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