Dogfish

...

You don't want to hear the story

of my life, and anyway

I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story - - -

a few people just trying,

one way or another,

to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.

And nobody, of course, is kind,

or mean,

for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to

swim through the fires to stay in

this world.

*

And look! look! look! I think those little fish

better wake up and dash themselves away

from the hopeless future that is

bulging toward them.

*

And probably,

if they don't waste time

looking for an easier world,

they can do it.

--Mary Oliver

The Myth of Sisyphus

We tend to think of Sisyphus as a tragic hero, condemned by the gods

to shoulder his rock sweatily up the mountain, and again up the mountain, forever.

The truth is that Sisyphus is in love with the rock. He cherishes every roughness

and every ounce of it. He talks to it, sings to it. It has become the mysterious Other.

He even dreams of it as he sleepwalks upward. Life is unimaginable without it,

looming always above him like a huge gray moon.

He doesn’t realize that at any moment he is permitted to step aside, let the rock

hurtle to the bottom, and go home.

Tragedy is the inertial force of the mind.

--Stephen Mitchell 

Symphony

In the womb, we learn to listen

long before we can even breathe.

Maybe this is our body’s way

of saying, listening is a form of

breathing, and hearing is more 

essential than air. Maybe we spend 

our lives trying to get back to a time 

when the voices around us sounded 

like a distant music, strange song 

of the everyday that plays even now 

when I pause at the street corner 

before crossing, and just listen—

to snippets of phone conversations, 

someone’s radio, a mother calling 

to her child to keep him near—this 

endless symphony of the world.

—James Crews

How does one hate a country, or love one? ... I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply?

Ursula K LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: These horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they'll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they'd tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead.

No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.

--Omar el Akkad

The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves - or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the monsters won't find you. 

 But it's all an illusion, because they die too, these people who roll up their spirits into little tiny balls to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.

Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did. 

How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause... It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives. What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. 

--Sophie Scholl, executed 22 February 1943

“Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.”

― Naomi Shulman

In a time of hate  

Love is an act of resistance  

In a time of fear  

Faith is an act of resistance  

In a time of misinformation  

Education is an act of resistance  

In a time of poor leadership  

Community is an act of resistance  

In a time like this  

Joy is an act of resistance  

Resist. Resist. Resist. 

–Loryn Brantz

Authoritarians cannot rise if there are strong communities. and if people are acting with joy. That is, you need despair and anger for an authoritarian to rise. Whatever those things are that you bring to the community - do them and do them with joy. And don't stop doing the things you love because you are scared, because that actually is a form of resistance. Showing up and doing things that you love says to an authoritarian: 'You have no place to root here.' " 

--Heather Cox Richardson

Right now all movements for love, care, material well-being, diversity, this earth, and humans having a future on this earth need to remember that we need each other. We must remember that there are organized forces working to disorganize and confuse us, turn us against each other and diffuse our power. We are not immune to the chaos of the world, but we can choose to be a grounding force together.

–Adrienne Maree Brown

You can’t expect anyone to save a world they’re not in love with.

--Josie George

Go to where suffering is aligned with your capacity to meet it. You don’t have to go to death row or live in a monastery. You don’t have to sit with the unsheltered if that’s not your work. Go to where you can care safely and deeply and broaden that capacity over time.

--Roshi Joan Halifax

Light

I want to write of the light

but I do not know

whether words can illuminate

the way it hangs

upon branches and bird wings

and broken things

returning beings to beauty.

Can words spin substance

from sunshine and decay?

Can words cajole

celebration from night-weary

birds?

Can words warm surfaces

of stones and sorrows?

Can words reveal richness

in mundane

and battered

things?

I do not know.

But if we would write

a tomorrow

which is wider than wounds

we have worn,

we might wield words

like benedictions

and remember

blessings

within brokenness,

beginnings

within endings,

and beauty

within all things.

-- Bernadette Miller

Dear Stranger,

1. 

There was never not a bridge 

from your chest to mine. 

My heartbeat was always 

the sound of your feet walking towards me. 

I can’t believe how many years 

I lived without knowing 

the air you were breathing out, 

was the air I was breathing in. 

Forgive me for not saying ‘thank you’

before our lungs had reason to hide.

2.

Fear is what you make it 

and I’ve been trying to make it my teacher. 

When the lesson starts to break me

I remember the dogs in the shelters-- 

how even those we call ‘the mean ones’

will follow their fear to each other’s sides 

in the middle of the night,

make pillows of each other’s chests 

when they think no home is coming.

Almost everyone in the world

is softer than they look.

3.

Do you pray now more than you used to? 

