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

Briefcases

Fifteen years ago I found my father's

    in the family attic, so used

       the shoemaker had to

repair it, and I kept it like love

until it couldn't be kept anymore.

    Then my father-in-law died

       and I got his, almost

identical, just the wrong initials

embossed in gold. It's forty years old,

    falling apart, soon

       there'll be nothing

that smells of father-love and that difficulty

of living with fathers, but I'd prefer

    a paper bag to those

       new briefcases

made for men living fast-forward

or those attaché cases that match

    your raincoat and spring open

       like a salute

and a click of heels. I'm going

to put an ad in the paper, "Wanted:

    Old briefcase, accordion style,"

       and I won't care

whose father it belonged to

if it's brown and the divider keeps

    things on their proper side.

       Like an adoption

it's sure to feel natural before long—

a son without a father, but with this

    one briefcase carrying

       a replica

comfortably into the future,

something for an empty hand, sentimental

    the way keeping is

       sentimental, for keep-

sake, with clarity and without tears.

-- Stephen Dunn

From New and Selected Poems 1974-1994

Better

We'll meet, yes - of course we will.

But not tomorrow or the week after.

Because work is hectic, or the kids unwell

or if we're honest, we're too tired or too lazy.

And haven't we all the time in the world?

Until we hadn't.

My last memory of you is singing

in the Hibernia Bar to an unruly crowd.

And above the clamour of barroom chatter

you dedicated every song to your audience of one,

who left before the set's closure

because there'd always be another.

And I wonder what right have I to mourn

when others did so much better?

Maintained the meetups, the texts, the calls.

Failed to let time slip by like we did.

Waiting for a better hour, a better day.

But grief does not discriminate.

--Tanya Farrelly

ME: When are things going to get easier? 

OLD WOMAN: They already are. 

ME: Doesn’t feel like it. I keep waiting for Creator to step in. 

OLD WOMAN: She already has. She always will. Keep faith burning in your heart. 

ME: I have. I’ve been waiting for things to change. 

OLD WOMAN: Faith isn’t about waiting for things to change. Faith is the constant effort to keep pushing through. 

ME: What’s on the other side? 

OLD WOMAN: You. 

― Richard Wagamese, Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations

All that we are is story. From the moment we are born to the time we continue on our spirit journey, we are involved in the creation of the story of our time here. It is what we arrive with. It is all we leave behind. We are not the things we accumulate. We are not the things we deem important. We are story. All of us. What comes to matter then is the creation of the best possible story we can while we’re here; you, me, us, together. When we can do that and we take the time to share those stories with each other, we get bigger inside, we see each other, we recognize our kinship – we change the world, one story at a time. 

― Richard Wagamese 

I am constantly surrounded by noise: TV, texts, the internet, music, meaningless small talk, my thinking. All of it blocks my consciousness, my ability to her the ME that exists beneath the cacophony. I am my consciousness, my awareness of my circumstance, my presence in every moment. So I cultivate silence every morning. I sit in it, bask in it, wrap it around myself, and hear and feel me. Then, wherever the day takes me, the people I meet are the beneficiaries of my having taken that time - they get the real me, not someone shaped and altered by the noise around me. Silence is the stuff of life.

― Richard Wagamese, Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations

Me: What if we're wrong?

Old Woman: Wrong about what?

Me: All this ceremony, prayer, meditation. What if, at the end of it, all there is is nothing?

Old Woman: Then we still come out better people.

Me: How?

Old Woman: Can you think of a better way to live than in gratitude? Can you think of a better way to be than to be kind, loving, compassionate, respectful, courageous, truthful, and forgiving? Even if we're wrong, can you think of a better way to breathe than through all that?

...

I couldn't. I can't. I continue.

― Richard Wagamese, Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations

If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.

--Robin Wall Kimmerer

"come to your senses"

isn't about using your brain

(or at least it shouldn't be)

it is an instruction to come into the current moment

imagine if we stopped

a few times each day

and truly came to our senses

maybe for a moment

all of our collective narratives

would pause

and we would simply

hear the sound of rain

smell the lilacs blooming

taste sweetness of an orange

see the colours of a rainbow

feel the warmth of a human hand

everybody, come to your senses

--daniel baylis

Winter, Spring

Winter is black and beige down here

from drought. Suddenly in March

there’s a good rain and in a couple

of weeks we are enveloped in green.

