___________________________________________
Father’s Day
Now I could rattle off a list a mile long
of all the things I got from Dad
I wish I hadn’t: shame and bruises,
this miserable stain of inadequacy,
a defensive streak a mile long.
And there is even a longer list
of all the things I wanted from Dad
and never got: impulsive offers of love,
a quiet shoulder to hang on, a hug in the dark,
the sweet nod of reassuring pride.
But despite all this, and maybe really because,
I grew up just fine and love my brilliant life.
Some gifts are delivered in twisted ways.
Thank you Dad for courage-sparked fire.
And formed from rigid lines in your sand,
a clarity I count on at every fork in the road.
And finally, sitting by your side
in the soft waning light of numbered days,
this bone naked compassion reflected
weary blue in your watery eyes.
bella 6-15-13
___________________________________________
Memorial Day
Grandpa was conscripted by the czar,
marched to the battle beat before
desperately herding his fledglings
to the dream shore of America.
My father was a bombardier
loyally perched in the womb of a P-38
gunning the faceless to kingdom come,
burning visions haunt his bedroom still.
Me? I sat silent in slick university halls,
paraded in hope-filled San Francisco streets
outraged at senseless carnage déjà vu,
my high school heart-throb stolen.
Now Memorial Day transpires once more
and I remember the sacrifice of youth and
the ancient lineage of wounded fathers passing
this mortal legacy through time immemorial.
In a world where drones fly and grandmothers cry
where collateral damage parades as logic
and home security trumps daily sanity,
we pray for peace, instead of fighting for it.
bella May 26, 2013
___________________________________________
All The Hemispheres
Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
~ Hafiz ~
_____________________________________________
The PLUM TREES by Mary Oliver
Such richness flowing
through the branches of summer and into
the body, carried inward on the five
rivers! Disorder and astonishment
rattle your thoughts and your heart
cries for rest but don’t
succumb, there’s nothing
so sensible as sensual inundation. Joy
is a taste before
it’s anything else, and the body
can lounge for hours devouring
the important moments. Listen,
the only way
to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking it
into the body first, like small
wild plums.
_____________________________________________
What We Want
What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names–
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don’t remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.
~ Linda Pastan ~
_____________________________________________
If i can’t do
what i want to do
then my job is to not
do what i don’t want
to do
It’s not the same thing
but it’s the best i can
do
If i can’t have
what i want . . . then
my job is to want
what i’ve got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more to want
Since i can’t go
where i need
to go . . . then i must . . . go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn’t lateral
When i can’t express
what i really feel
i practice feeling
what i can express
and none of it is equal
I know
but that’s why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry
Nikki Giovanni
_______________________________________________
SPRING
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge
to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else
my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its cities,
it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;
all day I think of her -—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.
Mary Oliver
_______________________________________________
The Fire
Listen, I’ve light
in my eyes
and on my skin
the warmth of a star, so strange
is this
that I
can barely comprehend it:
I think
I’ll lift my face to it, and then
I lift my face,
and don’t even know how
this is done. And
everything alive
(and everything’s
alive) is turning
into something else
as at the heart
of some annihilating
or is it creating
fire
that’s burning, unseeably, always
burning at such speeds
as eyes cannot
detect, just try
to observe your own face
growing old
in the mirror, or
is it beginning
to be born?
~ Franz Wright ~
_______________________________________________
Things to Think
Think in ways you’ve never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.
Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.
When someone knocks on the door,
Think that he’s about
To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time,
Or that it’s been decided that if you lie down no one will die.
~ Robert Bly ~
_______________________________________________
Some say you’re lucky
If nothing shatters it.
But then you wouldn’t
Understand poems or songs.
You’d never know
Beauty comes from loss.
It’s deep inside every person:
A tear tinier
Than a pearl or thorn.
It’s one of the places
Where the beloved is born.
~ Gregory Orr ~
_______________________________________________
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
David Wagoner
_______________________________________________
Blessing in the Chaos
To all that is chaotic
in you,
let there come silence.
Let there be
a calming
of the clamoring,
a stilling
of the voices that
have laid their claim
on you,
that have made their
home in you,
that go with you
even to the
holy places
but will not
let you rest,
will not let you
hear your life
with wholeness
or feel the grace
that fashioned you.
Let what distracts you
cease.
Let what divides you
cease.
Let there come an end
to what diminishes
and demeans,
and let depart
all that keeps you
in its cage.
Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath
the chaos,
where you find
the peace
you did not think
possible
and see what shimmers
within the storm.
Jan Richardson
_______________________________________________
IF YOU KNEW
By Ellen Bass
What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.
A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?
_______________________________________________
At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards;
at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline.
Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance,
and there is only the dance.
~ T.S. Eliot ~
________________________________________________
I AM AN EMOTIONAL CREATURE
I love being a girl.
I can feel what you’re feeling
as you’re feeling it inside
the feeling before.
I am an emotional creature.
Things do not come to me
as intellectual theories or hard-shaped ideas.
They pulse through my organs and legs
and burn up my ears.
I know when your girlfriend’s really pissed off
even though she appears to give you what
you want.
I know when a storm is coming.
I can feel the invisible stirrings in the air.
I can tell you he won’t call back.
It’s a vibe I share.
I am an emotional creature.
I love that I do not take things lightly.
Everything is intense to me.
The way I walk in the street.
The way my mother wakes me up.