I pray all of the time. I pray to The Big Bang 

and to The Tiny Bang and to The Bangs 

we’ll all have to cut ourselves so we can see 

what beauty can only be seen from 6 feet away.

4. 

Last night, a poet whose writing I love said he hasn’t written 

a single poem since the beginning of the quarantine.

He said every time he’s inclined to 

              he calls someone he loves instead.

5.

The first thing I learned from this virus 

was to question everything wanting to go viral.

The second thing I learned was to dream 

only giant dreams.

6.

A giraffe’s neck is 6 feet long. 

A decade from now will I remember the week

I spent wondering if I could hug a giraffe’s torso 

and not get sick if the giraffe coughed?

I don’t want to forget anything about this. 

Especially not how it feels to worry 

about everyone I love at the same time. 

So much of the world had been doing that already.

7.

If every heart-worthy novelist weeps for days 

before killing a beloved character off, 

how many centuries must god have spent sobbing 

before pressing a pen to the page of this year?

8.

I used to be a gardener in New Orleans. 

Every evening I’d spend almost an hour 

cleaning the earth out of my nails. 

She held on so tight. I loved her more for it.

Later I moved to the desert and was sitting

beside a cactus in my living room

when I heard a hurricane named Katrina 

was about to hit my former home. 

'Save the flowers', I said out loud, 

watching a storm cloud rage its hungry spiral 

across the television screen. 'Save the flowers', I said, 

having no idea we wouldn’t save the people.

9.

When the water left the city I went back,

drove through the 9th Ward to a church

that had been gutted by the storm.

The preacher had spray-painted his phone number 

across the length of the falling building.

There was something about his phone number

being as tall as the door––I couldn’t stop crying.

The world falls apart and people 

become foundation.

--Andrea Gibson

In the 1970s, Pete Seeger was invited to sing in Barcelona, Spain. Francisco Franco's fascist government, the last of the dictatorships that started World War II, was still in power but declining. A pro-democracy movement was gaining strength and to prove it, they invited America's best-known freedom singer to Spain. More that a hundred thousand people were in the stadium, where rock bands had played all day. But the crowd had come for Seeger. 

As Pete prepared to go on, government officials handed him a list of songs he was not allowed to sing. Pete studied it mournfully, saying it looked an awful lot like his set list. But they insisted: he must not sing any of these songs. 

Pete took the government's list of banned songs and strolled on stage. He held up the paper and said, “I've been told that I'm not allowed to sing these songs.” He grinned at the crowd and said, “So I'll just play the chords; maybe you know the words. They didn't say anything about *you* singing them.” 

He strummed his banjo to one song after another, and they all sang. A hundred thousand defiant freedom singers breaking the law with Pete Seeger, filling the stadium with words their government did not want them to hear, words they all knew and had sung together, in secret circles, for years. 

What could the government do? Arrest a hundred thousand singers? It had been beaten by a few banjo chords and the fame of a man whose songs were on the lips of the whole world. 

-- Richard Chamberlain

We Lived Happily During the War

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

 

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

 

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

 

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

 

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

 

In the sixth month

of a disastrous reign in the house of money

 

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,

our great country of money, we (forgive us)

 

lived happily during the war.

Copyright © 2013 by Ilya Kaminsky. 

"There are two kinds of suffering: the suffering which leads to more suffering, and the suffering which leads to the end of suffering. The first is the pain of grasping after fleeting pleasures and aversion for the unpleasant, the continued struggle of most people day after day.

The second is the suffering which comes when you allow yourself to feel fully the constant change of experience - pleasure, pain, joy, and anger - without fear or withdrawal. The suffering of our experience leads to inner fearlessness and peace."

- Venerable Ajahn Chah

you are but a collection of atoms

working together

in temporary harmony

before being dispersed

back into the universe

your earthly task is to help

those atoms

radiate

imagine the simplicity:

you need not

achieve anything

but gently glow

--Daniel Baylis

"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen." 

Rene Daumal

In the Meantime

Meanwhile, flowers still bloom.

The moon rises, and the sun.

Babies smile and somewhere,

Against all the odds,

Two people are falling in love.

Strangers share cigarettes and jokes.

Light plays on the surface of water.

Grace occurs on unlikely streets

And we hold each other fast 

Against entropy, the fires and the flood.

Life leans towards living

And, while death claims all things at the end,

There were such precious times between,

In which everything was radiant

And we loved, again, this world.

--Tom Hirons

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power.

Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”

~Arundhati Roy, ‘The Cost of Living’

The Question

All day, I replay these words:

Is this the path of love?

