Winter Grace

If you have seen the snow

under the lamppost

piled up like a white beaver hat on the picnic table

or somewhere slowly falling

into the brook

to be swallowed by water,

then you have seen beauty

and know it for its transience.

And if you have gone out in the snow

for only the pleasure

of walking barely protected

from the galaxies,

the flakes settling on your parka

like the dust from just-born stars,

the cold waking you

as if from long sleeping,

then you can understand

how, more often than not,

truth is found in silence,

how the natural world comes to you

if you go out to meet it,

its icy ditches filled with dead weeds,

its vacant birdhouses, and dens

full of the sleeping.

But this is the slowed-down season

held fast by darkness

and if no one comes to keep you company

then keep watch over; your own solitude.

In that stillness, you will learn

with your whole body

the significance of cold

and the night,

which is otherwise always eluding you.

-- Patricia Fargnoli

Writing About Summer, in Winter

Soon, the yard will fill with a pride of yellow lions

And the flurries outside my window:

Tiny parasails, drifting into neighbor’s yards.

(they will curse the abundance)

Soon, my feet will be buffed by sand

My body dusted with salt;

Seasoned by the sea, slow baked on the beach.

Soon,   so   much   light   - that dusk will be

Heralded by sparks of fire -  there  -  there -

Emerging from the threshold of wild and deliberate space

Random, but not really.

(we do not speak the language)

And we, as children, will exclaim

In our tongues of joy

When the flashes are suddenly  -  here - among us.

Yes, I could write of summer breezes

Whispering stanzas slowed by heat,

But

Why would I want to?  When there are still

Leopards of snow lounging in elbows

Of stately trees, waiting

To pounce on passersby;

When there are complex flavors

Slow rolling in a boil on my stove;

When the rhododendron furls its leaves to

Message me the temperature.

Why, when there are still stacks of books to read

And blazing fires 

To occupy my gaze

And warm the cat’s belly stretched full length

In worship.

Why would I want to hurry this fallow time

- that I have somehow forgotten to honor –

Squandering the gift, and now,

Remembered

Grasping at clear, cold, constellated skies

Even as the dark recedes.

(inexorable tide)

I forgot to listen to the cadence, then

Judged when my body danced 

To the rhythm anyway.

There is still time,

Spring is unreliable.

By Pam Rimington

in praise of i don’t know

Mostly, what washes up at the beach isn’t whole, though our eyes are peeled

for the perfect form of, say, a perfume bottle, or an old coin, or a message from the dead.

Instead, what reveals itself as the tide pulls back is a sea of uncertainty, cryptic shards

with the vaguest clues whose answers are scattered in places likely too far from here.

We will never retrieve them, not in the way our mind craves assembly.

But look how, against the late season light, a filmy beauty descends, nearly silencing

the clamor of what pulls at our sleeves to solve. What if we could let ourselves rest

for a little while in this halo of I don’t know, feel its soft touch against our urgent skin.

What if the thing in our hands, and every fractured remainder, is its own answer. What if

leaning into the wobbly shapes of our lives is another kind of sweetness and gold.

-- Maya Stein

When You Have Lost Yourself

It takes a while to find yourself again

after you lost yourself in the dark forest,

accidentally letting go of your hand,

losing sight of yourself. “Where did she go?”

you ask the owl, the squirrel, the skeptical fox

who looks at you like a philosophy professor

when you have given an answer so obviously wrong

that he can tell you haven’t read the textbook.

Unfortunately, there are things no philosophy textbook

will tell you, like how not to lose yourself,

where the paths in the forest go, or what the trees

are whispering as you pass — the oak, the beech,

the alder. Are they talking about you, or

the other you, wherever she is wandering?

It takes a while to find yourself — it takes

looking behind each tree, under each rock,

on the backs of leaves, among the meadow grasses,

asking crickets, chickadees, woodpeckers,

calling up to the distant circling hawk,

who can see the flickering tail of a hare as it runs

across a clearing. Perhaps you have hidden yourself

in its burrow, lined with fur, under an oak tree?

