected serenity surprise them.

For those who risk their lives each day for peace,

May their hearts glimpse providence at the heart of history.

That those who make riches from violence and war

Might hear in their dreams the cries of the lost.

That we might see through our fear of each other

A new vision to heal our fatal attraction to aggression.

That those who enjoy the privilege of peace

Might not forget their tormented brothers and sisters.

That the wolf might lie down with the lamb,

That our swords be beaten into ploughshares

And no hurt or harm be done

Anywhere along the holy mountain.

--John O'Donohue

Useful

This is my one prayer,

one intention carried

in the clay of skin:

to be a useful cup

fired in the kiln of life.

Cracked as I am, shaped

by flawed but caring

human hands, let me hold 

what is mine to hold,

then give it back,

transformed by the keeping,

to anyone thirsty enough

to receive it.

--James Crews

Blessing in the chaos

To all that is chaotic

in you,

let there come silence.

Let there be

a calming

of the clamoring,

a stilling

of the voices that

have laid their claim

on you,

that have made their

home in you,

that go with you

even to the

holy places

but will not

let you rest,

will not let you

hear your life

with wholeness

or feel the grace

that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you

cease.

Let what divides you

cease.

Let there come an end

to what diminishes

and demeans,

and let depart

all that keeps you

in its cage.

Let there be

an opening

into the quiet

that lies beneath

the chaos,

where you find

the peace

you did not think

possible

and see what shimmers

within the storm.

—Jan Richardson

from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

These Mornings

All these mornings

are one morning;

over and over I am

greeted by the new day—

who greets me but

this Self that is your Self?

Beauty flows fresh,

mist and light glowing

in the valleys, brilliance

of gold breaking through

the leaves and branches

of the trees. All around

me the treasures of

the soul have gathered

as beings, as the created

newness of the World.

If I could ask for

any gift to be given

to us all,

over and over

it would simply be

This!

This!

This!

--Richard Wehrman

Because the Frost Is Late This Year

The nasturtiums have flourished enough

to escape their bed, and long, round

stems stretch down from the wooden

box and run between rows along the garden

paths, and it’s a freaking insurgence

of blooming, a mutiny of beauty, a

rebellion of splendor and my god if

I don’t just stand here in the paths, stunned

by the unlikely blessing, cursed with my

knowledge of how quickly it all can die, but

today, just look at it, today, I don’t even

try not to praise it, instead I stand in

the midst of improbable glory and fall

in love with all these gold and orange

petals and wide rounded leaves, barely

able to breathe past the ache of how all

we love will leave us—even the wildest

of blossomings, even the most unruly

of beauties, even what looks as if it’s

so alive it could take over the whole world.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

From a Country Overlooked

There are no creatures you cannot love.

A frog calling at God

From the moon-filled ditch

As you stand on the country road in the June night.

The sound is enough to make the stars weep

With happiness.

In the morning the landscape green

Is lifted off the ground by the scent of grass.

The day is carried across its hours

Without any effort by the shining insects

That are living their secret lives.

The space between the prairie horizons

Makes us ache with its beauty.

Cottonwood leaves click in an ancient tongue

To the farthest cold dark in the universe.

The cottonwood also talks to you

Of breeze and speckled sunlight.

You are at home in these

great empty places

along with red-wing blackbirds and sloughs.

You are comfortable in this spot

so full of grace and being

that it sparkles like jewels

spilled on water.

-- Tom Hennen

From Darkness Sticks to Everything.

In the Community Garden

It's almost over now,

late summer's accomplishment,

and I can stand face to face

with this music,

eye to seed-paved eye

with the sunflowers' architecture:

such muscular leaves,

the thick stems' surge.

Though some are still

shiningly confident,

others can barely

hold their heads up;

their great leaves wrap the stalks

like lowered shields. This one

shrugs its shoulders;

this one's in a rush

to be nothing but form.

Even at their zenith,

you could see beneath the gold

the end they'd come to.

So what's the use of elegy?

If their work

is this skyrocket passage

through the world,

is it mine to lament them?

Do you think they'd want

to bloom forever?

It's the trajectory they desire—

believe me, they do

desire, you could say they are

one intent, finally,

to be this leaping

green, this bronze haze

bending down. How could they stand

apart from themselves

and regret their passing,

when they are a field

of lifting and bowing faces,

faces ringed in flames?

-- Mark Doty

Citizen Of Dark Times

Agenda in a time of fear: Be not afraid.

When things go wrong, do right.

Set out by the half-light of the seeker.

For the well-lit problem begins to heal.

Learn tropism toward the difficult.

We have not arrived to explain, but to sing.

Young idealism ripens into an ethical life.

Prune back regret to let faith grow.

When you hit rock bottom, dig farther down.

Grief is the seed of singing, shame the seed of song.

Keep seeing what you are not saying.

Plunder your reticence.

Songbird guards a twig, its only weapon a song.

--Kim Stafford

From “The Case for Hope” by Rebecca Solnit

"The future is bigger than our imaginations. 

It’s unimaginable, and then it comes anyway. 

To meet it we need to keep going, 

to walk past what we can imagine. 

We need to be unstoppable. 

And here’s what it takes: 

you don’t stop walking to congratulate yourself; 

you don’t stop walking to wallow in despair; 

you don’t stop because your own life got too comfortable or too rough; 

you don’t stop because you won; 

you don’t stop because you lost. 

There’s more to win, more to lose, others who need you.

You don’t stop walking because there is no way forward. 

Of course there is no way. 

You walk the path into being, you make the way, 

and if you do it well, others can follow the route. 

You look backward to grasp the long history you’re moving forward from, 

the paths others have made, the road you came in on. 

You look forward to possibility. 

That’s what we mean by hope, 

and you look past it into the impossible 

and that doesn’t stop you either. 

But mostly you just walk, right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. That’s what makes you unstoppable."

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was

Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:

World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world

Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes— 

On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands—

There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

--Louis MacNeice

Burning the old year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,

lists of vegetables, partial poems.

Orange swirling flame of days,

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,

only the things I did’t do

crackle after the blazing dies.

 

--Naomi Shihab Nye

When Augusta Showed Us a Two-Minute Video of Starlings

Though I don’t have wings

and though I cannot fly,

with my whole body, I felt it,

the longing to be so aware

of all that is around me

that I, too, might move through the world

like a starling, veering and rising,

turning and dropping, whirling

and doubling back in an elegant

response to what my neighbors

are doing. Does the starling

harshly judge its neighbor

when it flies the other direction?