Green everywhere in the mesquites, oaks,

cottonwoods, the bowers of thick

willow bushes the warblers love

for reasons of food or the branches,

the tiny aphids they eat with relish.

Each year it is a surprise

that the world can turn green again.

It is the grandest surprise in life,

the birds coming back from the south to my open

arms, which they fly past, aiming at the feeders.

by Jim Harrison

from Dead Man’s Float

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,

stepping gently, looking two times north and south,

because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.

No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo

but he’s not marked.

Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,

HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.

He hears the hum of a boy’s dream

deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able

to live in this world

if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing

with one another.

The road will only be wide.

The rain will never stop falling.

--Naomi Shihab Nye

From Red Suitcase

People don't live on [Earth]. ... Oh, [it] may be the place where the body eats, but they live elsewhere, in worlds of their own which orbit... the centre of their heads. 

-- The Last Continent, Terry Pratchett

when the moon passes by

and blocks out the sun

the world will see

but only for a moment

what grieving can feel like.

darkness.

and no one knowing

how to look at you.

sara rian

Words for the Road

Know, now, there is no one

who can guide you.

Know there will be nothing

to return to.

Know, now, that the trial

will be long.

Come, then. You were called to this,

this wild life.

Go in

and lie down in the darkness.

Hear them now, the wild flocks

in the starlight,

thrashing in the vastness of their passing?

If you cannot have a home, become a song.

-Joseph Fasano

If we shut our hearts to the pain of the world our celebrations become superficial. If we let that pain overwhelm our hope, we are lost in the dark. Tears in which pain and joy flow together do justice to life in its fullness.

--Brother David Steindl-Rast

The more you think you need to accumulate, the bigger fence you need to build around yourself and the fewer people you will trust and let into your life. It’s the inverse of what it means to live in true peace and security, which only comes in the context of relationship with people you can trust.

--Gareth Higgins

how do you create community?

i do not know

a hundred ways

a thousand ways

but

how do you kill community?

I can tell you one

sure to do the job.

be self-sufficient.

always have enough

always have it together

always be a giver

always have all the tools you need

never need to borrow a sewing needle

never need a cup of sugar

never tell anyone you're breaking down

never need anyone.

your pride

your insistence on competency

your unwillingness to be a burden

on us

when it is the proper time for you to collapse

may be the end of us all.

knowing what time it truly is

or knowing how to know the time at all

you

needing our help

being unable to continue without it

you

not knowing 

how to do everything

creates the occasion

for the village to reconstitute itself

and know itself again

--Tad Hargrave

Welcome Home

I understand:

for years, perhaps, you have lived

underground. Handling only

darkness, you have not become

accustomed to it. You want to get out.

One day you find an object which

may be a chair; at any rate,

a surface. Standing on

this dark thing, you reach up.

Here at the top the smell

is oppressive, sweet. You almost

fall. But you push, and the top begins

to crack. Plaster, or something, falls

around you. Emerging, you know

the smell: cake. Noise, lights:

you are outside, standing giddily on the top,

swathed in ribbons. And there

are all your friends,

dressed up, half drunk. The applause

is enormous. It is a party

for you. One of the crowd, the drunkest

and happiest, shrilling through a megaphone

“Welcome home,”

is me.

-- Everette Maddox

From The Paris Review no. 58 (Summer 1974)

Today I asked my body what she needed,

Which is a big deal

Considering my journey of

Not Really Asking That Much.

I thought she might need more water.

Or protein.

Or greens.

Or yoga.

Or supplements.

Or movement.

But as I stood in the shower

Reflecting on her stretch marks,

Her roundness where I would like flatness,

Her softness where I would like firmness,

All those conditioned wishes

That form a bundle of

Never-Quite-Right-Ness,

She whispered very gently:

Could you just love me like this?

{Hollie Holden, June 2016} https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=990659447717928&set=a.388682557915623 

Everyone is babbling about what happens after death

Everyone is babbling about what happens after death.

Superstitious villagers insist we become

peculiar wandering spirits,

while simple religious hearts assume our goal

to be sweet heavenly existence.

Lovers long to play

in eternal companionship with Divinity,

while mystics strive

to merge completely with Divine Reality.

Scriptures of radical wisdom maintain

that the apparent soul is like space within a jar.

When death shatters our earthen vessel,

only the open space of awareness remains.

Who is there to unify with whom?

This intoxicated poet who belongs to Goddess Kali

knows all opinion to be void of substance.

