The Only Prayer

Because there was nothing else to do,

and the news frightened me as usual,

I took a walk on my favorite trail

in the woods, and because the snow

began to melt as soon as it fell,

everything was wet—the lichen a bright

lime-green on the bark of each fallen tree,

the leaves beneath my feet deliciously

soft as they squelched and sank back

into the arms of the earth that shaped them. 

I picked up one of the limp, gold-

toned beech leaves, pressed it to my chest 

then left my despair on a mossy trunk,

like placing a lit candle on an altar

and saying the only prayer that matters:

I'm here, I’m here, I’m here.

—James Crews

Skiing into the Storm

I love the days when it feels right

not to turn from the storm

but to move deeper in,

when the body doesn’t shy

from the cold and wind,

when the smile arrives

as the storm magnifies

and a whoop rises from the lungs

like a fierce and hardy bird.

What is it in us that feels more alive

in these moments? 

Is it the part that rhymes

with instability,

the untamable part

that knows chaos, too,

is holy? And the gusts

swirl and the chill bites

and the smile

incredibly widens.

-- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Rural Delivery

I never thought we’d end up

Living this far north, love.

Cold blue heaven over our heads,

Quarter moon like chalk on a slate.

This week it’s the art of subtraction

And further erasure that we study.

O the many blanks to ponder

Before the night overtakes us once more

On this lonely stretch of road

Unplowed since this morning;

Mittens raised against the sudden

Blinding gust of wind and snow,

But the mailbox empty. I had to stick

My bare hand all the way in

To make sure this is where we live.

The wonder of it! We retraced our steps

Homeward lit by the same fuel

As the snow glinting in the gloom

Of the early nightfall.

-- Charles Simic

From Selected Poems: 1963-1983.

I Try to Describe the Baby Things

We discover physics like we write poetry – 

marveling at a mystery we already know 

but need the language to explain.

There are so many days I struggle

with words— with focus.

My mind holds awe

like a wasp in a butterfly net.

I fall back on cliches.

I say I feel blessed to be his mother,

even though his hand is on my cheek.

Carried for nine months,

held while crying, while both crying,

and now a choice, a hand, he is trying to tell me—

a new feeling, like a spring robin in the pine trees.

Our capacity for love is always growing 

and so I wonder if that is why the universe expands –

it is filling with the awe we feel for it.

--Leslie J. Anderson

The Lifeline

Here is what I know: when 

that bell tolls again, I 

need to go and make something,

anything: a poem, a pie, a terrible

scarf with my terrible knitting, I 

need to write a letter, remind myself

of any little lifeline around me.

When death sounds, I forget most

of what I learnt before. I go below. 

I compare my echoes with other people’s 

happiness. I carve that hole in my own 

chest again, pull out all my organs once

again, wonder if they’ll ever work again

stuff them back again. Begin. Again.

-- Pádraig Ó Tuama

A Few Words On The Soul

We have a soul at times.

No one’s got it non-stop,

for keeps.

Day after day,

year after year

may pass without it.

Sometimes

it will settle for awhile

only in childhood’s fears and raptures.

Sometimes only in astonishment

that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand

in uphill tasks,

like moving furniture,

or lifting luggage,

or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out

whenever meat needs chopping

or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations

it participates in one,

if even that,

since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,

it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:

it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,

our hustling for a dubious advantage

and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow

aren’t two different feelings for it.

It attends us

only when the two are joined.

We can count on it

when we’re sure of nothing

and curious about everything.

Among the material objects

it favors clocks with pendulums

and mirrors, which keep on working

even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from

or when it’s taking off again,

though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it

but apparently

it needs us

for some reason too.

-- Wislawa Szymborska

 The crucial work of social peace (negotiating peace, organizing peace, facilitating peace, instituting peace) only maintains a superficial and tenuous harmony if there is no on-the-ground commitment to interior peace, the kind that changes lives from the inside out. Countless civil disobedience movements have demonstrated the power of non-violent action when it is steeped in spiritual intention and grounded in a peace that no oppressor can give or take away.