Does the starling worry

it’s not good enough

to be in a murmuration?

Is it jealous of how its neighbors fly?

Does it wonder how

to get out of its own way?

Such human questions.

How would it be to wholly trust

we are all moving together

in some great mysterious dance?

Now I can’t stop thinking

of what Augusta said:

When we move together,

we like each other more.

It takes just one thought

to inspire a change in course.

What might happen now

when I walk out my door?

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Why I Should Hike Every Day No Matter What

I didn’t know how trapped I was

in my own busyness until,

walking past a quiet lake

and up through a lush spruce forest

I felt how with each step toward tree line

more calendar squares disappeared

and all my lists dissolved until

I was nowhere but wading

through waist-high bluebells

with corn lilies rising above my head.

How still my mind was then, still,

as I traversed creeks and clambered

over fallen trees. Still as I climbed

to the place where the clear water

streams down gray cliffs and yellow

monkey flower flourishes on the banks.

I was bathed with gratefulness.

Is it true that to know this freedom

once is to be able to carry it

like a touchstone in my body?

Will the larkspur have any dominion

tomorrow while I’m trapped in a deadline?

Will the scent of summer’s last wild roses

return when I’m scrambling

for just ten more minutes?

Oh freedom, I long to contain you.

That thought makes me laugh.

Yet it’s true. I long to find myself

mid-hustle still linked to the gurgling stream,

its waters so cold I can’t help but gasp

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

This is the time to be slow,

Lie low to the wall

Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let

The wire brush of doubt

Scrape from your heart

All sense of yourself

And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,

Time will come good;

And you will find your feet

Again on fresh pastures of promise,

Where the air will be kind

And blushed with beginning.

--John O'Donohue

"Thudong monks valued wandering as an ascetic practice, as a means of training the mind to face hardship and the unpredictable. Whenever they wandered far from the relative comfort and security of the monastic life, they had to contend with fear, pain, fatigue, hunger, frustration, and distress; and sometimes they risked death. ... [A monk] never knew where he would spend the night, where the next meal would come from, or what difficulties he would encounter. He learned to live with insecurities and discomforts - life's inevitable dukkha." 

- Kamala Tiyavanich, Forest Recollections, p. 143

Oxygen

Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,

while it calls the earth its home, the soul.

So the merciful, noisy machine

stands in our house working away in its

lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel

before the fire, stirring with a

stick of iron, letting the logs

lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,

are in your usual position, leaning on your

right shoulder which aches

all day. You are breathing

patiently; it is a

beautiful sound. It is

your life, which is so close

to my own that I would not know

where to drop the knife of

separation. And what does this have to do

with love, except

everything? Now the fire rises

and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red

roses of flame. Then it settles

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds

as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:

our purest sweet necessity: the air.

-- Mary Oliver

This Poem Should Be a Circle

I wish you the ability to breathe

after pain, to begin again, though

nothing else seems possible.

I wish you resilience: to part like

the ocean and accept like the sky,

to be held like a root.

I wish you survival: to take in life

like a trapped miner finding an

airhole and praising it as God.

I wish you courage: to ask of

everything you meet, “What

bridge are we?”

I wish you chances to listen:

to all that holds us up.

I wish you the-kindness-that-you-are

coming to brighten your face

like orange leaves scattered

at the end of fall.

I wish you endless journey that

seldom appears as we imagine.

I wish you curiosity: to make a

boat of wonder and an oar

of gratitude.

--Mark Nepo

Sabbaths 1993

No, no, there is no going back. 

Less and less you are 

that possibility you were. 

More and more you have become 

those lives and deaths 

that have belonged to you. 

You have become a sort of grave 

containing much that was 

and is no more in time, beloved 

then, now, and always. 

And so you have become a sort of tree 

standing over a grave. 

Now more than ever you can be 

generous toward each day 

that comes, young, to disappear 

forever, and yet remain 

unaging in the mind. 

Every day you have less reason 

not to give yourself away. 

--Wendell Berry

Ode to Joy

Friedrich Schiller called Joy the spark of divinity

but she visits me on a regular basis,

and it doesn’t take much for her to appear—

the salt next to the pepper by the stove,

the garbage man ascending his station

on the back of the moving garbage truck,

or I’m just eating a banana

in the car and listening to Buddy Guy.

In other words, she seems down-to-earth,

like a girl getting off a bus with a suitcase

and no one’s there to meet her.

It’s a little after four in the afternoon,

one of the first warm days of spring.

She sits on her suitcase to wait

and slides on her sunglasses.

How do I know she’s listening to the birds?

--Billy Collins

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

--Mary Oliver

Welcome Morning

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry “hello there, Anne”

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning

and I mean,

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

in a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,

dies young.

--Ann Sexton

Threshold

It has happened.

You thought you had some control

of your life

and that you were in a place

you understood

in a time that moved

from a past you knew

to a future that followed

in a more or less straight line.

But here you are at the edge

of a shore, the shallow waves

washing over your feet

taking the sand you stand on

away and suddenly you wonder

if all the ground beneath you

is disappearing.

You have stepped through the threshold.

The door closed and locked behind you.

You are on the other side.

You try to forget it, distract yourself,

but nothing works.

You check your messages.

The doctor’s office left a number

on your phone.

Is it a blood test result,

survival rate for treatment,

or days left to live?

Now you are alone.

After the panic subsides you stand there

looking around.

Everything is fresh,

colors are vivid,

you can smell scents,

even subtle ones,

and your hearing is sharp.

You feel the breeze on your skin

and the tickle of hairs moving

across your brow.

You are pierced through

with the inexplicable joy

at having nothing.

The sand forms around your foot

and the water wipes out all traces of your path.

Everywhere you turn there is something new

and the space around you

holds you gently

as it spills out and becomes

a part of the expanding world.

So many things are remarkable now.

Here is the freedom that always frightened you.

You have forgotten your name

and it does not matter.

--Newton Smith

You don't want to hear the story

of my life, and anyway

I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story

a few people just trying,

one way or another,

to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.

- Mary Oliver, from Dogfish

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

-Mary Oliver

What the Heart Says

The mind may leap five steps ahead,

devices pinging with new messages,

alerts, alarms. But the heart says,

There is no emergency. That muscle

wanting to unclench, aching to flex

as free as the monarch nectaring

on a Mexican sunflower at the cusp

of autumn. Don’t we all long for

space to pause and draw sweetness

from each bright thing in our path?