The way I hear bad news.
The way it’s unbearable when I lose.
I am an emotional creature.
I am connected to everything and everyone.
I was born like that.
Don’t you dare say all negative that it’s a
teenage thing
or it’s only only because I’m a girl.
These feelings make me better.
They make me ready.
They make me present.
They make me strong.
I am an emotional creature.
There is a particular way of knowing.
It’s like the older women somehow forgot.
I rejoice that it’s still in my body.
I know when the coconut’s about to fall.
I know that we’ve pushed the earth too far.
I know my father isn’t coming back.
That no one’s prepared for the fire.
I know that lipstick means
more than show.
I know that boys feel super-insecure
and so-called terrorists are made, not born.
I know that one kiss can take
away all my decision-making ability
and sometimes, you know, it should.
This is not extreme.
It’s a girl thing.
What we would all be
if the big door inside us flew open.
Don’t tell me not to cry.
To calm it down
Not to be so extreme
To be reasonable.
I am an emotional creature.
It’s how the earth got made.
How the wind continues to pollinate.
You don’t tell the Atlantic ocean
to behave.
I am an emotional creature.
Why would you want to shut me down
or turn me off?
I am your remaining memory.
I am connecting you to your source.
Nothing’s been diluted.
Nothing’s leaked out.
I can take you back.
I love that I can feel the inside
of the feelings in you,
even if it stops my life
even if it hurts too much
or takes me off track
even if it breaks my heart.
It makes me responsible.
I am an emotional
I am an emotional, devotional,
incandotional, creature.
And I love, hear me,
love love love
being a girl.
Eve Ensler
________________________________________________
Enough.
These few words are enough.
If not these words,
this breath.
If not this breath,
this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again,
until now.
Until now.
David Whyte
________________________________________________
THAT LIVES IN US
If you put your hands on this oar with me,
they will never harm another,
and they will come to find
they hold everything you want.
If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer
lift anything to your mouth
that might wound your precious land –
that sacred earth that is your body.
If you put your soul against this oar with me,
the power that made the universe will enter your sinew
from a source not outside your limbs,
but from a holy realm that lives in us.
Exuberant is existence, time a husk.
When the moment cracks open,
ecstasy leaps out and devours space;
love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.
Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and the future?
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.
Be kind to yourself, dear – to our innocent follies.
Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.
You will come to see that all evolves us.
~ Rumi
________________________________________________
Of Being
I know this happiness
is provisional:
the looming presences
great suffering, great fear
withdraw only
into peripheral vision:
but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:
this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:
this need to dance,
this need to kneel:
this mystery:
~ Denise Levertov ~
________________________________________________
Always we hope
someone else has the answer.
some other place will be better,
some other time it will all turn out.
This is it.
no one else has the answer.
no other place will be better,
and it has already turned out.
At the center of your being
you have the answer;
you know who you are
and you know what you want.
There is no need
to run outside
for better seeing.
Nor to peer from a window.
Rather abide at the center of your being;
for the more you leave it, the less you learn.
Search your heart
and see
the way to do
is to be.
–Lao Tzu
________________________________________________
Trust your wound to a teacher’s surgery.
Flies collect on a wound.
They cover it,
those flies of your self-protecting feelings,
your love for what you think is yours.
Let a Teacher wave away the flies
and put a plaster on the wound.
Don’t turn your head.
Keep looking
at the bandaged place.
That’s where
the light enters you.
And don’t believe for a moment
that you’re healing yourself.
Rumi
________________________________________________
All the True Vows
All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.
There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.
Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don’t turn your face away.
Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.
Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen
nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.
By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.
Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,
it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.
Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you
and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,
that way you’ll find
what is real and what is not.
I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.
Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years
in my own voice,
before it was too late
to turn my face again.
David Whyte
________________________________________________
It’s not magic; it isn’t a trick.
Every breath is a resurrection.
And when we hear the poem
which is the world, when our eyes
gaze at the beloved’s body,
we’re reborn in all the sacred parts
of our own bodies:
the heart
contracts, the brain
releases its shower
of sparks,
and the tear
embarks on its pilgrimage
down the cheek to meet
the smiling mouth.
Gregory Orr
________________________________________________
The Gift
Our
Union is like this.
You feel cold
So I reach for a blanket to cover
Our shivering feet.
A hunger comes into your body
So I run to my garden
And start digging potatoes.
You ask for a few words of comfort and guidance,
I quickly kneel at your side offering you
This whole book—
As a gift.
You ache with loneliness one night
So much you weep
And I say,
Here’s a rope,
Tie it around me,
Hafiz
Will be your companion
For life.
________________________________________________
Decades
When I lost my mom, nigh on 30 years ago,
I lost my champion, my woman guidess,
my model for all things good and some things bad,
my pink blankie.
Losing all this snapped shackles from my feet,
then swept the ground out from under them.
Set me free from “what would mom say?”
Spun me 20 years: wife, mother, business tycooness,
two decades of nose-coasting grindstone,
“wouldn’t mom be proud?” years,
ironic footnote in a domestic chapter.
I missed my mom dearly and less and less,
only sometimes taking solace
in the fuzzy warmth of her heart space.
Then children flew away one by one
and I landed in their vacated space,
both feet in the ground, dancing toward freedom,
a decade of wild wanton witchery,
abandon mixed with daring discipline.