I think of them as I rise, 

as I wake my children, 

as I wash dishes, 

as I drive too close behind the slow blue Subaru, 

Is this the path of love?

Think of these words as I stand in line at the grocery store, think of them as I sit on the couch with my daughter. 

Amazing how quickly six words become compass, the new lens through which to see myself in the world. 

I notice what the question is not.

Not, 

"Is this right?" 

Not,

"Is this wrong?" 

It just longs to know how the action of existence links us to the path to love.

And is it this? 

Is it this? 

All day,

I let myself be led by the question.

All day I let myself not be too certain of the answer. 

Is it this?

Is this the path of love? I ask as I wait for the next word to come.

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, 

Family Recipe

All day, I search for it,

the secret ingredient—

something my father

believed in. He always

made stuffing

with something extra

special something,

then made us guess

what the secret was.

All day, I notice

what goes into a day—

a total of 86,400 seconds,

and in every second

a choice of how

we will meet that second.

If the day is stuffing,

then this day has

some unusual ingredients:

a couple dozen folks

in swimsuits on the sidewalk,

one woman with a dying parrot

she has tucked in her sweater,

a whole garden full of lemon trees,

one ripe hour alone

in the sunshine on a rooftop,

a generous measure of laughter

as my daughter and husband and I

climb a near-vertical hill,

and bittersweet tears

as I think of Dad

and his love of secret ingredients.

All day, the world

shows off its flavors.

All day, I revel in the recipe,

this extraordinary day,

something that can never

be made the same way again.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

"It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.

It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.

But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.

We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on."

From "Midnight Library" a fantasy novel by Matt Haig

The world is violent and mercurial- it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love -- love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.

--Tennessee Williams

The first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.

-Frank Herbert (Dune, 1965)

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

--Wallace Stevens

Beannacht ("Blessing")

On the day when

the weight deadens

on your shoulders

and you stumble,

may the clay dance

to balance you. 

And when your eyes

freeze behind

the grey window

and the ghost of loss

gets in to you,

may a flock of colours,

indigo, red, green,

and azure blue

come to awaken in you

a meadow of delight. 

When the canvas frays

in the currach of thought

and a stain of ocean

blackens beneath you,

may there come across the waters

a path of yellow moonlight

to bring you safely home. 

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

may the clarity of light be yours,

may the fluency of the ocean be yours,

may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow

wind work these words

of love around you,

an invisible cloak

to mind your life.

~John O'Donohue

Don't Hesitate

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,

don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty

of lives and whole towns destroyed or about

to be. We are not wise, and not very often

kind. And much can never be redeemed.

Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this

is its way of fighting back, that sometimes

something happens better than all the riches

or power in the world. It could be anything,

but very likely you notice it in the instant

when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the

case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid

of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

--Mary Oliver

In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.

In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.

In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.

I realized, through it all, that…

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.

--Albert Camus

Love, Like Water

We could say the pain

was a block so great

        it could not be moved.

We could say love

did not try to move it.

        Love simply surrounded the mass

and dissolved it

the way water meets a block of salt,

        breaking apart each ionic bond

until every atom of sodium and chloride

is surrounded by molecules of water.

        And in this way,

and sooner than you’d think,

the pain was rearranged

        into minuscule bits,

and there was no part of the pain

that was not touched by love.

        The pain was no less, it’s true.

But mixed with love, dispersed,

the pain became something new.

        Something vital that encouraged

a different kind of life,

a substance that supported buoyancy—

        a medium to carry me.

—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Hope is … is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something is worth doing, regardless of how it turns out.

--Václav Havel

Part of our work as people who dare to believe we can save the world is to prepare our wills to withstand some losing, so that we may lose and still set out again, anyhow. 

--Julian Aguon 

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

—James Baldwin

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.

—Reinhold Niebuhr

We have to meditate

on being the rivers

so that we can experience

within ourselves

the fears and hopes

of the rivers.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

As she stared at the restless pixels on her screen, her impatience grew. This agitation was familiar, a paradoxical feeling that built up inside her when she was spending too much time online, as though some force was at once goading her and holding her back. How to describe it? A temporal stuttering, an urgent lassitude, a feeling of simultaneous rushing and lagging behind. 

--Ruth Ozeki, "A Tale for the Time Being"

During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for. It didn't look like we were going to win then and we did. It doesn't feel like we're going to win now but we could. Keep fighting, keep dancing.

--Dan Savage

A Prayer for these Times

When they hate, I will love.

When they curse, I will bless.

When they hurt, I will heal.

I am a servant of the light.

I am not afraid of darkness.

I will carry on with my work

as a steward of this Earth

and of all her children.