Br. Keith Nelson

Window

Hope makes itself every day

springs up from the tiniest places

No one gives it to us

we just notice it

quiet in the small moment

The 2-year-old 

"kissing the window" he said

because someone he loved

was out there

--Naomi Shihab Nye

How to Survive

Even the will will return again.

Even the love, the wonder.

Darken. The heart

can love this.

And the new moon changing in the maples.

And the grief like black oars in the rafters.

And the branches that have let go

of everything, saying

wait, just stay

in your changes;

you have hated

your one life 

long enough.

Try something wondrous.

Trust it.

--Joseph Fasano

My love

if we just put down our maps for a bit

and walk straight into the 

backcountry of our hearts

We will both be amazed by

what wonders 

we wander into.

--john roedel

Urgent Message to a Friend in Pain

I have to tell you

a little thing about living

(I know, I know, but hear me),

a little thing I've carried

in the dark:

Remember when you saw the stars of childhood,

when you knelt alone and thought

that they were there for you,

lamps that something held

to prove your beauty?

They are they are they are they

are they are.

--Joseph Fasano

 Make the ordinary come alive. The extraordinary will take care of itself

--William Martin

On the Train to Hospice Care

If every earthly body earns its trip into the dark,

then I would like to be there with you

when you turn your face away from the light

and say what you will say to the darkness--

perhaps prepared, perhaps words you never thought 

you would say--and I would like to be the one

leaning down and whispering into your ear,

into the last scrap of you that can hear me,

words you never heard in this life, from yourself or 

from the wind or from another, I would like to say

you are doing fine, you are doing this perfectly.

--Joseph Fasano

Questions for the New Year

Why not believe in magic?

Can I soften? Can I soften some more?

Does truth exist? How are stones alive?

What if I never learn

what happens when we die?

What's the next nice thing 

I can do for someone else?

What's for breakfast? What's at stake?

When I dream of my beloveds, is it them?

Where am I in my own way?

How might I be more river, less dam?

Which comes first, forgiveness or the peace?

Which comes last, unknowing or the known?

What is love? What is now? What is home?

What is it in us that knows how to wonder?

What is it in us that knows how to grow?

Who are we really? What is courage?

What's worth it? What's asked of me now?

Should I be in this moment a blade or a bloom?

What's the nature of higher ground?

Can I ask without longing for answers?

Can I feel I am one with it all?

How does life live through me?

Can I be in service to that?

What do I believe I can't give away?

What if I say nothing and listen?

Will I choose awe today?

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Jenta: Conqueror

I was forever getting lost

until one day the Buddha told me

To walk this Path,

you will need seven friends –

Mindfulness, curiosity,

courage, joy,

calm, stillness,

and perspective.

For many years, these friends and I have travelled together.

Sometimes wandering in circles.

Sometimes taking the long way around.

There were days when I thought I couldn’t go on.

There were days when I thought I was finally beaten.

It’s scary to give all of yourself to just one thing.

What if you don’t make it?

Oh my heart.

You don’t have to go it alone.

Train yourself 

to train 

just 

a little 

more gently.

--Matty Weingast, "The first free women"

Mittakali - Friend of the dark

I was always smart.

If the Path was good,

I figured it would make me 

even smarter.

One night while meditating,

I watched my thoughts

piling themselves up 

all around me.

My mind built a house

out of all those thoughts -- 

then filled that house.

Soon it was a whole city.

A whole world.

Oh, my beautiful, beautiful thoughts.

Who will look after you after I'm gone?

I swear I could weep.

I could weep for all of you.

My sisters. 

Do you really want to be free?

Are you ready to leave behind

all your precious little houses--

and make your home everywhere?

It's not as hard as you might think.

First stand up.

Then walk out the door.

--Matty Weingast, The First Free Women

Future Home of the Living God

We are so brief.

A one-day dandelion.

