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

--Wilfred Peltier

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

Fresh

To move

Cleanly.

Needing to be

Nowhere else.

Wanting nothing

From any store.

To lift something

You already had

And set it down in

A new place.

Awakened eye

Seeing freshly.

What does that do to

The old blood moving through

Its channels?

--Naomi Shihab Nye

Take Love for Granted

Assume it’s in the kitchen,

under the couch, high

in the pine tree out back,

behind the paint cans

in the garage. Don’t try

proving your love

is bigger than the Grand

Canyon, the Milky Way,

the urban sprawl of L.A.

Take it for granted. Take it

out with the garbage. Bring

it in with the takeout. Take

it for a walk with the dog.

Wake it every day, say,

“Good morning.” Then

make the coffee. Warm

the cups. Don’t expect much

of the day. Be glad when

you make it back to bed.

Be glad he threw out that

box of old hats. Be glad

she leaves her shoes

in the hall. Snow will

come. Spring will show up.

Summer will be humid.

The leaves will fall

in the fall. That’s more

than you need. We can

love anybody, even

everybody. But you

can love the silence,

sighing and saying to

yourself, “That’ s her.”

“That’s him.” Then to

each other, “I know!

Let’s go out for breakfast!”

--Jack Ridl

Insomnia

All over the world, people can’t sleep.

In different time zones, they are lying awake,

Bodies still, minds trudging along like child laborers.

They worry about bills.

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

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

Another was beaten by her husband.

One is planning a getaway.

One holding stolen goods.

One’s on the plaid couch in ICU.

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

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

Some are lying on Charisma sheets.

Some in hammocks.

Some in jail.

Some under bridges.

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

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

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

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

They’re all up.

Some are too cold.

Some too hot.

Some hungry.

Some in pain.

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

Some are crying.

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

Some get up.

Others stay in bed.

They eat Oreos.

Or drink wine.

Or both.

Many read.

A few make Halloween costumes.

Some check their email.

They try sleep tapes, hypnosis, drugs.

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

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

Right now, in Japan, dawn is coming.

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

They can stop trying.

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

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

So here’s a prayer for the wakeful,

for the souls who can’t rest:

As you lie with eyes open or closed,

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

--Ellen Bass

Skin Tight

The internal organs were growling

According to them

They did all of the work while

Skin got all of the attention

He’s an organ just like us

They groused

Even the heart, which, a

Century ago, was the Queen

Of metaphors, but now

Was reduced to the greetings

Cards section of CVS,

Chimed in

They decided to call skin

On the carpet.

Skin arrived from Cannes

Where he’d been the subject

Of much fuss as actresses

Fed him luxurious skin

Food prepared by Max Factor

Estée Lauder, L’Oreal,

And Chanel

They

Caressed him daily

Sometimes for hours before

They made the red carpet

Shine

He was petted

And preened

Others

Pleaded with him

To erase wrinkles to

Make them look younger

To tighten their chins

Skin tried to appease the

Critics, greeting them with

His familiar “give me some skin”

But his gesture went unheeded

Brain did all the talking

Brain said, “Here’s the skinny

Why do you get

All of the press

Your color

Your texture discussed

Endlessly

Nicole Kidman never

Did an ad about us

Cole Porter never

Wrote a song about us

Nor were we mentioned

In a Thornton Wilder novel

You’ve given us no

Skin in the game”

“What about the nasty

Things they say about

Me,” skin replied

“What about skin deep

For superficiality

Or

Skin trade

To denote something

Unsavory

How would you

Like acne rashes

Eczema

Boils

Pellagra

Leprosy

And

Conditions

That astonish

Even dermatologists

I wear my blemishes

In public while you guys

Hide yours”

“Without me and heart

You’d be nothing,” the brain said

“That’s not true,” protested

The liver, “without me he’d

Be nothing”

“No,” the kidney said

“It’s me who keeps the

Body functioning”

The bladder and

The kidney began

To quarrel with

Gallbladder

The lung twins spoke

Up

“Without us

He couldn’t breathe”

Even the esophagus

And the thyroid

And the pancreas

Joined the outbreak

“What about us?”

The eyes said

“Without eyes you

Can’t see”

Their squabble distracted

Them

When they looked

Up from their dust up

Skin’s

Helicopter was up

He was scheduled to

Address a convention of

Plastic surgeons at

The Beverly Hills

Hotel

Escaping by the skin

Of his teeth

His opponents gave

Chase

But above the roar

Of the chopper

They heard him say

“Don’t worry fellas

I got you covered”

--Ishmael Reed

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

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For a New Beginning

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

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

--John O’Donohue

One of the Butterflies

The trouble with pleasure is the timing

it can overtake me without warning

and be gone before I know it is here

it can stand facing me unrecognized

while I am remembering somewhere else

in another age or someone not seen

for years and never to be seen again

in this world and it seems that I cherish

only now a joy I was not aware of

when it was here although it remains

out of reach and will not be caught or named

or called back and if I could make it stay

as I want to it would turn to pain.