When they divide, I will unite.

When they rage, I will calm.

When they deny, I will affirm.

I will simply be who I am: for that is

what Spirit created me to be.

--Bishop Steven Charleston: Elder of the Choctaw Nation

Forgiveness

May the tide

never tire of its tender toil

how over and over

it forgives the Moon

the daily exile

and returns to turn

mountains into sand

as if to say,

you too can have

this homecoming

you too possess

this elemental power

of turning

the stone in the heart

into golden dust.

-- Maria Popova

Brahmaviharas

Out of the rich soil of good will grows the beautiful flower of compassion, watered by tears of joy and shaded by the great tree of equanimity.

--Longchenpa

Blessing for the longest night

All throughout these months,

as the shadows

have lengthened,

this blessing has been

gathering itself,

making ready,

preparing for

this night.

It has practiced

walking in the dark,

traveling with

its eyes closed,

feeling its way

by memory,

by touch,

by the pull of the moon

even as it wanes.

So believe me

when I tell you

this blessing will

reach you,

even if you

have not light enough

to read it;

it will find you,

even though you cannot

see it coming.

You will know

the moment of its

arriving

by your release

of the breath

you have held

so long;

a loosening

of the clenching

in your hands,

of the clutch

around your heart;

a thinning

of the darkness

that had drawn itself

around you.

This blessing

does not mean

to take the night away,

but it knows

its hidden roads,

knows the resting spots

along the path,

knows what it means

to travel

in the company

of a friend.

So when

this blessing comes,

take its hand.

Get up.

Set out on the road

you cannot see.

—Jan Richardson

from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

The Opening

I feel it before dawn -

the longing not only for light

but for the vast embrace

of the dark,

the way it links me

to the farthest reachings

of the universe,

the way it holds

each dull planet,

each luminous star,

holds me with no question,

no reservation,

holds all I love

and all I have yet

to learn to love.

With each breath

I bring it into my body,

small sips of dark,

great gulps of dark.

Inside me it swirls

with my love of light,

and this is how the certainties

of the heart are erased-

when I love and ache

in two directions at once-

and what's left

is so raw, so open,

so alive.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

The World I Live In

I have refused to live

locked in the orderly house of

reasons and proofs.

The world I live in and believe in

is wider than that. And anyway,

what's wrong with Maybe?

You wouldn't believe what once or

twice I have seen. I'll just

tell you this:

only if there are angels in your head will you

ever, possibly, see one.

-Mary Oliver

How to Survive

Love the small things of the earth.

The dust. The dark rain in the lemon trees.

The sound of moonflowers opening

at evening. Love them

even when the sky is burning,

even when a mother crouches with her child

in a dark room, wetting his lips

with a small glass of water. Love them

quietly, quietly but ferociously,

their hearts in them like flocks

the wind has furled.

And then, in the spring, if the world

has survived, walk out

with your gift that you have practiced,

your fresh gift that has ripened in secret;

lie down in the long, soft grass of summer

and wait for love, wait for it

to find you-

and when it lays its hand at last

upon your shoulder, open

to all that is about to happen;

rise up and walk off into the lemon trees

and live awhile, live awhile

with someone-their eyes, their scent, their curls-

and when love departs, when love

is done and fallen, stand there

in the coming winds of autumn

and turn back to the small things

that have been with you-

buttons, apples, chapters-

and then, because you've practiced this

forever, because you are ready now

for the hardest task of all of them,

lay your hand on the changed face in the mirror

and look at it-its wounds, its crimes, its changes-

and tell yourself what you see

deserves your mercy-that face, that name, that stranger-

and place your palms on that one life in the mirror

and open to the whole of it, the whole of it,

and love it like the last chance of the world.

-Joseph Fasano

Gus Speth, former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, says, "I used to think that top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science, we could address these problems, but I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don't know how to do that."

Yonatan Neril, Leo Dee

Eco Bible: Volume 1: An Ecological Commentary on Genesis and Exodus

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

What scent of old wood hovers, what softened

sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now? Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found; carry into evening

all that you want from this day. This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

--William Stafford

My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;

Every year the green ivy grows longer.

No news of the affairs of men,

Only the occasional song of a woodcutter.

The sun shines and I mend my robe;

When the moon comes out I read Buddhist poems.

I have nothing to report, my friends.

If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after

so many things.

- Ryōkan Taigu (1758 - 1831)

From 'One Robe, One Bowl', the Zen Poetry of Ryōkan, translated by John Stevens.

The Paradox

When I am inside writing,

all I can think about is how I should be outside living.

When I am outside living,

all I can do is notice all there is to write about.