This Gabrielle mom reached out,
yanked me from mundane, insisted that I grow up,
resurrect my hippie dreams,
remember when everything was clear
about peace, love, understanding,
stripped me spit raw.
Now she leaves me on this unescorted trail,
a tribe set wandering forty desert days,
wild sad abandon, alone again,
spirit flying free, unfettered expression,
full, alive still and dancing.
bella Oct 22, 2012
___________________________________________________
Om Namah Shivaya
Salutations black-winged mama
who ripped me from my sleepy bed
and tenderly cast me into mystery
who pierced me with exacting demands
and nudged me over successive precipices
Salutations to all that I am becoming
Salutations to all that you are becoming
Salutations to all that tribe is becoming
Keep walking the void by my side
our feet haunting empty space together
steeped in this final dance
Salutations black-winged mama
bella October 18, 2012
___________________________________________________
Only This Water Falling
Here, where water falls relentless,
I breathe in each spray-arising thought,
breathe out and let the following go:
a memorial cascade to the mundane
and the exquisite,
an infinite splash
in rippled reflection.
My world, self-formed box after box,
cramping constructs that hold me back.
From what? This, this letting go,
these snapshots of cycling life.
I miss an eternity in the daily drivel.
Here in precious disconnect
I breathe in the essence
capable of pinning me
to this sacred seat, staying put,
exhaling, no where to go.
I dream of forgetting,
calmly explaining to each faceless being
how my memory is on the loose,
fortelling whisper of release
from this single-minded slavery.
Aaah to forget,
unleash what has gone,
bathe not in the coming waters…
only this, only this, only this.
bella August 28, 2012
___________________________________________________
Not Here
There’s courage involved if you want
to become truth. There is a broken-
open place in a lover. Where are
those qualities of bravery and sharp
compassion in this group? What’s the
use of old and frozen thought? I want
a howling hurt. This is not a treasury
where gold is stored; this is for copper.
We alchemists look for talent that
can heat up and change. Lukewarm
won’t do. Halfhearted holding back,
well-enough getting by? Not here.
–Rumi
___________________________________________________
I created this poetry based on the prose from an interview with Ran Ortner in the June 2012 Sun Magazine. My apologies to this amazing artist if in anyway I misinterpreted his words as they made their way into a poem. Ortner paints incredible oceanic landscapes and you can get a sense of the work (but not the incredible scale!) at http://www.ranortner.com/#home/
“We name ourselves as either
mountain or ocean people.
Those who heave up
with tectonic plate collision
and then erode down,
are not so different
as those whose waves rise and crumble.
Just different timelines.
Waves break in synchronicity
with the beating of our hearts,
the in and out of our very breath.
Ocean: the collision of life with death.
Each wave rising, life insisting on itself,
and in the trough, a glimpse of death.
Highs and lows of the large dance of
lament and generosity.
The waves keep arriving,
forces endlessly working back and forth.
In the sea, all the paradox of life:
arriving in a surge, waves peak in masculinity,
then shape themselves into tube, into womb.
Devastatingly brutal, tempest and dark death,
the waters will pummel you, chew you up.
In the next moment: luminous, delicate, tender.
Out of this ancient body, pulsing energy emerges,
a metronome constantly marking the Now.
We clean our wounds here in the reflection
of our own impossible nature.
________________________________________________
in the ether
Indeed it is hard to have no grounding,
no specific interest, no intention,
no understanding of what one is,
or what one is supposed to be.
There is no certainty to begin with,
no orientation point,
only the vast amorphous madness of being,
whipping and spinning us about
from impossibility to impossibility,
never touching down,
but blowing us hither and thither,
like winds driven and tossed in the wind.
Hard indeed to follow the course we cannot avoid taking.
Ah, how the spirit soars
at the expense of its footing,
though we must cease to be petrified,
as the world drops mercilessly out from under our feet.
Drifting, and self-forgotten,
fluid in infinity,
we groove into the chaos.
Swerving into the pleroma,
we rejoin the legion of cosmic wanderers.
Yea, though we fall and fall and fall,
struggling every unpredictable step of the way,
eventually we become more adept at living out of balance
…as seamen will tell you.
Jack Haas
_________________________________________________
Hawks
Surely, you too have longed for this –
to pour yourself out
on the rising circles of the air
to ride, unthinking,
on the flesh of emptiness.
Can you claim, in your civilized life,
that you have never leaned toward
the headlong dive, the snap of bones,
the chance to be so terrible,
so free from evil, beyond choice?
The air that they are riding
is the same breath as your own.
How could you not remember?
That same swift stillness binds
your cells in balance, rushes
through the pulsing circles of your blood.
Each breath proclaims it –
the flash of feathers, the chance to rest
on such a muscled quietness,
to be in that fierce presence,
wholly wind, wholly wild.
~ Lynn Ungar
__________________________________________________
What Is There Beyond Knowing?
What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me? I can’t
turn in any direction
but it’s there. I don’t mean
the leaves’ grip and shine or even the thrush’s
silk song, but the far-off
fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven’s slowly turning
theater of light, or the wind
playful with its breath;
or time that’s always rushing forward,
or standing still
in the same — what shall I say –
moment.
What I know
I could put into a pack
as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder,
important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained
and unexplainable. How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly
to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.
But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing
in and out. Life so far doesn’t have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.
If there’s a temple, I haven’t found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass
and the weeds.