--W. S. Merwin

A Spiritual Journey

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

no matter how long,

but only by a spiritual journey,

a journey of one inch,

very arduous and humbling and joyful,

by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,

and learn to be at home.

--Wendell Berry

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

- Navajo [Dine] Proverb

As if to Demonstrate an Eclipse

I pick an orange from a wicker basket

and place it on the table

to represent the sun.

Then down at the other end

a blue and white marble

becomes the earth

and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.

I get a glass from a cabinet,

open a bottle of wine,

then I sit in a ladder-back chair,

a benevolent god presiding

over a miniature creation myth,

and I begin to sing

a homemade canticle of thanks

for this perfect little arrangement,

for not making the earth too hot or cold

not making it spin too fast or slow

so that the grove of orange trees

and the owl become possible,

not to mention the rolling wave,

the play of clouds, geese in flight,

and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.

Then I fill my glass again

and give thanks for the trout,

the oak, and the yellow feather,

singing the room full of shadows,

as sun and earth and moon

circle one another in their impeccable orbits

and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.

--Billy Collins

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

--Madeline Miller, from "Circe"

Commencement speech delivered to a herd of walrus calves

Young walruses, we all must adapt! For example, 

some of your ancestors gouged the world 

with four tusks, but you can grow only two. 

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

but if given a choice,

you should put in a request for thumbs. 

Anyway, congratulations! You’re entering 

a world that’s increasingly hostile and cruel 

and full of people who’ll never take you seriously

though that will be a mistake on their end. 

You are more tenacious than they know. 

You’ll be a fierce and loyal defender 

of those you love. You will fight polar bears 

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

Of course, odds always favor the polar bear, 

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

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

even when the fight in which you find yourself

ensures unpleasant things will happen to you. 

For example, the bear will gnaw apart your skull 

or neck until you stop that persistent twitching; 

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

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

it will savor every bite, and you will just 

suffer and suffer until the emptiness can wash over you. 

The good news is: things change! 

For example: the environment. 

Climate change, indeed, is bad for you, 

but it’s worse for polar bears whose conservation status 

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

from “endangered” which is one step removed 

from “extinct” which is a synonym 

for Hooray! None of you get eaten! 

I suppose this will make some people sad. 

Even now, they’re posting pictures

of disconsolate polar bears on melting ice floes 

drifting toward a well-deserved oblivion. 

They say, We need to stop this! 

They say, We need to do something, now!

These people are not your friends. 

One cannot be on both Team Walrus and Team Polar Bear 

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

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

I’m saying sharpen your tusks, young calves; 

your enemies are devious. You need to train 

yourself to do what they won’t expect. 

For example: use computers, invest 

in renewable energies, read Zbigniew Herbert. 

Unrelatedly: your whiskers make you appear 

to have mustaches, which, seeing as you’re 

not even toddlers, is remarkably unsettling. 

Babies that look like grown men freak me out.

Like those medieval paintings by so-called masters

where they’d make the face of little baby Jesus

look like an ancient constipated banker.  

If that’s what God really looks like, 

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

Maybe you can repair what we spent lifetimes taking apart. 

Replace some screws. Oil some hinges. 

This might sound impossible, but have you ever 

looked at yourselves? Seriously—take a quick look 

and tell me how a walrus face is possible; 

everything about it defies the laws of physics. 

You will exist beyond the reach of nature.

You will learn to slow your own heartbeat to preserve oxygen 

while diving to depths of over 900 feet. 

You will stay awake for up to three consecutive days 

while swimming on the open sea.  

And when the ocean is too rough—

so terrible with longing, so ruptured with heartache—

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

It will be difficult to climb from the water, 

but because there’s hope for us all, 

you will hoist yourself up,

using only your front teeth to drag your body 

onto the shore.

--Matthew Olzmann

Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?

There are things you can’t reach. But

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

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

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

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

out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing

from the unreachable top of the tree.

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

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around

as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come, some

shining coil of wind,

or a few leaves from any old tree —

they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth.

Everything in the world

comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

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

Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold

fluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.