A seedpod skittering across the ice.

We are a feather falling from the wing of a bird.

I don't know why it is given to us to be so

mortal and to feel so much.

It is a cruel trick, and glorious.

 

--Louise Erdrich 

Since I’m not sure of the address to which to send my gratitude, I put it out there in everything I do.

--Michael J. Fox

Awe

It’s a shiver that climbs the trellis

of the spine, each tingle a bright white

morning glory breaking into blossom

beneath the skin. It can happen anywhere,

anytime, even finding this sleeve of ice

worn by a branch all morning, now fallen

on a bed of snow. You can choose to pause,

pick it up, hold the cold thing in your hand

or not. Few tell us that wonder and awe

are decisions we make daily, hourly,

minute by minute in the tiny offices

of the heart—tilting the head to look up

at every tree turned into a chandelier

by light striking ice in just the right way.

--James Crews

A House Called Tomorrow

You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen—

You are a hundred wild centuries

And fifteen, bringing with you

In every breath and in every step

Everyone who has come before you,

All the yous that you have been,

The mothers of your mother,

The fathers of your father.

If someone in your family tree was trouble,

A hundred were not:

The bad do not win—not finally,

No matter how loud they are.

We simply would not be here

If that were so.

You are made, fundamentally, from the good.

With this knowledge, you never march alone.

You are the breaking news of the century.

You are the good who has come forward

Through it all, even if so many days

Feel otherwise.  But think:

When you as a child learned to speak,

It’s not that you didn’t know words—

It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,

And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.

From those centuries we human beings bring with us

The simple solutions and songs,

The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies

All in service to a simple idea:

That we can make a house called tomorrow.

What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day,

Is ourselves.  And that’s all we need

To start.  That’s everything we require to keep going.

Look back only for as long as you must,

Then go forward into the history you will make.

Be good, then better.  Write books.  Cure disease.

Make us proud.  Make yourself proud.

And those who came before you?  When you hear thunder,

Hear it as their applause.

--Alberto Ríos

January

Of course it's to be expected:

the dim light and early dark

and the endless days of rain.

And if the week of brutal cold 

wasn't what you signed up for,

well, it's what you got,

so might as well make the best of it.

Other people got blizzards,

and friends have flooded basements

or days without power

or lost everything to wind-whipped 

wildfire. Of course, there's nothing

less comforting than the notion

that others have it worse.

Misery doesn't love company, 

it just spreads like an oil slick

across the dull land, and we

have moved on from terror

to a cranky ennui. But one day

last week the clouds lifted,

and there was the mountain, shining

in all its snow-clad glory.

My breath caught to remember

that what I see is not 

the sum of what is there.

--Lynn Ungar

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.

He went flying down the river in his boat

with his video camera to his eye, making

a moving picture of the moving river

upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly 

toward the end of his vacation. He showed 

his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,

preserving it forever: the river, the trees, 

the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat

behind which he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was having it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.

--Wendell Berry

One of the mighty illusions in our culture is that all pain is a negation of worthiness: that the real chosen people, the real worthy people, are the people who are most free from pain. 

--bell hooks

Be patient with everyone, but above all, with yourself. I mean, do not he disheartened by your imperfections, but always rise up with fresh courage. I am glad you make a fresh beginning daily. There is no better means of attainment to the spiritual life than by continually beginning again, and never thinking that we have done enough. How are we to be patient in dealing with our neighbor's faults if we are impatient in dealing with our own. He who is fretted by his own failings will not correct them. All profitable correction comes from a calm and peaceful mind.

--Saint Francis de Sales

Vira - Hero

Truly strong

among those 

who think themselves 

strong.

Truly unafraid

among those 

who hide their

fear.

A hero

among those

who talk of heroes.

Don't be fooled by outward signs--

lifting heavy things

or picking fights with weaker opponents

and running headfirst into battle.

A real hero 

walks the Path

to its end.

Then shows others the way.

--from The first free women, by Matty Weingast