~ Mary Oliver ~
____________________________________________________
Sunrise
You can under the lashes
die for it– of my own eyes, and I thought
an idea, I am so many!
or the world. People
What is my name?
have done so,
brilliantly, What is the name
letting of the deep breath I would take
their small bodies be bound over and over
for all of us? Call it
to the stake,
creating whatever you want, it is
an unforgettable happiness, it is another one
fury of light. But of the ways to enter fire.
fire.
this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar Mary Oliver
fabric of dawn, I thought
of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
ON A DAY WHEN THE WIND IS PERFECT Rumi
On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open
and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a day.
My eyes are like the sun
that makes promises;
the promise of life
that it always
keeps each morning.
The living heart
gives to us as does that luminous sphere,
both caress the earth with great
tenderness.
This is a breeze that can enter the soul.
This love I know plays a drum.
Arms move around me;
who can contain their self before my beauty?
Peace is wonderful,
but ecstatic dance is more fun, and less narcissistic;
gregarious He makes our lips.
On a day when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open
and the love starts.
Today is such a day.
_____________________________________________________
Gravity’s Law
How surely gravity’s law
strong as an ocean current
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing—
each stone, blossom, child—
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrender
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things.
Because they are in God’s heart
they have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall patiently,
to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
Rilke
_____________________________________________________
Elements Encompassed
East winds blow through
this heart, birthed in
innocence, alive with
first lung full of air,
lifetime of breath.
Deep to this solar plexus
south side fires evoke
a wild youth, passionate
sun drenched days,
star studded spirit.
We bow at the west bank,
all grown now, water
splashes into a patient
pelvic bowl. Blood and sweat,
fluid creeks running.
Finally, a turn north,
feet firm on this earth,
bones planted deep in dirt,
feeding all rooted here,
wisdom before dust.
Bella 6-9-12
_____________________________________________________
Mysteries, Yes
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
~ Mary Oliver _____________________________________________________
I am the Coloma witch
I haunt these aged floors
I mine the charged air
for the tinctures
for the potions
for the spells
that will cast
the scars of the pack
that will reveal
the pungent truth
that will strip
the deepest skin
I will stop at nothing
in my appetite
for every soul
to step up to
this precious plate
this steaming cauldron
this tasty brew
the time is always now
the time is always now
the time is always now
bella 5-23-12
_____________________________________________________
Instructions
Give up the world; give up self; finally, give up God.
Find god in rhododendrons and rocks,
passers-by, your cat.
Pare your beliefs, your absolutes.
Make it simple; make it clean.
No carry-on luggage allowed.
Examine all you have
with a loving and critical eye, then
throw away some more.
Repeat. Repeat.
Keep this and only this:
what your heart beats loudly for
what feels heavy and full in your gut.
There will only be one or two
things you will keep,
and they will fit lightly
in your pocket.
~ Sheri Hostetler _____________________________________________________
The Line Dance
On the north side
the bleachers echo
with antiquity’s cheer,
so I dance my rapture for you,
those loves who went before
that can dance no more.
And I beat my hips for those
who came before them,
stretching back so far
I am time dizzy,
but I keep the beat anyway
until there is only a blue brown swirl
and just one bird counting
on me to spin the light.
And in the south
the pulse of children’s feet
tapping out their rhythms
on the dirt
for they keep the cadence for me
when I am finally still.
We twirl in sky dirt light,
weaving our way across
an endless floor:
the ancestors and me,
the children, the bird,
the everlasting dance.
October 2003
Bella…..Hawaii
_____________________________________________________
God give us rain when we expect sun.
Give us music when we expect trouble.
Give us tears when we expect breakfast.
Give us dreams when we expect a storm.
Give us a stray dog when we expect congratulations.
God play with us, turn us sideways and around
~ Leunig ~
_____________________________________________________
Krishnamurti said “Truth is a pathless land.”
And I say I can practice
on the road to this land
but all the places
where there are clear markers
will finally fade away
and there will be no sign posts,
there will be no arrows,
only a sensitive gut
honed by years of form.
Inside my body
inquiries regarding need
orient me toward truth,
the place where form informs
and never dictates.
And when the path is
paved in pulse and passion
I can drop it down
or turn to it any time
I lose my way.
But plans, by definition,
cannot be truth:
they live in the future and
truth doesn’t travel there.
When I lose my grip,
this fog of delusion
clears enough to see
that a particular path
will never deliver us
to pathless lands.
bella 4-25-12
_____________________________________________________
Easter Exultet by James Broughton
Shake out your qualms.
Shake up your dreams.
Deepen your roots.
Extend your branches.
Trust deep water
and head for the open,
even if your vision
shipwrecks you.
Quit your addiction
to sneer and complain.
Open a lookout.
Dance on a brink.
Run with your wildfire.
You are closer to glory
leaping an abyss
than upholstering a rut.
Not dawdling.
Not doubting.
Intrepid all the way
Walk toward clarity.
At every crossroad
Be prepared
to bump into wonder.
Only love prevails.
En route to disaster
insist on canticles.
Lift your ineffable
out of the mundane.
Nothing perishes;
nothing survives;
everything transforms!
Honeymoon with Big Joy!
_____________________________________________________
Where Everything Is Music / Rumi
Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.
So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.
This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.
Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!
They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.
Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.
_____________________________________________________
Hymn to the Sacred Body of the Universe
by Drew Dillinger
Let’s meet at the confluence where you flow into me
and one breath swirls between our lungs.