Mother's mystery eludes

every earnest practitioner or philosopher

who assumes negative or positive energy

to be substantial or real.

This mirror mind and rainbow body

are her marvelous play

through the transparent medium of her elements.

After death, her dancing elements flow on,

and simply Mother remains.

The singer of this liberating song

laughs loud and long:

"We will be in the end

what we were in the beginning,

clear bubbles forming and dissolving

in the stream of timeless Mother Wisdom."

--Ramprasad Sen

Paradox of Noise

It is a paradox that we encounter so much internal

noise when we first try to sit in silence.

It is a paradox that experiencing pain releases pain.

It is a paradox that keeping still can lead us

so fully into life and being.

Our minds do not like paradoxes. We want things

To be clear, so we can maintain our illusions of safety.

Certainty breeds tremendous smugness.

We each possess a deeper level of being, however,

which loves paradox. It knows that summer is already

Growing like a seed in the depth of winter. It knows

that the moment we are born, we begin to die.

It knows that all of life shimmers, in shades of

becoming-that shadow and light are always together,

the visible mingled with the invisible.

When we sit in stillness we are profoundly active.

Keeping silent, we hear the roar of existence.

Through our willingness to be the one we are,

We become one with everything.

--Gunilla Norris

everybody wants to hear that

everything is going to be alright

here is an alternative version:

many things are going to be alright

but also some things will not be alright

some things will get broken

and then we will fix them

but other things will be so broken

that we can't fix them

and grief will be inevitable

and it will continue like this

indefinitely

so rest well

and eat good food

and drink water

because you will need stamina

I will see you out there

thank you and goodnight

--daniel baylis

Aubade

O, this morning, not a cloud in the sky, and coffee, black,

the way I like it.  I have been watching a phoebe, dark hood

and wagtail bobbing, as he flits back and forth from the beauty

bush to the eave of the shed, just yards from this red Adirondack

chair where I’m sitting, breathing the day through my skin.

It rained last night, and the chair’s damp slats are cool

on my back; there’s a scree of frogs in the swamp, a creek

of sound in the background, a river of desire: Here I am. Find me. 

Felicitous. That’s the only word to describe this. The sun pours

warm honey from its great glass jar, no matter how little we deserve it.

Some of us drag a heavy load through the day, a sack of should of’s,

or push a bushel of sorrow up a hill. But there’s the phoebe coming

back with his bit of straw or broken twig. He has a job to do,

and he sticks with it. And then he opens his beak and sings.

--Barbara Crooker

Love and the Deli Counter

At my Stop & Shop the ladies at the deli counter

give us free slices of meat so we can talk about

how thin we want it. Everyone wants it thinner

but me. A woman asks for four slices shaved

ham. She can have anything she wants. I want

two pounds of turkey, sliced thick. I never

got the thin slice thing; it's hard to pick up. It tears.

It takes the ladies longer to cut it up. Here's what

I hate: inconveniencing ladies. One of the deli ladies

tells me the provolone piccante smells like feet and I

say Way to sell it! I make her coworker laugh,

which is all I want from a trip to the Stop & Shop.

She and I keep looking at each other, nodding as if

we are listening seriously while foot-taste cheese

lady makes her case; the foot taste is a good thing!

Then she wants to talk about not wearing socks

as a kid, getting in trouble with her mom. I love

them both. I am eating a free slice of turkey, thanking

them, telling another lady in the store I love the blue

and yellow grosgrain ribbon down her jeans' seams,

telling another I love your boots. There are no men

in the store. Saturday afternoon; we stroll the aisles,

kind to each other. Some days Boston is just a bunch

of women calling out to each other I LOVE YOUR DRESS!

We eat free turkey, help each other find the sour cream.

The checkout girl's name tag says Love. Love tells me

her mom called her love so much she just changed it.

I love it, love my Stop & Shop, her name, love

when people, strangers, call me love or lovie. At the gym

Christine says Hello, love until she learns my name;

a shame. At the deli counter, a woman dries her hands,

smiles at me, says and what can I get you, my love?

-- Jill McDonough

From AMERICAN TREASURE 2022 Jill McDonough.

Words to Say When Walking Out the Door

Yes, you will be damaged.

You will fail sometimes

and wildly.

Grief may snag its antlers

in your branches

before it leaves you,

before it finds its way.

Life, my one life,

can you hear me?

Someone in the sleep they call their waking

will crush your wonder,

and you will crush their wonder.