Perhaps you have hidden yourself under the roots

that overhang the stream, and only dragonflies

notice your eyes gleaming in the darkness.

Perhaps you have hidden yourself under the litter

of last year’s leaves, or up in the canopy,

which is already turning red with autumn.

And once you have found yourself, what will you do?

I suggest taking yourself back to the cottage

near the clearing, sitting yourself in front of the fire,

making yourself some soup on the ancient stove,

with carrots, potatoes, and beans, flavored with parsley,

then putting yourself to bed and telling yourself

one of the old stories. It is after all

stories that tell us who we are, stories

that remind us where the paths might lead, and how

to talk to foxes so we can ask directions,

how to find the witch at the heart of the forest,

who might, as it turns out, be yourself after all,

stories that tell us what we could become,

stories that guide us home.

-- Theodora Goss

Me: Hey God.

God: Hello, My love.

Me: The world is completely out of control!

God: I know.  It's such an adventure, right? 

Me: No!  It's like being on a runaway train!  I need to feel like I am in control of my life. 

God: You want to be in control?  

Me: Yes!  

God: You are living on a spinning wet rock of a planet that resides next to a constantly exploding fireball in the middle of an ever-expanding universe that is filled with mysteries beyond your wildest imagination.  

Me: Um, okay....

God: And on this planet that you are hurtling through the great expanse in - you are coexisting with billions of other people who have free-will and their own experiences that shape their perspectives and beliefs.

Me: Yeah...? 

God: And while all this is going on your soul is residing in a physical body that is such a miracle of delicate engineering that at any given moment could produce its last heartbeat.

Me: Right...

God: What is it about your existence that you think you have any control of?

Me: Um…

God: Come on - you know the answer to this.  What can you control?

Me: How kind I am to people?

God:  Yep and one other thing.

Me:  What's that?

God: How kind you are to yourself.  Aside from that - most of everything else is a bit outside of your design.  

Me: This is a bit terrifying...

God: All great adventures are!

          ~ john roedel

How mutuality works in a community

 Tiffany couldn't quite work out how Miss Level got paid. Certainly the basket she carried filled up more than it emptied. They'd walk past a cottage and a woman would come scurrying out with a fresh-baked loaf or a jar of pickles, even though Miss Level hadn't stopped there. But they'd spend an hour somewhere else, stitching up the leg of a farmer who'd been careless with an axe, and get a cup of tea and a stale biscuit. It didn't seem fair.

"Oh, it evens out," said Miss Level, as they walked on through the woods. "You do what you can. People give what they can, when they can. Old Slapwick there, with the leg, he's as mean as a cat, but there'll be a big cut of beef on my doorstep before the week's end, you can bet on it. His wife will see to it. And pretty soon people will be killing their pigs for the winter, and I'll get more brawn, ham, bacon, and sausages turning up than a family could eat in a year." 

"You do? What do you do with all that food?"

"Store it," said Miss Level.

"But you--"

"I store it in other people. It's amazing what you can store in other people." Miss Level laughed at Tiffany's expression. "I mean, I take what I don't need round to those who don't have a pig, or who're going through a bad patch, or who don't have anyone to remember them."

"But that means they'll owe you a favour!"

"Right! And so it just keeps on going round. It all works out."

"I bet some people are too mean to pay--"

"Not pay," said Miss Level severely. "A witch never expects payment and never asks for it and just hopes she never needs to. But, sadly, you are right."

"And then what happens?"

"What do you mean?"

"You stop helping them, do you?"

"Oh, no," said Miss Level, genuinely shocked. "You can't not help people just because they're stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone's poor round here. If I don't help them, who will?"

--Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

Joy is much bigger than happiness. 

 --Archbishop Desmond Tutu

 “Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. "

― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

After the First Snow Storm

Just when I believed

autumn would last forever

it didn’t.

Not that I really thought

the gold leaves would stay.

Not that I really believed

the warm days were endless—

but part of me wanted them to be.

And so this cold morning,

driving on ice

when I feel the slip of the wheels

as they lose traction,

the heart resonates

with the skid.