Let’s meet at the confluence where you flow into me
and one breath swirls between our lungs.
For one instant to dwell in the presence of the galaxies.
For one instant to live in the truth of the heart.
The poet says this entire traveling cosmos is the secret one, slowly growing a body.
Two eagles are mating, clasping each other’s claws and turning cartwheels in the sky.
Grasses are blooming, grandfathers dying, consciousness blinking on and off; all of this is happening at once.
All of this, vibrating into existence, out of nothingness.
Every particle foaming into existence, transcribing the ineffable.
Arising and passing away, arising and passing away, 23 trillion times per second. When Buddha saw that, he smiled.
16 million tons of rain are falling every second on the planet.
An ocean, perpetually falling, and every drop is your body.
Every motion, every feather, every thought is your body.
Time is your body.
And the infinite, curled inside like invisible rainbows folded into light,
Every word of every tongue is love telling a story to her own ears.
Let our lives be incense burning like a hymn to the sacred body of the universe. My religion is rain. My religion is stone.
My religion reveals itself to me in sweaty epiphanies.
Every leaf, every river, every animal, your body.
Every creature trapped in the gears of corporate nightmares.
Every species made extinct was once your body.
Ten million people are dreaming that they’re flying.
Junipers and violets are blossoming.
Stars exploding and being born.
God is having deja vu.
I am one elaborate crush.
We cry petals as the void is singing.
You are the dark that holds the stars in intimate distance
that spun the whirling, whirling world into existence.
Let’s meet at the confluence where you flow into me
and one breath swirls between our lungs.
_____________________________________________________
My friends, let’s grow up.
Let’s stop pretending we don’t know the deal here.
Or if we truly haven’t noticed, let’s wake up and notice.
Look: everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It’s simple–how could we have missed it for so long?
Let’s grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings,
But please, let’s not be so shocked by them.
Let’s not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.
Impermanence is life’s only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.
To a child she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
And her compassion is exquisitely precise:
Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
She strips away the unreal to show us the real.
This is the true ride — let’s give ourselves to it!
Let’s stop making deals for a safe passage:
There isn’t one anyway, and the cost is too high.
We are not children any more.
The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.
Let’s dance the wild dance of no hope!
The Dakini Speaks
by Jennifer Welwood
_____________________________________________________
Such Singing in the Wild Branches
It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves -
then I saw him clutching the limb
in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still
and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness -
and that’s when it happened,
when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree -
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,
and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward
like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing -
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed
not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky – all, all of them
were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t last
for more than a few moments.
It’s one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,
is that, once you’ve been there,
you’re there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?
Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then – open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.
~ Mary Oliver ~
_____________________________________________________
On the Way to Kingdom Come
Clearly and fearlessly I’ll speak truth
abiding in a cradle of compassion,
a basket woven from ribbons of human predicament.
I’ll sing of the plight of this flesh and blood,
this finite silken web,
suspended for an inkling in winds of time.
The starless void nips at our heels
yet we turn away
at any hint of gloom or doom.
We are learning to return home again and again
until we can step
through the door in a single breath
and not only in the moments when everything
is just so. Ease only points
her arrow toward the pulse of presence.
It will take one hundred echoes to answer
the river’s call.
Only then will we soften into wakefulness
and dance our way to kingdom come,
voraciously alive.
bella 3-10-12
_____________________________________________________
Emerge
I live in this earth bound body
Every breath roots me
Feet glide easy on the land
I feel my heart beat, hips pulse
Breath of fire
Hot threads connect me and you
I shake out my mind
Empty every breath
Dissolve in this ocean
earth bound body heart beat empty mind
break loose now
shackled soul
ask the million dollar question
Why are we here?
Why are you here?
Why am I here?
Bella 2-15-12
______________________________________________________
Funny
What’s it like to be a human
the bird asked
I myself don’t know
it’s being held prisoner by your skin
while reaching infinity
being a captive of your scrap of time
while touching eternity
being hopelessly uncertain
and helplessly hopeful
being a needle of frost
and a handful of heat
breathing in the air
and choking wordlessly
it’s being on fire
with a nest made of ashes
eating bread
while filling up on hunger
it’s dying without love
it’s loving through death
That’s funny said the bird
and flew effortlessly up into the air
~ Anna Kamienska
______________________________________________________
If prayer would do it
If prayer would do it
I’d pray.
If reading esteemed thinkers would do it
I’d be halfway through the Patriarchs.
If discourse would do it
I’d be sitting with His Holiness
every moment he was free.
If contemplation would do it
I’d have translated the Periodic Table
to hermit poems, converting
matter to spirit.
If even fighting would do it
I’d already be a blackbelt.
If anything other than love could do it
I’ve done it already
and left the hardest for last.
~ Stephen Levine ~
______________________________________________________
The great affair, the love affair with life,
is to live as variously as possible,
to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred,
climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day.
Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding,
and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours,
life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length.
It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery,
but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.
~ Diane Ackerman ~
(“found poetry” from A Natural History of the Senses)
______________________________________________________
Encounter
We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.
And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.
That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.
O my love, where are they, where are they going?
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.
~ Czeslaw Milosz _______________________________________________________
Gravity’s Law
How surely gravity’s law
strong as an ocean current
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing—
each stone, blossom, child—
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrender
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things.