Bring your wonder; bring it anyway.

--Joseph Fasano

you don't

criticise the moon

for not shining

the same each night

you don't

look up at it and say

you're not trying hard enough

because the moon

doesn't have to be

full and bright

every night to be loved

and neither do you.

--ida banks

No umbrella, getting soaked,

I’ll just use the rain as my raincoat.

--Daito Kokushi

Too lazy to be ambitious,

I let the world take care of itself.

Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;

a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.

Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?

Listening to the night rain on my roof,

I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

~Ryokan

Percy (2002-2009)

This -- I said to Percy when I had left

our bed and gone

out into the living room couch where

he found me apparently doing nothing -- this

is called thinking.

It's something people do,

not being entirely children of the earth,

like a dog or a tree or a flower.

His eyes questioned such an activity.

"Well, okay," he said. "If you say so. Whatever

it is. Actually

I like kissing better."

And next to me,

tucked down his curly head

and, sweet as a flower, slept.

--Mary Oliver from  "Dog Songs"

I have just said

I have just said

something

ridiculous to you

and in response,

your glorious laughter.

These are the days

the sun

is swimming back

to the east

and the light on the water

gleams

as never, it seems, before.

I can't remember

every spring,

I can't remember

everything-

so many years!

Are the morning kisses

the sweetest

or the evenings

or the inbetweens?

All I know

is that "thank you" should appear

somewhere.

So, just in case

I can't find

the perfect place-

"Thank you, thank you."

--Mary Oliver

Abhirupananda ~ Delighting in Beauty

Haven't you spent enough time

comparing your hair

and your clothes

and your face

to the hair

and the faces

and the clothes

of those around you?

See the body for what it is.

Real beauty is in 

the clear open light 

of the nonjudgmental heart.

--Matty Weingast

Sangha ~ Community

When I left the only home I'd ever known,

I thought I'd left everything behind.

But I was still carrying

all the years

of running

back and forth

and around in circles

after this or that.

Just sitting still, 

those circles

have broken apart

and been carried away

by this simple wind

blowing in

and out.

All your old thoughts

like snow

falling

on

warm

ground.

Just sit back and watch.

--Matty Weingast

Breaking Ground

Living in the violence of spring-

living in a time

where shells are cracking

and shapes alter,

who can afford to risk

forgetting the danger,

forgetting the moment

the crocus bulb breaks ground,

never knowing whether

snow or sun or ice

await in warm or jagged welcome.

There is no safety in

this restless season.

Even the sheltering ground

rejects its own,

thrusting the life it held

into the untrustworthy

and insufficient care

of air and weather.

There are no choices here-

no careful path or

reasoned way,

no holding in reserve for

some more settled,

more propitious time,

but only the unconsidered

faith of the crocus

whose saffron petals echo

or demand the sun.

-Lynn Ungar

With Astonishing Tenderness

When, in the middle of the night, 

you wake with the certainty you’ve

done it all wrong, when you wake

and see clearly all the places you’ve failed,

in that moment, when dreams will not return, 

this is the chance for your softest voice—

the one you reserve for those you love most—

to say to you quietly, oh sweetheart, 

this is not yet the end of the story. 

Sleep will not come, but somehow, 

in that wide awake moment there is peace—

the kind of peace that does not need

everything to be right before it arrives. 

The peace that comes from not fighting 

what is real. The peace that rises

in the dark on its sure dark wings 

to meet you exactly as you are.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Trust

It's like so many other things in life

to which you must say no or yes.

So you take your car to the new mechanic.

Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

The package left with the disreputable-looking

clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,

the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—

all show up at their intended destinations.

The theft that could have happened doesn't.

Wind finally gets where it was going

through the snowy trees, and the river, even

when frozen, arrives at the right place.

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life

is delivered, even though you can't read the address.

-- Thomas R. Smith

From Waking before Dawn

Sticks and stones are hard on bones.

Aimed with angry art,

Words can sting like anything.

But silence breaks the heart.

--Phyllis McGinley

The Habit of Perfection

Elected Silence, sing to me

And beat upon my whorlèd ear,

Pipe me to pastures still and be

The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:

It is the shut, the curfew sent

From there where all surrenders come

Which only make you eloquent.

Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark

And find the uncreated light:

This ruck and reel which you remark

Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,

Desire not to be rinsed with wine:

The can must be so sweet, the crust

So fresh that come in fasts divine!