--Mary Oliver

Sadness

Sooner or later it comes to everyone:

the beautiful prom queen who has lost a breast,

the Don Juan of the tenth grade who has

turned up impotent, the fleet chiropodist

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

and you are never prepared for it quite yet,

you who had hoped to be spared through another epoch

of your rightful happiness, you who had always

given to charity. Like a gargantuan tackle

lumbering toward you, it comes and comes,

and—though you may double lateral all you wish,

though you may throw a perfect spiral

up the middle to some ecstatic receiver

and be blessed blue-green some night

by the ministrations of strangers—it will not

spare you. It comes and comes, inevitable

as sunrise, palpable as longing,

and we must go on

laughing it right in the face

until it learns to sing again.

--Michael Blumenthal

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

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

Death Comes Knocking at My Door

When I saw Death standing at my doorstep

I thought of the speech I long prepared.

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

Did you have to take Keith and Bill and Frederic

and Mahlon and Tim and Hunter and Kerry –

I could go on with the names all day.”

Sometimes when I compose this long rehearsed

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

All these words hung in the air unspoken

as I watched how tired Death looked.

Death's bones bowed with weariness.

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

Death gave no answer but walked in

and sat in my living room chair.

I dropped over the tired bones my favorite

afghan quilt knitted by my grandma.

I almost said, you are now wrapped by the

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

I made Death a cup of tea, who took it

gratefully. And we sat. In silence.

The strangeness of Death sitting in

my living room, covered by my grandma's

wool afghan, sipping tea wore off.

We were not strangers to each other.

Then Death stood, handed me the tea cup,

the afghan dropping to the chair.

As Death crossed my threshold I said,

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

--Michael Kiesow Moore

From The Song Castle. Nodin Press © 2019.

Remember

Remember the sky that you were born under,

know each of the star's stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is.

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

strongest point of time. Remember sundown

and the giving away to night.

Remember your birth, how your mother struggled

to give you form and breath. You are evidence of

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

Remember your father. He is your life, also.

Remember the earth whose skin you are:

red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth

brown earth, we are earth.

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

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

listen to them. They are alive poems.

Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the

origin of this universe.

Remember you are all people and all people

are you.

Remember you are this universe and this

universe is you.

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

Remember language comes from this.

Remember the dance language is, that life is.

Remember.

--Joy Harjo

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

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

Instructions on Not Giving Up

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out

of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s

almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving

their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate

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

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

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

the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,

the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin

growing over whatever winter did to us, a return

to the strange idea of continuous living despite

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

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

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

Ada Limón - 1976-

Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse. Some years, the vine

faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,

sometimes someone aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;

elect someone honest, decide they care

enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.

Some people become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go

amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow

that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

-- Sheenagh Pugh

from “Selected Poems”, 1990

Brooding

Winter,

rising from mature darkness,

offers its faithful bidding

for brooding reflection…

a time to pause

for deep stories to find my lips,

a time to gather

around a hearth of friendship,

a time to surrender,

fully exposed,

to the north light of winter.

Curiously,

I find myself longing

for this blackness of Solstice,

for the peace it brings.

I am raw with musing,

searching deep understandings;

my life’s autumn is complete,

like a last chapter’s page

damp with ink,

drying…

ready to turn for the next.

What shards of light

are found in darkness?

What stunning stories

will a final season bring?

l sigh into deep pause,

I quiet…

my soul waits to be heard,

as I draw in replenishment

with brooding renewal,

taking in this clean, pristine

breath of my winter.

--Marilyn Loy Every, from Tending the Heart

Blackberries

In the early morning an old woman

is picking blackberries in the shade.

It will be too hot later

but right now there's dew.

Some berries fall: those are for squirrels.

Some are unripe, reserved for bears.

Some go into the metal bowl.

Those are for you, so you may taste them

just for a moment.

That's good times: one little sweetness

after another, then quickly gone.

Once, this old woman

I'm conjuring up for you

would have been my grandmother.

Today it's me.

Years from now it might be you,

if you're quite lucky.

The hands reaching in

among the leaves and spines

were once my mother's.

I've passed them on.

Decades ahead, you'll study your own

temporary hands, and you'll remember.

Don't cry, this is what happens.

Look! The steel bowl

is almost full. Enough for all of us.

The blackberries gleam like glass,

like the glass ornaments

we hang on trees in December

to remind ourselves to be grateful for snow.

Some berries occur in sun,

but they are smaller.

It's as I always told you:

the best ones grow in shadow.

--Margaret Atwood

When I Am Among The Trees

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

--Mary Oliver

I Am Standing

I am standing

on the dunes

in the heat of summer

and I am listening

to mockingbird again

who is tonguing

his embellishments

and, in the distance,

the shy

weed loving sparrow

who has but one

soft song

which he sings

again and again

and something

somewhere inside

my own unmusical self

begins humming:

thanks for the beauty of the world.

Thanks for my life.

--Mary Oliver