Because they are in God’s heart
they have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall patiently,
to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
Rilke
_______________________________________________________
At Blackwater Pond
At Blackwater Pond
the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?
Mary Oliver
________________________________________________________
THE ONE BEING DANCED
Let these words be a whirling dervish, then!
I am unraveled beyond what naked means.
There is simply no place for “me”
when The One
wants so clearly to dance!
So I acquiesce,
and the words present themselves behind my heart
like an ocean of songs
that will not be tamed no matter who
The One Being Danced
thought she was.
em claire
________________________________________________________
Mind Wanting More
Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and
there. Birds reluctant to fly.
The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.
But the mind always
wants more than it has –
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses — as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren’t enough,
as if joy weren’t strewn all around.
~ Holly Hughes ~
_________________________________________________________
THE SUNRISE RUBY by Rumi
In the early morning hour,
just before dawn, lover and beloved wake
and take a drink of water.
She asks, “Do you love me or yourself more?
Really, tell the absolute truth.”
He says, “There is nothing left of me.
I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise.
Is it still a stone, or a world
made of redness? It has no resistance
to sunlight.”
This is how Hallaj said, I am God,
and told the truth!
The ruby and the sunrise are one.
Be courageous and discipline yourself.
Completely become hearing and ear,
and wear this sun-ruby as an earring.
Work. Keep digging your well.
Don’t think about getting off from work.
Water is there somewhere.
Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door.
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.
_________________________________________________________
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 from House of Light
_________________________________________________________
A Cloth of Fine Gold
by Dorothy Walters
You may think
that first lit flame
was the ultimate blaze,
the holy fire
entered at last.
What do you know of furnaces?
This is a sun that returns
again and again, refining, igniting,
pouring your spirit
through a cloth of delicate gold
until all dross is taken
and you are sweet as
clarified butter
in god’s mouth.
_________________________________________________________
A Gift
Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.
~ Denise Levertov ~
_________________________________________________________
For the Sleepwalkers
Tonight I want to say something wonderful
for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith
in their legs, so much faith in the invisible
arrow carved into the carpet, the worn path
that leads to the stairs instead of the window,
the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror.
I love the way that sleepwalkers are willing
to step out of their bodies into the night,
to raise their arms and welcome the darkness,
palming the blank spaces, touching everything.
Always they return home safely, like blind men
who know it is morning by feeling shadows.
And always they wake up as themselves again.
That’s why I want to say something astonishing
like: Our hearts are leaving our bodies.
Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs
flying through the trees at night, soaking up
the darkest beams of moonlight, the music
of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches.
And now our hearts are thick black fists
flying back to the glove of our chests.
We have to learn to trust our hearts like that.
We have to learn the desperate faith of sleep-
walkers who rise out of their calm beds
and walk through the skin of another life.
We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness
and wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised.
Edward Hirsch
_________________________________________________________
Talking to God on the Seventh Day by Ruth L. Schwartz
You’re not so sure about this world?
Listen. Take another look:
the joyful reckless
barking dogs, convinced of doom, hysterical,
or only proud to own the yard,
the block, the wind –
the raised welt of their voices
roughening your dreams.
The new leaves slightly bent, like
fingers on guitar,
rippling their chord of twigs –
and the still-bare
slingshot branches,
naked as the tails of rats,
liminal as roots.
The squirrel crushed in the road,
its tail still
waving, in the wind of
passing cars, a flag,
and the blackest of black crows,
breaching the body
with its surgeon beak –
black needles of its feet so pleased
with death,
which is also meat, and life.
Another squirrel, its rapid jaws
muttering around a nut:
My number not up yet not yet bub not yet –
Now tell me why you ever thought
you could improve on this
music, this hunger.
_________________________________________________________
Gravity’s Law
How surely gravity’s law
strong as an ocean current
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing—
each stone, blossom, child—
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrender
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things.
Because they are in God’s heart
they have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall patiently,
to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
Rilke
_________________________________________________________
In Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Mary Oliver
_________________________________________________________
Can You Imagine?
For example, what the trees do
not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer’s night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now – whenever
we’re not looking. Surely you can’t imagine
they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade – surely you can’t imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can’t imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.
Mary Oliver
__________________________________________________________
What I Have Learned So Far
Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.
All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of — indolence, or action.
Be ignited, or be gone.
Mary Oliver
__________________________________________________________
All The Hemispheres
Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
Hafiz
__________________________________________________________
And For No Reason
And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.
And
For no reason
I turn into a leaf
That is carried so high
I kiss the Sun’s mouth
And dissolve.
And
For no reason
A thousand birds
Choose my head for a conference table,
Start passing their
Cups of wine
And their wild songbooks all around.
And
For every reason in existence
I begin to eternally,
To eternally laugh and love!
When I turn into a leaf
And start dancing,
I run to kiss our beautiful Friend
And I dissolve in the Truth
That I Am.
Hafiz
__________________________________________________________
Destined
There is this little girl,
sweet in me,
a little confused
about what is happening
around her:
strong emotions
waft like smoke
through the house,
leaving their morning after haze,
a tincture of fear woven
into the comfort of yarn fuzz
and a closing inward
to the safety of child’s pose.
She wears a cotton pinafore,
checked lavender
tied neatly in the back,
a worn petticoat,
properly waisted,
white anklets encircled
with a flirty ruffle,
mary janes, maybe patent leather,
maybe not.