Don’t we crave the slowness of that

butterfly perched on orange petals,

coming alive in a way it never can

while in mid-air, wings folding and

unfolding their own form of prayer?

—James Crews

Wellness Check

In any moment,

on any given day,

I can measure

my wellness

by this question:

Is my attention on loving,

or is my attention on

who isn't loving me?

--Andrea Gibson

Friend, you are who taught me 

that a difficult life is not less 

worth living than a gentle one. 

Joy is just easier to carry than sorrow, 

and you could lift a city

from how long you’ve spent holding

what’s been nearly impossible to hold. 

But this world needs those who know

how to do that. Those who can find 

a tunnel with no light at the end 

of it and hold it up like a telescope 

to show that the darkness contains 

many truths that can bring the light 

to its knees. 

Grief astronomer, adjust the lens, 

look close, tell the world

what you see.

--Andrea Gibson 

August Afternoon

The backyard bugs are sparks

of afternoon sun as a white

butterfly wobbles up and

over the fence and visits

dandelions at random and

how can it exist? So fragile

and bright and alone in the world.

These warm August days are as

fleeting as those bright wings,

eluding every touch until you finally

sit still and let them land.

--James A Pearson

The Cure at Troy

Human beings suffer,

they torture one another,

they get hurt and get hard.

No poem or play or song

can fully right a wrong

inflicted or endured.

The innocent in jails

beat on their bars together.

A hunger-striker's father

stands in the graveyard dumb.

The police widow in veils

faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don't hope

on this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

the longed for tidal wave

of justice can rise up,

and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change

on the far side of revenge.

Believe that a further shore

is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles

and cures and healing wells.

Call the miracle self-healing:

The utter self-revealing

double-take of feeling.

If there's fire on the mountain

Or lightning and storm

And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing

the outcry and the birth-cry

of new life at its term.

It means once in a lifetime

That justice can rise up

And hope and history rhyme.

- Seamus Heaney, from "The Cure at Troy"

When I Thought I Was Dying

It was easy to love things. Birds, the flutter of branches,

my husband who always has to be right.

I thought, I will lose all of this. I hugged my cats more.

I watched less television, except for comedies, which drugged

me to sleep at night. Stupid 1950's sci-fi films, especially.

Maybe I loved them too. I loved poetry and wrote almost every day,

thinking, I do not have time to write. The lights would flicker

and threaten outages. How like our bodies these power lines are,

reliable until they are not: eaten by rats or rammed by cars at random.

You see how I thought everything was profound: my Netflix

recommendations, passing a woman on the street and smiling at each other.

I ate a lot more pancakes, something I hadn't done since childhood.

I thought, maybe there will be a miracle. Maybe I will have more time.

A temporary grant of extension. I will still do taxes and fill out forms

at the doctor's office. I will have time to be mad at traffic.

I will stop petting random dogs. I will have time to stop

noticing when the hummingbird or deer or Steller's jay pauses

to look in my eyes, that moment before. That's the thing

about having time. You miss so much.

--Jeannine Hall Gailey

In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask them how they’re doing, you ask: in Arabic, Kayf haal-ik? or, in Persian, Haal-e shomaa chetoreh? How is your haal?

What is this haal that you inquire about? It is the transient state of one’s heart. In reality, we ask, 'How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?' When I ask, 'How are you?' that is really what I want to know.

I am not asking how many items are on your to-do list, nor asking how many items are in your inbox. I want to know how your heart is doing, at this very moment. Tell me. Tell me your heart is joyous, tell me your heart is aching, tell me your heart is sad, tell me your heart craves a human touch. Examine your own heart, explore your soul, and then tell me something about your heart and your soul.

Tell me you remember you are still a human being, not just a human doing. Tell me you’re more than just a machine, checking off items from your to-do list. Have that conversation, that glance, that touch. Be a healing conversation, one filled with grace and presence.

Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect with me for one second. Tell me something about your heart, and awaken my heart. Help me remember that I too am a full and complete human being, a human being who also craves a human touch.

— Omid Safi, The Disease of Being Busy

The Buddha's Last Instruction

“Make of yourself a light,”

said the Buddha,

before he died.

I think of this every morning

as the east begins

to tear off its many clouds

of darkness, to send up the first

signal -- a white fan

streaked with pink and violet,

even green.

An old man, he lay down

between two sala trees,

and he might have said anything,

knowing it was his final hour.

The light burns upward,

it thickens and settles over the fields.

Around him, the villagers gathered

and stretched forward to listen.

Even before the sun itself

hangs, disattached, in the blue air,

I am touched everywhere

by its ocean of yellow waves.

No doubt he thought of everything

that had happened in his difficult life.

And then I feel the sun itself

as it blazes over the hills,

like a million flowers on fire --

clearly I'm not needed,

yet I feel myself turning

into something of inexplicable value.

Slowly, beneath the branches,

he raised his head.

He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

~ Mary Oliver

Life is short, and it is sinful to waste one’s time. They say I’m active. But being active is still wasting one’s time, if in doing one loses oneself. Today is a resting time, and my heart goes off in search of itself. If an anguish still clutches me, it’s when I feel this impalpable moment slip through my fingers like quicksilver… At the moment, my whole kingdom is of this world. This sun and these shadows, this warmth and this cold rising from the depths of the air: why wonder if something is dying or if [people] suffer, since everything is written on this window where the sun sheds its plenty as a greeting to my pity?

-- Albert Camus

Next Time

I'll know the names of all of the birds

and flowers, and not only that, I'll

tell you the name of the piano player

I'm hearing right now on the kitchen

radio, but I won't be in the kitchen,

I'll be walking a street in

New York or London, about

to enter a coffee shop where people

are reading or working on their

laptops. They'll look up and smile.

Next time I won't waste my heart

on anger; I won't care about

being right. I'll be willing to be

wrong about everything and to

concentrate on giving myself away.

Next time, I'll rush up to people I love,

look into their eyes, and kiss them, quick.

I'll give everyone a poem I didn't write,

one specially chosen for that person.

They'll hold it up and see a new

world. We'll sing the morning in,

and I will keep in touch with friends,

writing long letters when I wake from

a dream where they appear on the

Orient Express. "Meet me in Istanbul,"

I'll say, and they will.

-- Joyce Sutphen

From After Words

Once the World Was Perfect

Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.

Then we took it for granted.

Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.

Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.

