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