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