And once Doubt ruptured the web,

All manner of demon thoughts

Jumped through—

We destroyed the world we had been given

For inspiration, for life—

Each stone of jealousy, each stone

Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.

No one was without a stone in his or her hand.

There we were,

Right back where we had started.

We were bumping into each other

In the dark.

And now we had no place to live, since we didn't know

How to live with each other.

Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another

And shared a blanket.

A spark of kindness made a light.

The light made an opening in the darkness.

Everyone worked together to make a ladder.

A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,

And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,

And their children, all the way through time—

To now, into this morning light to you.

--Joy Harjo

From Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.  Copyright © 2015 by Joy Harjo.  

God Says Yes To Me

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic

and she said yes

I asked her if it was okay to be short

and she said it sure is

I asked her if I could wear nail polish

or not wear nail polish

and she said honey

she calls me that sometimes

she said you can do just exactly

what you want to

Thanks God I said

And is it even okay if I don't paragraph

my letters

Sweetcakes God said

who knows where she picked that up

what I'm telling you is

Yes Yes Yes

—Kaylin Haught

The Light We Leave Behind

A star chart tells me

that the star I am seeing tonight

is 500 light years away.

It may have died 499 years ago,

and I am still seeing its last light.

Stars are born, they live, and they die.

What is the light that remains when we leave?

If I die after writing this poem, is this my light,

and how long might that light remain and be seen?

I wondered last night and still this morning

about these questions, and still now,

standing again outside

under a mackerel sky dappled, rippled with clouds

and the sun, our family star,

which will also die.

Then, there will be no light remaining.

Perhaps, this is not what you believed.

When it dies, the Earth dies with it.

No last light to come after it.

In its end, the sun will expand

into a red giant

and will vaporize the Earth.

My son rises

and joins me outside

his coffee steaming a small cloud

into the December air.

In this enormous moment,

we look into the sky and universe.

We are a fortnight from the year ending

and hopeful for many more circles

around the sun. We are expanding,

gathering our light, and sharing it

while we can still see it reflected

in those constellating nearby.

--Kenneth Ronkowitz

I am astonished in my teaching to find how many poets are nearly blind to the physical world. They have ideas, memories, and feelings, but when they write their poems they often see them as similes. To break this habit, I have my students keep a journal in which they must write, very briefly, six things they have seen each day—not beautiful or remarkable things, just things. This seemingly simple task usually is hard for them. At the beginning, they typically “see” things in one of three ways: artistically, deliberately, or not at all. Those who see artistically instantly decorate their descriptions, turning them into something poetic: the winter trees immediately become “old men with snow on their shoulders,” or the lake looks like a “giant eye.” The ones who see deliberately go on and on describing a brass lamp by the bed with painful exactness. And the ones who see only what is forced on their attention: the grandmother in a bikini riding on a skateboard, or a bloody car wreck. But with practice, they begin to see carelessly and learn a kind of active passivity until after a month nearly all of them have learned to be available to seeing—and the physical world pours in. Their journals fill up with lovely things like, “the mirror with nothing reflected in it.” This way of seeing is important, even vital to the poet, since it is crucial that a poet see when she or he is not looking—just as she must write when she is not writing. To write just because the poet wants to write is natural, but to learn to see is a blessing. The art of finding in poetry is the art of marrying the sacred to the world, the invisible to the human.

— Linda Gregg, from “The Art of Finding”

Breaking News

When the house seems to breathe

on its own, and I stare out the window

without purpose, in love with loneliness,

all of my moments—past, present

and future—merge into one. And I see

among hummingbirds, moths and bees

tonight’s breaking news: a pair

of goldfinches, each of which balances

on the bobbing head of a zinnia,

pecking at petals to get to the center

of the flower, where they must sense

some sweetness waits just for them.

—James Crews

My Dead Friends

My friends are dead who were

the arches    the pillars of my life 

the structural relief when

the world gave none.

My friends who knew me as I knew them

their bodies folded into the ground or burnt to ash.

If I got on my knees

might I lift my life as a turtle carries her home?  

Who if I cried out would hear me?

My friends—with whom I might have spoken of this—are gone.

--Marie Howe

The Work of Happiness

It's the floating ache I don't know how to answer,

hovering in the filtered morning so full of peace

and wanting.

I keep telling myself I will get to the work of happiness

when there is time, but always there is someone I love

dying and a new promotion to apply for.

One of my chickens pecks out the eye of another.

Who is to say what causes this wild need to damage

ourselves and others, to take

the whole curtain down with us.

Their coop is bigger than my own bedroom

with three nesting boxes for every hen.

But most days it doesn't seem to matter.

They fight over one,

they fight over a single blade of grass in a field of grass.

I've watched them each take the tender limbs of a frog and pull.

Nothing good

can come of this.

This morning has arrived with its beautiful light, and the entire day

stretches out in front of me, but I'm already unhappy,

already wanting another.

--Brittney Scott

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator

and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.

Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.

Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.

Don't even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.

Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles

or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything

matches, at all.

Except one word to another. Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic—decide first

what is authentic,

then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don't even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons

in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in through the screened windows, who collect

patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters

this ruse you call necessity.

by Louise Erdrich

From Original Fire.

The Hope of Loving

What keeps us alive? What allows us to endure?

I think it is the hope of loving,

or being loved.

I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey

to find its source, and how the moon wept

without her lover’s

warm gaze.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts. We wither

like fields if someone close

does not rain their

kindness upon us.

--Daniel Ladinksky (inspired by Meister Eckhart)

The Happiness of Trees

I slept that summer on a screen porch in the woods

    with the creatures and insects singing so loudly

my mind seemed to join them—out there without me—

    to move around like a breeze from form to form

and then to return as a fox or a cicada,

    some other night creature, to slip back inside me

humming whatever it had heard, patterns

    I couldn’t sing along with but felt inside

like the happiness of trees when a soft wind

    turns their leaves’ pale underbellies up to the sky

and makes the sap rise. I loved to wake

    before myself, to silence and fog.

Sometimes I got up and walked out into the chilly woods

    and sometimes I turned over as though this happiness

might last forever, and slept just a while

    longer, until the first birds sang.

-- Michael Hettich

Mystery of Life

I have a theory that the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. I have tried this experiment a thousand times and I have never been disappointed. The more I look at a thing, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I want to see. It is like peeling an onion. There is always another layer, and another, and another. And each layer is more beautiful than the last.