When I read about love, I think I should be out loving.

When I love, I think I need to read more.

I am stumbling in pursuit of grace,

I hunt patience with a vengeance.

On the mornings when my brother's tired muscles

held to the pillow, my father used to tell him,

For every moment you aren't playing basketball,

someone else is on the court practicing.

I spend most of my time wondering

if I should be somewhere else.

So I have learned to shape the words thank you

with my first breath each morning, my last breath every night.

When the last breath comes, at least I will know I was thankful

for all the places I was so sure I was not supposed to be.

All those places I made it to,

all the loves I held, all the words I wrote.

And even if it is just for one moment,

I will be exactly where I am supposed to be.

--Sarah Kay

Winter Poem

once a snowflake fell

on my brow and i loved

it so much and i kissed

it and it was happy and called its cousins

and brothers and a web

of snow engulfed me then

i reached to love them all

and i squeezed them and they became

a spring rain and i stood perfectly

still and was a flower

--Nikki Giovanni 

Where did the middle go?

It's always near the end

that I'm startled into presence-

my morning walk nearly over,

my coffee down to its last sip.

Where have I been? Where did

the middle go? I've been asking

all my life. But then what's ending

shakes me back into my body,

the way autumn calls to you

with its waving yellows

and falling reds: "Witness me!"

it seems to shout. "I'm here

only for a moment."

--James A Pearson

a love note to my body:

first of all,

I want to say

thank you

for the heart you kept beating

even when it was broken

for every answer you gave me in my gut

for loving me back

even when

I didn't know how to love you

for every time you recovered when I pushed you past our limits

for today,

for waking up.

- cleo wade

A Journey

It's a journey ... that I propose ... I am not the guide .. . nor

technical assistant ... I will be your fellow passenger ...

Though the rail has been ridden ... winter clouds cover ...

autumn's exuberant quilt ... we must provide our own guide-

posts . . .

I have heard ... from previous visitors ... the road washes out

sometimes ... and passengers are compelled ... to continue

groping ... or turn back ... I am not afraid ...

I am not afraid ... of rough spots ... or lonely times ... I don't

fear ... the success of this endeavor ... I am Ra ... in a space

.. . not to be discovered ... but invented

I promise you nothing ... I accept your promise ... of the

same we are simply riding ... a wave ... that may carry ... or

crash ...

It's a journey ... and I want ... to go ...

--Nikki Giovanni

you are not on call

for the pain of the world

I know you feel every hit of the hammer, beating

plowshares into swords,

and people into plowshares

and every time you fail to step between

the blow and it’s target

the injustice is sewn into your bones, too

and so

when the hammer rises, you must rise with it

raising your voice your eyes your awareness your body

whatever part of you that can given as an offering

you cannot stay this way forever

sewn to this cacophony of blows

every movement of yours a follow

until your body is owned by the drumbeat of

the raising of weapons

until your days string together in a stuttering heartbreak of rage

and you can’t

       catch

             your breath

but this is what you promised

to those who don’t get to choose whether or to to show up for the fight

you promised

that you would hold nothing back

I know

except, you cannot be on call

for the pain of the world

it is not work that can be done

without sleep

when we said that people are too sacred to be

beaten into plowshares 

or swords

we meant you

we need you

for the fight

and we need you for all the things

that are less, and more, than fighting

we need you to be ready to listen in the soft way earth listens

to rain in the hours before dawn

to be tender, to cradle precious things, to hold the smell of dew in your hair

to hum the song that flowers 

will rise up through the earth to hear

I need you 

to stay

in love with the world

--Liz James

Counting, This New Year's Morning, What Powers Yet Remain To Me

The world asks, as it asks daily:

And what can you make, can you do, to change my deep-broken, fractured?

I count, this first day of another year, what remains.

I have a mountain, a kitchen, two hands.

Can admire with two eyes the mountain,

actual, recalcitrant, shuffling its pebbles, sheltering foxes and beetles.

Can make black-eyed peas and collards.

Can make, from last year's late-ripening persimmons, a pudding.

Can climb a stepladder, change the bulb in a track light.

For four years, I woke each day first to the mountain,

then to the question.

The feet of the new sufferings followed the feet of the old,

and still they surprised.

I brought salt, brought oil, to the question. Brought sweet tea,

brought postcards and stamps. For four years, each day, something.

Stone did not become apple. War did not become peace.

Yet joy still stays joy. Sequins stay sequins. Words still bespangle, bewilder.

Today, I woke without answer.

The day answers, unpockets a thought from a friend

don't despair of this falling world, not yet

didn't it give you the asking

--Jane Hirshfield