She knows how to plaster
a big smile over gaping holes
and even then
a body awareness that
in photos
reeks of regal discipline,
when she is not
cowering in a corner.
She misses nothing,
scanning the clues
of her surroundings
with keen obsession.
She is nimble footed,
poised to go out
into the world…
so ill prepared in many ways,
so perfectly prepared in all.
bella
October 15, 2011
__________________________________________________________
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 ~
(The Way It Is)
___________________________________________________________
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver
___________________________________________________________
Fall Song
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back
from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
of unobservable mysteries – roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – how everything lives, shifting
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.
~ Mary Oliver ~
___________________________________________________________
Almost a Conversation
I have not really, not yet, talked with otter
about his life.
He has so many teeth, he has trouble
with vowels.
Wherefore our understanding
is all body expression
he swims like the sleekest fish,
he dives and exhales and lifts a trail of bubbles.
Little by little he trusts my eyes
and my curious body sitting on the shore.
Sometimes he comes close.
I admire his whiskers
and his dark fur which I would rather die than wear.
He has no words, still what he tells about his life
is clear.
He does not own a computer.
He imagines the river will last forever.
He does not envy the dry house I live in.
He does not wonder who or what it is that I worship.
He wonders, morning after morning, that the river
is so cold and fresh and alive, and still
I don’t jump in.
~ Mary Oliver ~
___________________________________________________________
Day Dream
One day people will touch and talk perhaps easily,
And loving be natural as breathing and warm as sunlight,
And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted,
Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers,
Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea,
And work will be simple and swift as a seagull flying,
And play will be casual and quiet as a seagull settling,
And the clocks will stop, and no one will wonder or care or notice,
And people will smile without reason, even in winter, even in the rain.
A. S. J. Tessimond
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Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, XXII
We set the pace.
But this press of time –
take it as a little thing
next to what endures.
All this hurrying
soon will be over.
Only when we tarry
do we touch the holy.
Young ones, don’t waste your courage
racing so fast,
flying so high.
See how all things are at rest –
darkness and morning light,
blossom and book.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~
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I HAVE COME INTO THIS WORLD TO SEE THIS
I have come into this world to see this:
the sword drop from men’s hands even at the height
of their arc of angerbecause we have finally realized
there is just one flesh to wound
and it is His – the Christ’s, our
Beloved’s.
I have come into this world to see this:all creatures hold hands as
we pass through this miraculous existence we share on the way
to even a greater being of soul,
a being of just ecstatic light, forever entwined and at play
with Him.
I have come into this world to hear this:
every song the earth has sung since it was conceived in
the Divine’s womb and began spinning from
His wish,
every song by wing and fin and hoof,
every song by hill and field and tree and woman and child,
every song of stream and rock,
every song of tool and lyre and flute,
every song of gold and emerald
and fire,
every song the heart should cry with magnificent dignity
to know itself as
God:
for all other knowledge will leave us again in want and aching -
only imbibing the glorious Sun
will complete us.
I have come into this world to experience this:
men so true to love
they would rather die before speaking
an unkind
word,
men so true their lives are His covenant -
the promise of
hope.
I have come into this world to see this:
the sword drop from men’s hands
even at the height of
their arc of
rage
because we have finally realized
there is just one flesh we can wound.
~ Hafiz
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Boundaries
The universe does not
revolve around you.
The stars and planets spinning
through the ballroom of space
dance with one another
quite outside of your small life.
You cannot hold gravity
or seasons; even air and water
inevitably evade your grasp.
Why not, then, let go?
You could move through time
like a shark through water,
neither restless or ceasing,
absorbed in and absorbing
the native element.
Why pretend you can do otherwise?
The world comes in at every pore,
mixes in your blood before
breath releases you into
the world again. Did you think
the fragile boundary of your skin
could build a wall?
Listen. Every molecule is humming
its particular pitch.
Of course you are a symphony.
Whose tune do you think
the planets are singing
as they dance?
~ Lynn Ungar
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Sunrise
You can under the lashes
die for it– of my own eyes, and I thought
an idea, I am so many!
or the world. People
What is my name?
have done so,
brilliantly, What is the name
letting of the deep breath I would take
their small bodies be bound over and over
for all of us? Call it
to the stake,
creating whatever you want, it is
an unforgettable happiness, it is another one
fury of light. But of the ways to enter the fire.
fire.
this morning, Mary Oliver
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought
of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
___________________________________________________________
It is Not Enough
It is not enough to know.
It is not enough to follow
the inward road conversing in secret.
It is not enough to see straight ahead,
to gaze at the unborn
thinking the silence belongs to you.
It is not enough to hear
even the tiniest edge of rain.
You must go to the place
where everything waits,
there, when you finally rest,
even one word will do,
one word or the palm of your hand
turning outward
in the gesture of gift.
And now we are truly afraid
to find the great silence
asking so little.
One word, one word only.
David Whyte
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Tree
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books –
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life
___________________________________________________________
In the Beginning
Sometimes simplicity rises
like a blossom of fire
from the white silk of your own skin.
You were there in the beginning
you heard the story, you heard the merciless
and tender words telling you where you had to go.
Exile is never easy and the journey
itself leaves a bitter taste. But then,
when you heard that voice, you had to go.
You couldn’t sit by the fire, you couldn’t live
so close to the live flame of that compassion
you had to go out in the world and make it your own
so you could come back with
that flame in your voice, saying listen…
this warmth, this unbearable light, this fearful love…
It is all here, it is all here.