This is the way I look at the world. I don't see it as a collection of objects, but as a vast and mysterious organism. I see the beauty in the smallest things, and I find wonder in the most ordinary events. I am always looking for the hidden meaning, the secret message. I am always trying to understand the mystery of life.

I know that I will never understand everything, but that doesn't stop me from trying. I am content to live in the mystery, to be surrounded by the unknown. I am content to be a seeker, a pilgrim, a traveler on the road to nowhere.

 -- Henry Miller

Spiritual literacy is recognizing the sacred in everything around us. Everything around you and everything you do has spiritual significance. The point is that it's all around us. You just have to have the eyes to see.

- Mary Ann Brussat

There Is an Old Woman Inside Me

There is an old woman inside me

with long gray hair and fuzzy green eyes.

She is soft in the way stones are soft

when tumbled by waves for a hundred years.

She is still as I run from room to room

content to listen to my bluster,

to watch the day unfold.

Her smile is gentle as dawn light

as she hums a wordless tune.

And as I make calls and check schedules,

she curls in the lap of my busyness

like an ash-colored cat,

her body warm and relaxed.

I love the old woman inside me,

gnarled as the branches of an old peach tree.

She is no stranger to how the world changes.

Every day I practice to be more like her,

slow as honey, quiet as moonlight,

familiar as the woman in the mirror.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Learning from the Painting on My Kitchen Wall

                  with thanks to Rob Schultheis

She is beautiful, the woman

on the wall with one long braid

and an owlet perched on her hand.

Not beautiful the way young girls dream,

but beautiful in the way old women dream.

which is to say she is deeply seen.

Sometimes I swear she watches me

as I slice the shiitake, as I chop the kale.

Her eyes are serious and always keen.

Her gaze makes me beautiful, too,

beautiful the way a morning is beautiful—

because it arrives every day as if

night cannot contain it; beautiful

the way the sun is beautiful, because

it needs no praise to share all its light.

By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I Meant to Do My Work Today

I meant to do my work today—

 But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,

And a butterfly flitted across the field,

 And all the leaves were calling me. 

And the wind went sighing over the land,

 Tossing the grasses to and fro,

And a rainbow held out its shining hand—

 So what could I do but laugh and go?

 by Richard Le Gallienne

When Feeling Lost

Sit alone by an open window

as rain-cooled wind tosses the trees,

scatters the white petals of viburnum

like your own useless thoughts

on soft mulch beneath. Hear how the air

carries the calls of newly fledged wrens

resting for now in a brush pile, 

afraid to fly. Let peace swoop down

into your life, perch in the empty branches

of your lungs with each newborn breath.

Let stillness take your hand as when

you were a child, and they said:

if you’re lost in the woods or confused 

by a crowd, it helps to stay in one place—

not moving, doing nothing so that 

you may be found again.

—James Crews

Look at the flowers, so faithful to what is earthly, 

to whom we lend fate from the very border of fate. 

And if they are sad about how they must wither and die,

perhaps it is our vocation to be their regret.

All Things want to fly. Only we are weighed down by desire,

caught in ourselves and enthralled with our heaviness.

—Rilke, from Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Stephen Mitchell 

Excerpt from ‘Coleman’s Bed’

See with every turning day,

how each season wants to make

a child of you again, wants you to become

a seeker after rainfall and birdsong,

watch how it weathers you to a testing

in the tried and true, tells you

with each falling leaf, to leave and slip away,

even from the branch that held you,

to be courageous, to go when you need to,

to be like that last word you’d want to say

before you leave the world.

…

David Whyte

Stars

Here in my head, language

keeps making its tiny noises.

How can I hope to be friends

with the hard white stars

whose flaring and hissing are not speech

but a pure radiance?

How can I hope to be friends

with the yawning spaces between them

where nothing, ever, is spoken?

Tonight, at the edge of the field,

I stood very still, and looked up,

and tried to be empty of words.

What joy was it, that almost found me?

What amiable peace?

Then it was over, the wind

roused up in the oak trees behind me

and I fell back easily.

Earth has a hundred thousand pure contraltos -

even the distant night bird

as it talks threat, as it talks love

over the cold, black fields.

Once, deep in the woods,

I found the white skull of a bear

and it was utterly silent -

and once a river otter, in a steel trap,

and it too was utterly silent.

What can we do

but keep on breathing in and out,

modest and willing, and in our places?

Listen, listen, I’m forever saying.

Listen to the river, to the hawk, to the hoof,

to the mockingbird, to the jack-in-the-pulpit

then I come up with a few words, like a gift.

Even as now.

Even as the darkness has remained the pure, deep darkness.

Even as the stars have twirled a little, while I stood here,

looking up,

one hot sentence after another. 

by Mary Oliver 

The New Life

This is how it is: we live again.

We rise up

from the deathbed in our grave-clothes

and we walk again

and we open

every window,

and we live again, though living

is the cost.

Yes, my friends, I have a thing to tell you:

My story

is like any, on this wild earth:

I rose up, I was broken,

and I rose again-

and although I closed my arms

around my body,

although I said that darkened harp

was ruined,

the nights have filled my life with brutal music

that has taught me that we're only here

to listen,

to hold each other awhile

and to listen,

and to carry each other

with the song of songs inside us

that is wiser, and is greater than our changes,

and that sings the way most wholly when we're lost.

-Joseph Fasano

Illumination

Always   there is something more to know

      what lingers      at the edge of thought

awaiting illumination       as in

      this secondhand book       full

of annotations     daring the margins in pencil

a light stroke as if

      the writer of these small replies

meant not to leave them    forever

      meant to erase

evidence of this private interaction

      Here     a passage underlined   there

a single star on the page

      as in a night sky       cloud-swept and hazy

where only the brightest appears

      a tiny spark     I follow

its coded message    try to read in it

the direction of the solitary mind

      that thought to pencil in

a jagged arrow   It 

      is a bolt of lightning

where it strikes

      I read the line over and over

as if I might discern

      the little fires set

the flames of an idea    licking the page

how knowledge burns      Beyond

       the exclamation point

its thin agreement     angle of surprise

there are questions   the word why

So much is left

      untold     Between

the printed words     and the self-conscious scrawl

      between   what is said and not

white space framing the story

      the way the past      unwritten

eludes us   So much

      is implication      the afterimage

of measured syntax     always there

      ghosting the margins that words

their black-lined authority

      do not cross     Even

as they rise up   to meet us

      the white page hovers beneath

silent    incendiary     waiting

 by Natasha Trethewey

From MONUMENT © 2018 Natasha Trethewey.

