This is the time to be slow,

Lie low to the wall

Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let

The wire brush of doubt

Scrape from your heart

All sense of yourself

And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,

Time will come good;

And you will find your feet

Again on fresh pastures of promise,

Where the air will be kind

And blushed with beginning.

--John O'Donohue

"Thudong monks valued wandering as an ascetic practice, as a means of training the mind to face hardship and the unpredictable. Whenever they wandered far from the relative comfort and security of the monastic life, they had to contend with fear, pain, fatigue, hunger, frustration, and distress; and sometimes they risked death. ... [A monk] never knew where he would spend the night, where the next meal would come from, or what difficulties he would encounter. He learned to live with insecurities and discomforts - life's inevitable dukkha." 

- Kamala Tiyavanich, Forest Recollections, p. 143

Oxygen

Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,

while it calls the earth its home, the soul.

So the merciful, noisy machine

stands in our house working away in its

lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel

before the fire, stirring with a

stick of iron, letting the logs

lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,

are in your usual position, leaning on your

right shoulder which aches

all day. You are breathing

patiently; it is a

beautiful sound. It is

your life, which is so close

to my own that I would not know

where to drop the knife of

separation. And what does this have to do

with love, except

everything? Now the fire rises

and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red

roses of flame. Then it settles

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds

as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:

our purest sweet necessity: the air.

-- Mary Oliver

This Poem Should Be a Circle

I wish you the ability to breathe

after pain, to begin again, though

nothing else seems possible.

I wish you resilience: to part like

the ocean and accept like the sky,

to be held like a root.

I wish you survival: to take in life

like a trapped miner finding an

airhole and praising it as God.

I wish you courage: to ask of

everything you meet, “What

bridge are we?”

I wish you chances to listen:

to all that holds us up.

I wish you the-kindness-that-you-are

coming to brighten your face

like orange leaves scattered

at the end of fall.

I wish you endless journey that

seldom appears as we imagine.

I wish you curiosity: to make a

boat of wonder and an oar

of gratitude.

--Mark Nepo