Oh, this lesson

in losing control.

Oh, this remembering

how quickly it all slides by—

the light, the warmth,

the deepening gold,

even this fleeting understanding

of how quickly

it all slides by.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

To Existing Being Enough

On days like today, you're just existing,

and that's fine.

The ocean is not always a tsunami.

The wind is not always a tornado.

You are no less powerful

in all your stillness.

--Natasha T. Miller, from Butcher

Generosity keeps faith with our appreciation of each other. It stems from a natural empathy with everything that, like us, has the courage to take a shape in the world.

--John Tarrant

Why some people be mad at me sometimes

they ask me to remember

but they want me to remember

their memories

and i keep on remembering

mine.

--Lucille Clifton, from How to Carry Water

I fell through a hole in
a church pew yesterday
and landed right
in the thick amber
field of a piece of
          stained glass
I asked a red saint
    who was stargazing
"why must I suffer?"
without looking
at me
     he said
"to know God."
I didn’t like
that answer
so
I crawled through
a mist of royal triangles
and swam across a sea of ovals
   and scaled a pointed cusp
until I found a glowing sinner
and I asked her the
       same question
"why must I suffer?"
she placed her
green hand on my
purple cheek
      and sung
"Because a broken heart
       is easier to share."
suddenly
my hands became
       turquoise doves
and my lips became
     yellow vines
and my feet became
     fat red rubies
and I became radiant
     painted glass of the divine
and I became
   reflected light
and everything
    I touched glowed
and now my broken
illuminated heart
colors the walls
   of every room I walk into

 
          ~ john roedel

Keep my anger from becoming meanness

Keep my sorrow from collapsing into self-pity

Keep my heart soft enough to keep breaking

Keep my anger turned towards justice, not cruelty

Remind me that all of this, every bit of it, is for love

Keep me fiercely kind

--Laura Jean Truman

Improvement

The optometrist says my eyes

are getting better each year.

Soon he’ll have to lower my prescription.

What’s next? The light step I had at six?

All the gray hairs back to brown?

Skin taut as a drum?

My improved eyes and I

walked around town and celebrated.

We took in the letters

of the marquee, the individual leaves

filling out the branches of the sycamore,

an early moon.

So much goes downhill: our joints

wearing out with every mile,

the delicate folds of the eardrum

exhausted from years of listening.

I’m grateful for small victories.

The way the heart still beats time

in the cathedral of the ribs.

And the mind, watching its parade of thoughts

enter and leave, begins to see them

for what they are: jugglers, fire swallowers, acrobats

tossing their batons in the air.

--Danusha Laméris, from BONFIRE OPERA © 2020 Danusha Laméris.

Life’s short. Even while

We talk, Time, hateful, runs a mile.

Don’t trust tomorrow’s bough

For fruit. Pluck this, here, now.

--Horace, Odes (translation by James Michie, in the 1964 Penguin edition of Horace's odes.)

BLESSING FOR THE BROKENHEARTED

"There is no remedy for love but to love more."

—Henry David Thoreau

Let us agree

for now

that we will not say

the breaking

makes us stronger

or that it is better

to have this pain

than to have done

without this love.

Let us promise

we will not

tell ourselves

time will heal

the wound,

when every day

our waking

opens it anew.

Perhaps for now

it can be enough

to simply marvel

at the mystery

of how a heart

so broken

can go on beating,

as if it were made

for precisely this—

as if it knows

the only cure for love

is more of it,

as if it sees

the heart’s sole remedy

for breaking

is to love still,

as if it trusts

that its own

persistent pulse

is the rhythm

of a blessing

we cannot

begin to fathom

but will save us

nonetheless.

—Jan Richardson

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

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love--whether we call it friendship or family or romance--is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light.

--Maria Popova writing about James Baldwin https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/01/31/james-baldwin-nothing-personal-love/ 

Unexpected wonders happen, not on schedule, or when you expect or want them to happen,  but if you keep hanging around, they do happen.   