If failure is a great unlearning, meditation is a profound act of failure.

--Sarah Kokernot

Rowan's Ravine

It's half past eight,

the grass is catching its breath after a long day,

July's fierce sun is simmering down.

My legs half-soaked

under silk sheets of water,

wet sand kissing my toes,

soft pebbles tickling my feet.

A prairie breeze swifts by,

carrying me away to the

golden light at the edge

of the horizon as it sinks

beneath the blue.

Here,

I throw myself into

the arms of my favorite lake

and dissolve like a grain of salt.

I feel my heart floating, my skin

breathing, and for a few

fleeting moments, I let go

of all the weight off

my chest, my shoulders.

Here,

I ponder how the sand,

the water, the pebbles

never tire of all the feet,

the toes, the hearts

that have been here,

and will come here

a thousand sunsets from now,

just to feel alive

in the arms of

their favorite lake.

by Abdulsalam Abo Al Shamat

How to Survive

You don't have to know what your life is.

You don't have to wake today in the summer light

and dance your way into the kitchen.

Your tired heart doesn't have to make

a sound.

Listen. Just keep breathing

and the magic will happen.

When Lazarus

felt a hand upon his shoulder,

he didn't ask

if he deserved that mercy.

He stood. He took

the new life.

Friend, don't lie down forever.

Couldn't you also

be chosen?

Hasn't anyone told you?

The amount of agony

you carry

is only the vastness of your

love

waiting in the darkness to be found.

-Joseph Fasano

Reduced to Joy

I was sipping coffee on the way to work, 

the back road under a canopy of maples

turning orange.  In the dip of woods, a small

doe gently leaping.  I pulled over, for there

was no where else to go.  She paused as if

she knew I was watching.  A few orange

leaves fell around her like blessings no

one can seem to find.  I sipped some

coffee, completely at peace knowing

it wouldn’t last.  But that’s alright.

We never know when we will blossom

into what we’re supposed to be.  It might

be early,  It might be late.  It might be after

thirty years of failing at a misguided way.

Or the very first time we dare to shed

our mental skin and touch the world.

They say, if real enough, some see God

at the moment of their death.  But isn’t 

every fall and letting go a death?  Isn’t God

waiting right now in the chill air between the 

small doe’s hoof and those fallen leaves?

--Mark Nepo

The Long Boat

When his boat snapped loose

from its mooring, under

the screaking of the gulls,

he tried at first to wave

to his dear ones on shore,

but in the rolling fog

they had already lost their faces.

Too tired even to choose

between jumping and calling,

somehow he felt absolved and free

of his burdens, those mottoes

stamped on his name-tag:

conscience, ambition, and all

that caring.

He was content to lie down

with the family ghosts

in the slop of his cradle,

buffeted by the storm,

endlessly drifting.

Peace! Peace!

To be rocked by the Infinite!

As if it didn’t matter

which way was home;

as if he didn’t know

he loved the earth so much

he wanted to stay forever.

--Stanley Kunitz

Whispers

Whispers live inside the body,

in tiny open spaces like the gaps

between rocks out of which pours

the sweetest spring water you have

ever tasted. If only you’d kneel,

search, find the source, the whispers

would tell you which way to turn,

when to stop, and what you need

in words as ancient as the air

that flows out of caves. You could

make a whole map of your life

just by sitting still and listening

until the small voice becomes

like a song you’ve been singing

since long before you were born.

—James Crews

Breathing Room

There should be a room in every house 

or office building set aside strictly 

for breathing. No speaking allowed, 

no phones, clocks or other devices 

may be brought inside. Let the walls 

be empty and white, only potted ferns 

stirring near windows thrown open 

to a night-breeze bearing the scents 

of jasmine and lilac. You can count 

if you like until your heartbeat slows 

to its own natural pace, and your mind's 

as blank as a page in the back of a book.

If someone asks for directions, say

it’s the room at the end of the hall

with nothing else in it but a few plants

and all the air you can breathe.

—James Crews

I used to get so bored with being alive

Then one day I started to pretend that I was an angel 

who was sent to earth on a secret mission to absorb as much beauty as I could before being called back home

Then I started to pretend that everyone else was on the same mission

Then soon after, I stopped pretending

Now I see haloes everywhere

--John Roedel

A dozen angels

have started living in the holes in my heart

they have put up hammocks

and started planting roses

Last night they had a bonfire

they burned a box of my oldest regrets

and played drums until dawn

These angels have made themselves at home inside of my imperfect heart

in hopes that 

someday

I'll do the same

--John Roedel

The root of joy is gratefulness... It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful. 

--Br. David Steindl-Rast

Finding the Islands

Look for islands of brief relief,

open spaces in an otherwise crowded day

where you can come ashore for a while,

find safe harbor. Hear again the warble

of hidden birds, and isolate each inter-

woven strand of song, even if you can’t 

name the small bodies that sing them.

Click the airplane icon on your phone,

which means no messages will fly to you

with their bad news, landing in the branches

of your mind. Let your thoughts climb

to the sky like the vines of morning glory, 

and see the glint of a red pebble in the yard

still stippled with dew—the first wild

strawberry of the season, which you pluck

and eat right there in knee-high weeds, 

tiny feast of an instant before the rest 

of the day’s worries try to haul you 

back out to stormy seas.

—James Crews

Hope is radical openness for surprise—for the unimaginable. If that is the attitude with which we look, listen, and open all our senses, we enter into a meaningful relationship with whatever Life offers us at a given moment.

--Br. David Steindl-Rast

Penelope and Odysseus

Not the moment when he slays the suitors

in the palace, their wild cries thicker

than history. Not the moment

when he shows them all his great deeds,

the dark scars where they tied him

from the Sirens.

Not the moment someone touches him

in wonder

and feels Hector's death,

the flames of Troy, no land.

Not any of those moments. No.

Not those but the moment

he stands face to face with only her

and takes off the last of his armor

and she comes to him and touches his shoulder.

History is what happens

when we step out of the myths

and see the real mess standing before us.

Love is what happens after that.

-Joseph Fasano

The Last Song of the World

BOA Editions, November 2024

Coleman's Bed

Be taught now, among the trees and rocks.

How the discarded is woven into shelter.

Learn the way things hidden and unspoken,

slowly proclaim their voice in the world. 

Find that inward symmetry to all outward appearances.