Nostrils, our careless breath that spend

Upon the stir and keep of pride,

What relish shall the censers send

Along the sanctuary side!

O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet

That want the yield of plushy sward,

But you shall walk the golden street

And you unhouse and house the Lord.

And, Poverty, be thou the bride

And now the marriage feast begun,

And lily-coloured clothes provide

Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins

Originally written in 1866, a fragment from “The Habit of Perfection” was first published in Robert Seymour Bridges’s anthology The Spirit of Man: An Anthology in English & French from the Philosophers & Poets (Longmans Green & Co., 1916). In “Food Metaphors in Gerard Manley Hopkins,” published in Victorian Poetry, vol. 55, no. 3 (Fall 2017), Mariaconcetta Costantini, professor of English at D’Annunzio University of Chieti–Pescara, Italy, writes, “Another struggle against the lure of the senses, including taste, is dramatized in ‘The Habit of Perfection.’ Like other lyrics of Hopkins’s university years, this poem in quatrains exalts the human capacity for renouncing physical pleasures in favor of spiritual ones [. . .]. [T]he poet turns the body and its perceptive organs into vehicles for achieving a condition of bliss that entails the final rejection of corporeality. Such a strategy is evident at the beginning of each quatrain, which opens with a direct reference to man’s sensual powers of perception / communication: hearing, speaking, seeing, tasting, smelling and touching. Stanza four, in particular, focuses on the pleasures of the palate—‘the hutch of tasty lust’—which are visibly evoked before the invitation to transcend them. Despite the use of negation, the speaker gives flesh to the palate’s ‘desire . . . to be rinsed with wine,’ while the other references to drinks and aliments (‘The can . . . so sweet, the crust / So fresh’) attach physical valences to the ‘fasts divine.’”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins was an English poet and Jesuit priest during the nineteenth century. Known for his innovations in prosody, most notably his “sprung rhythm,” the vast majority of his work was published posthumously. He died on June 8, 1889.

By Then

By then I was leaving,

and the deer in the meadow had stopped 

paying me their mind. I was alone

as I’d always been

but twice as deep for knowing it

now. Sometimes it’s OK

you have to wander a strange house

covered only by a blanket,

itchy wool rubbing against your naked ass

and shoulders—

the coarse gray fire station blanket

given me as a child. I didn’t know

whether this was one of those

times; I mean, 

I didn’t know if I was “OK.”

Shame thinks of us

in friendly terms—it sees how we are,

on the blink—it wants only

to do us the kindness

of anchoring us to the world it makes us

feel unworthy of.

I kept thinking a good cry

will take care of everything

wrong—getting 

day by day

skinnier but filled

somehow despite it all

to bursting.

Do me a favor,

I wanted to ask shame,

hold me, why don’t you?

Because at heart

it’s just that simple 

maybe. I wanted to be

held, that’s all. When I say

the word “world”

I mean love of course.

When I say “then”

I mean now. Always.

-- David Rivard

From SOME OF YOU WILL KNOW © 2022 David Rivard published by Arrowsmith Press.

Grounded

The stories all forget that the Buddha

was just a man sitting beneath a tree

in the middle of the night, weathering

the storm of his thoughts and fears, 

each one demanding: Who do you think 

you are? His simple answer: to reach 

down and touch the earth, feel the wet 

hair of the grasses, the smooth skin

of sandy soil beneath his hand. And so 

I say to myself: Ground yourself here. 

Pick up a single dead oak leaf, if that’s 

all you can do, and turn it this way 

and that, so the leathery surface gleams 

in thin winter light, so that the earth,

which you are, can welcome you back.

—James Crews

The Medicine of Surrender

comes with no spoonful of sugar.

No promises, no back up plans,

no returns, no insurance.

The medicine of surrender

never tastes the way you expect,

never tastes the same next time,

seldom has the hoped for effect.

And if there were some part of you

that thought it might not be affected,

that thought it might hold back,

that part is most likely the first part

to be flooded with the relentless

truth of what is. Oh surrender.

The surest medicine that exists.

There are infinite side effects.

Wonder. Freedom. Rawness.

It’s like opening the dictionary

to the word heaven. Or obliteration.

And knowing it’s the same thing.

It’s like playing spin the bottle with life,

and you French kiss whatever you get.

It’s the only remedy that can help you

be whole. The only real medicine there is.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Blessing of Breathing

That the first breath

will come without fear.