 --  Wendell Berry

In a Time of Much Doing

Teach us to sit still.

            —T.S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday, Part 6”

How soon I seem to have forgotten

how to be still, how to not plan,

how to step out into the day

and let the world itself write

the story of how a morning becomes

an afternoon becomes a night

becomes a woman.

How soon I seem to have forgotten

the value of not doing,

the gift of unscheduling,

the blessing of dipping my toes into the stream

of no time, then wading in full body,

where I remember I am part of an infinite story

at the same time I relearn how fragile it is,

this life.

How soon I forgot I could change it all.

Even now, I could be still again.

I could choose silence.

Even now.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

someday, in your most insecure hour,

when you feel like maybe your life

is some sort of a cosmic mistake,

I want you to close your eyes

and imagine that you are holding

your newborn self in your arms.

feel the heat of your baby skin press up

against your present-day bare chest.

notice how your two heartbeats

take turns keeping the rhythm

between the person you were born

to be and the person who you are now. 

if you listen to those two heartbeats

for long enough

you will hear a voice whispering to you

and you will recognize it

as the Voice of Love.  

it is saying:

"you are born of miracle

   to be a miracle

to someday return to miracle"

my love,

in that moment

look down at your

tiny form

while the voice reminds you of your

~worth

~dignity

~significance

~value

~goodness

feel how the doubt you have

in yourself will start to

soften like butter sitting

in the sun.

this plague of insecurity

has been preying on how exhausted

this modern world makes us all feel.

but - it has one weakness:

  our lives

(however we got here)

are a miracle

and if we try our best to honor

the marvel of our existence

our insecurities will have

no choice but to let

go of our singing throats.

~ no, it won't happen right away

but the more time you spend

with your newborn self

listening to the Voice of Love

you will remember

what a wonder child

of creation you have always been.

~ john roedel

Gentle

I want to be held by each moment

as the arms of branches cradle a nest, 

as the center of that nest, lined with 

the cottony seeds of milkweed, creates 

a cushion for eggs, for the hunger

of hatchlings. I want to make of each 

passing minute a safe place for myself 

and everyone around me, twig by twig 

building a life that shelters others beneath 

my strong wings. I want to seek only 

what feeds us, what softens the world- 

like thistledown, like clipped grass, 

like feathers plucked from the underside 

of my own body.

--James Crews

Self-Care

Some days it feels like a foreign language

I’m asked to practice, with new words

for happiness, work, and love. I’m still learning

how to say: a cup of tea for no reason,

what to call the extra honey I drizzle in,

how to label the relentless urge to do more

and more as poison. And how to translate

the heart’s pounding message when it comes:

enough, enough. This morning, I search for words

to capture the glimmering sun as it lifts

above the mountains, clouds already closing in

as fat droplets of rain darken the deck.

I’m learning to call this stillness self-care too,

just standing here, watching goldfinches

scatter up from around the feeder like pieces

of bright yellow stained-glass, reassembling

in the sheltering arms of a maple.

--James Crews

A Map to the Next World

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was

once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

-Joy Harjo

Every day priests minutely examine the Dharma

and endlessly chant complicated sutras.

Before doing that, though,

they should learn how to read the love letters

sent by the wind and the rain,

the snow and the moon.

---

A meal of fresh octopus:

lots of arms, just like Kannon the Goddess

Sacrificed for me, garnished with citron--I revere it so!

The taste of the sea, just divine!

Sorry, Buddha,

this is another precept

I just cannot keep.

---

My real dwelling

has no pillars

and no roof either

so rain cannot soak it

and wind cannot blow it down.

---

Even if I were a god or a buddha you'd be on my mind.

I sit beneath the lamp, a skinny monk chanting love songs.

The fierce autumn wind nearly bowls me over

and my heart is choked with thick clouds.

---

Day and night I cannot keep you out of my thoughts.

In the darkness, on an empty bed, the longing deepens.

I dream of us joining hands, exchanging words of love.

But then the dawn bell

shatters my reverie

and rends my heart.

from "Wild Ways: Zen poems of Ikkyu"