Apprentice yourself to yourself.

Begin to welcome back all you sent away.

Be a new annunciation. 

Make yourself a door through which to be hospitable, 

even to the stranger in you. 

-- David Whyte

Summer Solstice

Peonies now bow low to the ground,

petals blown apart and dissolving

back into earth after each rainfall.

Meanwhile, the woodpecker knocks

on the oak door of this summer day,

demanding to be let in. Meanwhile,

the day lily blooms a month early,

orange velvet dusted with a trail

of pollen left by some hurried bee. 

And what will we leave behind here 

when we move on to the nectar 

of some other life? I just want to be

remembered as the pond recalls 

the shimmer of noon sun, still holds 

those particles inside its body 

as we leap from the dock at dusk.

—James Crews

Visible Light

You have bought the wrong light bulbs again–

too bright this time. This time you brought

the receipt but first you travel the well-lit aisle

of lighting fixtures. There’s a notice about a ban

on fluorescence which reminds you 

of Ben’s offer for a bioluminescence

paddle in the Salish Sea. You want that–

to glide out into a wash of light, stars and sea

bedazzled. But here in the West Seattle True Value,

you are confused by wattage, the question

of dimming and LED. How many hours 

of light should you expect? The time changed

this week and you hustle home to walk the dog

before nightfall, his vision dimming with age.

In the dark, he runs into lamp posts even as 

they cast a glow and as the neighbors’ televisions pulse

a spectrum of the evening news, the wars brightening

their big screens. You can see into their living

rooms–in a way you never do

during the long summer evenings when you wave

to one another, stop to chat about the weather.

Walking the dog in the gloaming, you feel

an unexpected tenderness for your neighbors, 

a desire to enter their darkened rooms and sit 

beside them watching the televised world.

Maybe you would be silent together.

Or perhaps, someone would turn on a light,

offer a glass of wine. You want that—

to be a reason for light.

-- Heidi Seaborn

Foolishness? No, It's Not

Sometimes I spend all day trying to count

the leaves on a single tree. To do this I

have to climb branch by branch and

write down the numbers in a little book.

So I suppose, from their point of view,

it’s reasonable that my friends say: what

foolishness! She’s got her head in the clouds

again.

But it’s not. Of course I have to give up,

but by then I’m half crazy with the wonder

of it – the abundance of the leaves, the

quietness of the branches, the hopelessness

of my effort. And I am in that delicious

and important place, roaring with laughter,

full of earth-praise.

-- Mary Oliver

Summer Solstice

This is the longest day,

so I guess it's all downhill from here.

The light gradually fades, but

so does the freshness of spring,

and now it's heat and dust until

the rains come, and before you know it,

winter. It seems like somehow

it should be different. But once again

we find ourselves in the world

where flowers fade and leaves

curl and brown and drop.

In spite of our efforts and intentions.

the earth persists in its awkward orbit,

displacing us from our rightful place in the sun.

The endless summers of childhood

live only in imagination, and the world

we proposed has once again failed

to come to pass. Still just this one life,

and the pages continually turning.

While we're on the subject,

our heroes could have been more

reliably virtuous, our parents more

understanding, our children more

devoted. Our bodies did not have

to be so frail, and who decided dogs

would only live a handful of years?

The whole design of it, every part,

leaves something to be desired.

Perhaps I will start by desiring

the roses, the orange-winged moths,

the damp morning grass, the crescent moon.

the succulent peaches, the litany

of transient gifts that persist in arriving.

through absolutely no fault of my own.

-Lynn Ungar 6-20-24

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you think. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, difficult as it is...You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”

~Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

 In a culture that pushes us to focus not on what we can give, but on what we can take, what we tend to take is everything for granted.

--Andrea Gibson

The Lovers

I was always afraid

of the next card

the psychic would turn

over for us—

                              Forgive me

for not knowing

how we were

every card in the deck.

--Timothy Liu

The Healers

You can hear them

moving among the ruins,

hear them by their silence in the noisy crowds.

You can see them, opening

their little bags, opening

the shrapneled hearts of strangers,

crouching before the body of a child

to lean down and whisper her a story,

a story in which what's happening

is not what's happening.

They mend; they stitch; they carry.

They work; they weep; they lose.

And when nothing can be done

among the rubble,

they kneel there as the fires fall around them

and they cradle the face

of the dying,

the life that is trying

to speak to them,

the life that whispers, listen,

and they do.

--Joseph Fasano

Grief Is Not Like the Squirrel in My Garden

that’s been eating all my pansies,

eating them to the roots

so that nothing of beauty remains.

We were able to lure the squirrel

with sunflower seeds and peanut butter

and trap it in a cage and take it far away.

Grief is more like the mice that eat the lure,

then slip through the cage, though the holes

are tiny, the door shut tight.

Grief stays. It takes what I offer and escapes.

But it hasn’t devoured all that is beautiful.

See how the pansies are blooming.

Like the mice, grief makes a nest

in my garden. We live here together.

I’ve put away the cage.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

The Pandemic Halo

The first time I saw it was above the head

of an old Lab. He was being walked, as usual, at 7 AM

by his young owner. Lots of lamppost stops, as usual.

There it was: faint at first, then hovering at a rakish tilt

above his silky head. I thought maybe it was a weird trick of light —

the day was bright — but then the next morning the nurse who parks

across the street, in the now almost empty lot, was trotting along

on her way to the clinic that is just below my window. She had it, too.

I don’t think she noticed it at all. She was moving quickly, late

to work. I imagine that’s what was on her mind, not holiness.

The third day a young man in a red cap with a backpack slouched past.

I had never seen him before. You could see he was seriously depressed,

looking down at the sidewalk. But there it was, firmly in place

above him, so he couldn’t see how beautiful

he really was. By now the pandemic halo is well recorded.

We almost take it for granted, what once seemed so amazing.

After the pandemic is over, they say, the halo effect will disappear.

They say we will return to life as usual. We won’t need it.

I have my doubts. I think we might need it more than ever.

I think we might be saying things like “Remember how incredible it was

during the pandemic, how everyone had a halo,

how grief and holiness were all we knew of the world

and the sight of a dog at a lamppost could bring us to tears?”

-- Jim Moore

From The Sun Magazine

To be alive: not just the carcass

But the spark.

That's crudely put, but…

If we're not supposed to dance,

Why all this music?

~Gregory Orr

Nostos

There was an apple tree in the yard-

this would have been

forty years ago-behind,

only meadow. Drifts

of crocus in the damp grass.