That the second breath

will come without pain.

The third breath:

that it will come without despair.

And the fourth,

without anxiety.

That the fifth breath

will come with no bitterness.

That the sixth breath

will come for joy.

Breath seven:

that it will come for love.

May the eighth breath

come for freedom.

And the ninth,

for delight.

When the tenth breath comes,

may it be for us

to breathe together,

and the next,

and the next,

until our breathing

is as one,

until our breathing

is no more.

—Jan Richardson

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

 "My son has gotten to be fourteen with no encouragement from me. I believe the perfect age for any son is a certain week in his eleventh year when he balances briefly at the triangular intersection of self-sufficiency, unconditional love, and eagerness to please." 

--Wild Life, by Molly Gloss.

The more I love my life, the more I understand the meaning of it

On Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, 

raindrops are much bigger 

than they are on earth, and fall 

so slowly you could look up, 

spot one coming, and move

out of the way. 

Imagine seeing that for the first time– 

rain inching down from the sky, 

how wide your eyes would be 

as you followed each dreaming drop 

to the ground, how you’d be 

absolutely hypnotized. 

That’s how I feel looking at this world 

of ours now, knowing our time here

is never promised—I heal 

the disease of being accustomed 

to beauty. I see the miracle 

of the Aspen tree with its golden leaves 

like a thousand yellow lights 

begging me to slow down. 

I laugh each time someone calls me 

an “an old soul.” I am not an old soul. 

Please life, let the astonishment

on my face make it clear that this

is my first time here, marveling

at the steam rising from a cup 

of lavender tea, the patch of sun 

that traveled 90 million miles 

to warm the hardwood floor 

where my oldest puppy dreams, 

my window thrown open 

to my neighbor’s violin, 

every goosebump on my skin, 

a coin in god’s tip jar.

--Andrea Gibson

The Only Prayer

Because there was nothing else to do,

and the news frightened me as usual,

I took a walk on my favorite trail

in the woods, and because the snow

began to melt as soon as it fell,

everything was wet—the lichen a bright

lime-green on the bark of each fallen tree,

the leaves beneath my feet deliciously

soft as they squelched and sank back

into the arms of the earth that shaped them. 

I picked up one of the limp, gold-

toned beech leaves, pressed it to my chest 

then left my despair on a mossy trunk,

like placing a lit candle on an altar

and saying the only prayer that matters:

I'm here, I’m here, I’m here.

—James Crews

Skiing into the Storm

I love the days when it feels right

not to turn from the storm

but to move deeper in,

when the body doesn’t shy

from the cold and wind,

when the smile arrives

as the storm magnifies

and a whoop rises from the lungs

like a fierce and hardy bird.

What is it in us that feels more alive

in these moments? 

Is it the part that rhymes

with instability,

the untamable part

that knows chaos, too,

is holy? And the gusts

swirl and the chill bites

and the smile

incredibly widens.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Rural Delivery

I never thought we’d end up

Living this far north, love.

Cold blue heaven over our heads,

Quarter moon like chalk on a slate.

This week it’s the art of subtraction

And further erasure that we study.

O the many blanks to ponder

Before the night overtakes us once more

On this lonely stretch of road

Unplowed since this morning;

Mittens raised against the sudden

Blinding gust of wind and snow,

But the mailbox empty. I had to stick

My bare hand all the way in

To make sure this is where we live.

The wonder of it! We retraced our steps

Homeward lit by the same fuel

As the snow glinting in the gloom

Of the early nightfall.

-- Charles Simic

From Selected Poems: 1963-1983.

I Try to Describe the Baby Things

We discover physics like we write poetry – 

marveling at a mystery we already know 

but need the language to explain.

There are so many days I struggle

with words— with focus.

My mind holds awe

like a wasp in a butterfly net.

I fall back on cliches.

I say I feel blessed to be his mother,

even though his hand is on my cheek.

Carried for nine months,

held while crying, while both crying,

and now a choice, a hand, he is trying to tell me—

a new feeling, like a spring robin in the pine trees.

Our capacity for love is always growing 

and so I wonder if that is why the universe expands –

it is filling with the awe we feel for it.

--Leslie J. Anderson

The Lifeline

Here is what I know: when 

that bell tolls again, I 

need to go and make something,

anything: a poem, a pie, a terrible

scarf with my terrible knitting, I 

need to write a letter, remind myself

of any little lifeline around me.

When death sounds, I forget most

of what I learnt before. I go below. 