I stood at that window:

late April. Spring

flowers in the neighbor's yard.

How many times, really, did the tree

flower on my birthday,

the exact day, not

before, not after? Substitution

of the immutable

for the shifting, the evolving.

Substitution of the image

for relentless earth. What

do I know of this place,

the role of the tree for decades

taken by a bonsai, voices

rising from the tennis courts-

Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.

As one expects of a lyric poet.

We look at the world once, in childhood.

The rest is memory.

--Louise Glück

“The sun is perfect and you woke this morning. You have enough language in your mouth to be understood. You have a name, and someone wants to call it. Five fingers on your hand and someone wants to hold it. If we start there, every beautify thing that has existed, and will ever exist is possible. If we start there, everything for a moment is right in the world.”

--Warsan Shire

Meeting the Light Completely

Even the long-beloved

was once

an unrecognized stranger.

Just so,

the chipped lip

of a blue-glazed cup,

blown field

of a yellow curtain,

might also,

flooding and falling,

ruin your heart.

A table painted with roses.

An empty clothesline.

Each time,

the found world surprises—

that is its nature.

And then

what is said by all lovers:

"What fools we were, not to have seen."

--Jane Hirshfield

All that's required of you

Did you know

there will be poppies

again this year?

It's true. I've seen

their muted green fractals

stockpiling sunlight,

distilling it down

to its purest essence

before igniting into

slow motion fireworks.

In the end, isn't this all

that's required of you?

To drink in what you love,

to concentrate it

in the crucible of your body,

and, finally, to bloom.

--James A Pearson

A Litany for Survival

For those of us who live at the shoreline

standing upon the constant edges of decision

crucial and alone

for those of us who cannot indulge

the passing dreams of choice

who love in doorways coming and going

in the hours between dawns

looking inward and outward

at once before and after

seeking a now that can breed

futures

like bread in our children's mouths

so their dreams will not reflect

the death of ours;

We were never meant to survive.

For those of us

who were imprinted with fear

like a faint line in the center of our foreheads

learning to be afraid with our mother's milk

for by this weapon

this illusion of some safety to be found

the heavy-footed hoped to silence us

For all of us

this instant and this triumph

And when the sun rises we are afraid

it might not remain

when the sun sets we are afraid

it might not rise in the morning

when our stomachs are full we are afraid

of indigestion

when our stomachs are empty we are afraid

we may never eat again

when we are loved we are afraid

love will vanish

when we are alone we are afraid

love will never return

and when we speak we are afraid

our words will not be heard

nor welcomed

but when we are silent

we are still afraid

So it is better to speak

remembering

we were never meant to survive.

--Audre Lorde 

In a Friend’s Garden

“I want to be here to see

the poppies open,” my friend says,

telling me why she never travels

anymore in the middle of summer.

We each hold one of the heavy buds

whose petals already ache to break

free and spread, bursting red at the seams.

The mulch is warm beneath our feet,

and sunlight shimmers pink in the

shifting leaves of the Japanese maple.

I keep hearing her words—I want

to be here—and feel something new

leaning toward the light inside me too,

some seed of need just to be rooted

right where I am for each small pleasure,

every rippling wave of sorrow.

She wraps an arm around me, and we 

go inside for tea. There is nothing

to escape from, but our own desire

to escape at all.

—James Crews

Yes, We Can Talk

Having loved enough and lost enough,

I am no longer searching,

just opening.

No longer trying to make sense of pain,

but trying to be a soft and sturdy home

in which real things can land.

These are the irritations that rub into a pearl

So we can talk awhile

but then we must listen,

the way rocks listen tot he sea

And we can churn at all that goes wrong

but then we must lay all distractions down,

and water every living seed.

And yes, on nights like tonight

I too feel alone. but seldom do I

face it squarely enough

to see that it is a door

into the endless breath

that has no breather

into the surf that human shells

call god.

--Mark Nepo

An invitation to a brave space

Together we will create brave space

Because there is no such thing as a "safe space"

We exist in the real world

We all carry scars and we have all caused wounds.

In this space

We seek to turn down the volume of the outside world.

We amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere,

We call each other to more truth and love

We have the right to start somewhere and continue to grow.

We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know.

We will not be perfect.

It will not always be what we wish it to be

But

It will be our brave space together,

And

We will work on it side by side.

-by Micky Scottbey Jones

Messages from Everywhere

light up our backyard.

A bird that flew five thousand miles

is trilling six bright notes.

This bird flew over mountains and valleys

and tiny dolls and pencils

of children I will never see.

Because this bird is singing to me,

I belong to the wide wind,

the people far away who share

the air and the clouds.

Together we are looking up

into all we do not own

and we are listening.

--Naomi Shihab Nye

I forgive 

you 

~ to release me from you 

for so so 

long 

I’ve been holding my breath

waiting on an apology that will

not ever come 

~ it turns out that 

mercy for you 

is mercy for me 

I didn’t need a confession

  ~ just an admission that being 

a human is a messy venture 

and we can often get it all wrong 

but sometimes our 

tongues get 

knotted by pride

~ so I’m letting go for the both of us 

and the scar you left on me 

will be a reminder

of all the ones 

I’ve given others 

I forgive you

I forgive you

I forgive you

     and now I’m the breeze

and I hope you remember 

me fondly whenever you see the 

waves whip and whirl 

under a whistling windy sky 

~ john roedel 

You will never make anybody's life better

by agreeing to not be yourself.

Denying who you are will never

bring any other person true peace.

Though it may not seem so from the outside,

every soul in the universe is invested

in every other soul living inline with their truth.

Therefore, anyone asking you

to live in opposition to your essence,

to who you really are,

is not speaking from their soul.

They are speaking from their

learned biases, hatreds, and fears.

So, to be you is not only to be the guardian

of your own spirit, but also to be the guardian

of the spirits of those who mistakenly think

their lives would be better if you would

agree to be someone other than you are.

--Andrea Gibson

No Wrong Way

Pay attention to the interruptions, the wrong turns, 

the plans gone awry. 

Bow to the rude waiter, the overdue bill, 

All of the ways this world disappoints you.

This is the marrow of the practice, 

the heartwood: knowing how to love an imperfect life.

Still your mind, slow your breath. 

And witness the messy miracle of this moment 

revealing itself to you 

now

            and now

                                    and now.

--Stephen Pradarelli  August 11, 2023