I compare my echoes with other people’s 

happiness. I carve that hole in my own 

chest again, pull out all my organs once

again, wonder if they’ll ever work again

stuff them back again. Begin. Again.

-- Pádraig Ó Tuama

A Few Words On The Soul

We have a soul at times.

No one’s got it non-stop,

for keeps.

Day after day,

year after year

may pass without it.

Sometimes

it will settle for awhile

only in childhood’s fears and raptures.

Sometimes only in astonishment

that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand

in uphill tasks,

like moving furniture,

or lifting luggage,

or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out

whenever meat needs chopping

or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations

it participates in one,

if even that,

since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,

it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:

it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,

our hustling for a dubious advantage

and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow

aren’t two different feelings for it.

It attends us

only when the two are joined.

We can count on it

when we’re sure of nothing

and curious about everything.

Among the material objects

it favors clocks with pendulums

and mirrors, which keep on working

even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from

or when it’s taking off again,

though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it

but apparently

it needs us

for some reason too.

-- Wislawa Szymborska

 The crucial work of social peace (negotiating peace, organizing peace, facilitating peace, instituting peace) only maintains a superficial and tenuous harmony if there is no on-the-ground commitment to interior peace, the kind that changes lives from the inside out. Countless civil disobedience movements have demonstrated the power of non-violent action when it is steeped in spiritual intention and grounded in a peace that no oppressor can give or take away.

Br. Keith Nelson

Window

Hope makes itself every day

springs up from the tiniest places

No one gives it to us

we just notice it

quiet in the small moment

The 2-year-old 

"kissing the window" he said

because someone he loved

was out there

--Naomi Shihab Nye

How to Survive

Even the will will return again.

Even the love, the wonder.

Darken. The heart

can love this.

And the new moon changing in the maples.

And the grief like black oars in the rafters.

And the branches that have let go

of everything, saying

wait, just stay

in your changes;

you have hated

your one life 

long enough.

Try something wondrous.

Trust it.

--Joseph Fasano

My love

if we just put down our maps for a bit

and walk straight into the 

backcountry of our hearts

We will both be amazed by

what wonders 

we wander into.

--john roedel

Urgent Message to a Friend in Pain

I have to tell you

a little thing about living

(I know, I know, but hear me),

a little thing I've carried

in the dark:

Remember when you saw the stars of childhood,

when you knelt alone and thought

that they were there for you,

lamps that something held

to prove your beauty?

They are they are they are they

are they are.

--Joseph Fasano

 Make the ordinary come alive. The extraordinary will take care of itself

--William Martin

On the Train to Hospice Care

If every earthly body earns its trip into the dark,

then I would like to be there with you

when you turn your face away from the light

and say what you will say to the darkness--

perhaps prepared, perhaps words you never thought 

you would say--and I would like to be the one

leaning down and whispering into your ear,

into the last scrap of you that can hear me,

words you never heard in this life, from yourself or 

from the wind or from another, I would like to say

you are doing fine, you are doing this perfectly.

--Joseph Fasano

Questions for the New Year

Why not believe in magic?

Can I soften? Can I soften some more?

Does truth exist? How are stones alive?

What if I never learn

what happens when we die?

What's the next nice thing 

I can do for someone else?

What's for breakfast? What's at stake?

When I dream of my beloveds, is it them?

Where am I in my own way?

How might I be more river, less dam?

Which comes first, forgiveness or the peace?

Which comes last, unknowing or the known?

What is love? What is now? What is home?

What is it in us that knows how to wonder?

What is it in us that knows how to grow?

Who are we really? What is courage?

What's worth it? What's asked of me now?

Should I be in this moment a blade or a bloom?

What's the nature of higher ground?

Can I ask without longing for answers?

Can I feel I am one with it all?

How does life live through me?

Can I be in service to that?

What do I believe I can't give away?

What if I say nothing and listen?

Will I choose awe today?

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Jenta: Conqueror

I was forever getting lost

until one day the Buddha told me

To walk this Path,

you will need seven friends –

Mindfulness, curiosity,

courage, joy,

calm, stillness,

and perspective.

For many years, these friends and I have travelled together.

Sometimes wandering in circles.

Sometimes taking the long way around.

There were days when I thought I couldn’t go on.

There were days when I thought I was finally beaten.

It’s scary to give all of yourself to just one thing.

What if you don’t make it?

Oh my heart.

You don’t have to go it alone.

Train yourself 

to train 

just 

a little 

more gently.

--Matty Weingast, "The first free women"

Mittakali - Friend of the dark

I was always smart.

If the Path was good,

I figured it would make me 

even smarter.

One night while meditating,

I watched my thoughts

piling themselves up 

all around me.

My mind built a house

out of all those thoughts -- 

then filled that house.

Soon it was a whole city.

A whole world.

Oh, my beautiful, beautiful thoughts.

Who will look after you after I'm gone?

I swear I could weep.

I could weep for all of you.

My sisters. 

Do you really want to be free?

Are you ready to leave behind

all your precious little houses--

and make your home everywhere?

It's not as hard as you might think.

First stand up.

Then walk out the door.

--Matty Weingast, The First Free Women

Future Home of the Living God

We are so brief.

A one-day dandelion.

A seedpod skittering across the ice.

We are a feather falling from the wing of a bird.

I don't know why it is given to us to be so

mortal and to feel so much.

It is a cruel trick, and glorious.

 

--Louise Erdrich 

Since I’m not sure of the address to which to send my gratitude, I put it out there in everything I do.

--Michael J. Fox

Awe

It’s a shiver that climbs the trellis

of the spine, each tingle a bright white

morning glory breaking into blossom

beneath the skin. It can happen anywhere,

anytime, even finding this sleeve of ice

worn by a branch all morning, now fallen

on a bed of snow. You can choose to pause,

pick it up, hold the cold thing in your hand

or not. Few tell us that wonder and awe

are decisions we make daily, hourly,

minute by minute in the tiny offices

of the heart—tilting the head to look up

at every tree turned into a chandelier

by light striking ice in just the right way.

--James Crews

A House Called Tomorrow

You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen—

You are a hundred wild centuries

And fifteen, bringing with you

In every breath and in every step

Everyone who has come before you,

All the yous that you have been,

The mothers of your mother,

The fathers of your father.

If someone in your family tree was trouble,

A hundred were not:

The bad do not win—not finally,

No matter how loud they are.

We simply would not be here

If that were so.

You are made, fundamentally, from the good.

With this knowledge, you never march alone.

You are the breaking news of the century.

You are the good who has come forward

Through it all, even if so many days

Feel otherwise.  But think:

When you as a child learned to speak,

It’s not that you didn’t know words—

It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,

And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.

From those centuries we human beings bring with us

The simple solutions and songs,

The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies

All in service to a simple idea:

That we can make a house called tomorrow.

What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day,

Is ourselves.  And that’s all we need

To start.  That’s everything we require to keep going.

Look back only for as long as you must,

Then go forward into the history you will make.

Be good, then better.  Write books.  Cure disease.

Make us proud.  Make yourself proud.

And those who came before you?  When you hear thunder,

Hear it as their applause.

--Alberto Ríos

January

Of course it's to be expected:

the dim light and early dark

and the endless days of rain.

And if the week of brutal cold 

wasn't what you signed up for,

well, it's what you got,

so might as well make the best of it.

Other people got blizzards,

and friends have flooded basements

or days without power

or lost everything to wind-whipped 

wildfire. Of course, there's nothing

less comforting than the notion

that others have it worse.

Misery doesn't love company, 

it just spreads like an oil slick

across the dull land, and we

have moved on from terror

to a cranky ennui. But one day

last week the clouds lifted,

and there was the mountain, shining

in all its snow-clad glory.

My breath caught to remember

that what I see is not 

the sum of what is there.

--Lynn Ungar

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.

He went flying down the river in his boat

with his video camera to his eye, making

a moving picture of the moving river

upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly 

toward the end of his vacation. He showed 

his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,

preserving it forever: the river, the trees, 

the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat

behind which he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was having it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.

--Wendell Berry

One of the mighty illusions in our culture is that all pain is a negation of worthiness: that the real chosen people, the real worthy people, are the people who are most free from pain. 

--bell hooks

Be patient with everyone, but above all, with yourself. I mean, do not he disheartened by your imperfections, but always rise up with fresh courage. I am glad you make a fresh beginning daily. There is no better means of attainment to the spiritual life than by continually beginning again, and never thinking that we have done enough. How are we to be patient in dealing with our neighbor's faults if we are impatient in dealing with our own. He who is fretted by his own failings will not correct them. All profitable correction comes from a calm and peaceful mind.

--Saint Francis de Sales