~ David Whyte __________________________________________________________
The Fountain by Denise Levertov
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen
the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes
found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.
The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched—but not because
she grudged the water,
only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,
it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.
___________________________________________________________
I believe in all that has never yet been spoken
I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.
If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.
Rilke
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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 from House of Light
___________________________________________________________
The Plum Trees by Mary Oliver
Such richness flowing
through the branches of summer and into
the body, carried inward on the five
rivers! Disorder and astonishment
rattle your thoughts and your heart
cries for rest but don’t
succumb, there’s nothing
so sensible as sensual inundation. Joy
is a taste before
it’s anything else, and the body
can lounge for hours devouring
the important moments. Listen,
the only way
to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking it
into the body first, like small
wild plums.
___________________________________________________________
Hawks by Lynn Ungar
Surely, you too have longed for this –
to pour yourself out
on the rising circles of the air
to ride, unthinking,
on the flesh of emptiness.
Can you claim, in your civilized life,
that you have never leaned toward
the headlong dive, the snap of bones,
the chance to be so terrible,
so free from evil, beyond choice?
The air that they are riding
is the same breath as your own.
How could you not remember?
That same swift stillness binds
your cells in balance, rushes
through the pulsing circles of your blood.
Each breath proclaims it –
the flash of feathers, the chance to rest
on such a muscled quietness,
to be in that fierce presence,
wholly wind, wholly wild.
___________________________________________________________
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
___________________________________________________________
Walking North Mark Nepo
No matter how I turn the magnificent light follows. Background to my sadness.
No matter how I lift my heart my shadow creeps in wait behind. Background to my joy.
No matter how fast I run a stillness without thought is where I end.
No matter how long I sit there is a river of motion I must rejoin.
And when I can’t hold my head up it always falls in the lap of one who has just opened.
When I finally free myself of burden there is always someone’s heavy head landing in my arms.
The reasons of the heart are leaves in wind. Stand up tall and everything will nest in you.
We all lose and we all gain. Dark crowds the light. Light fills the pain.
It is a conversation with no end a dance with no steps a song with no words a reason too big for any mind.
No matter how I turn the magnificence follows.
___________________________________________________________
Stillness Mat by Bella
“Meditation is like training a puppy, you say ’stay’ but after a few breaths, the puppy wanders away. You go back and gently pick it up and bring it back.”
Jack Kornfield
She never really changes,
always drooling at the door,
just the slimmest temptation,
bolt eager for a leap into the wild.
A tender tug on the leash,
reigns this seasoned puppy in,
guides her back to obedience
on the stillness mat.
But then, the other day,
an inspired thunderbolt:
after twenty years,
this ain’t no puppy!
This dog is friggin’ old,
arthritis in both hips, random
grey whiskers jut askew from her
canine yellow maw.
Weepy-eyed by the door,
listless panting,
she doesn’t really want to go out
but dogged habits die hard.
I lay down beside her,
my cheek on fleecy flanks
and weep for mercy.
I don’t want to go either.
Together we lay
on the stillness mat,
track the persistent parade
streaming right by without us.
___________________________________________________________
By Mark Nepo
Having loved enough and lost enough,
I’m no longer searching
just opening,
no longer trying to make sense of pain
but trying to be a soft and sturdy home
in which real things can land.
These are the irritations
that rub into a pearl.
So we can talk for a while
but then we must listen,
the way rocks listen to the sea.
And we can churn at all that goes wrong
but then we must lay all distractions
down and water every living seed.
And yes, on nights like tonight
I too feel alone. But seldom do I
face it squarely enough
to see that it’s a door
into the endless breath
that has no breather,
into the surf that human
shells call God.
___________________________________________________________
Breaking Surface by Mark Nepo
Let no one keep you from your journey,
no rabbi or priest, no mother
who wants you to dig for treasures
she misplaced, no father
who won’t let one life be enough,
no lover who measures their worth
by what you might give up,
no voice that tells you in the night
it can’t be done.
Let nothing dissuade you
from seeing what you see
or feeling the winds that make you
want to dance alone
or go where no one
has yet to go.
You are the only explorer.
Your heart, the unreadable compass.
Your soul, the shore of a promise
too great to be ignored.
___________________________________________________________
What Sustains By Mark Nepo
The more I am hollowed
by the fire, the more my ribs
spread like the tree of life.
The more I am washed
by the tears of others, the more
my heart rounds like an ocean shell.
The more stories I tell
of how one picks up another,
the more my hands open
like scoops for grain.
To be what others drink,
to be what others stand on
to reach what they love -
we should be so lucky
to be worn to this.
___________________________________________________________
I Rocked my Own Chest by Rumi
Yesterday I sent a message as clear and steady as a star.
You that turned stoniness to gold, change me.
I showed you the longing and rocked my own chest.
like an infant to hush it from crying.
Undo your breast. Take me back to love’s first place where we were in union.
How much longer do I have to wonder apart?
I will be quiet now and patient, waiting for you to turn and look.
___________________________________________________________
The Holy Longing by Goethe
Tell a wise person, or else keep silent, for those who do not understand will mock it right away. I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.
In the calm waters of the love nights,
Where you were begotten, where you have begotten, a strange feeling comes over you
as you watch the silent candle burning.
Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness, and a desire for higher lovemaking
sweeps you upwards.
Distance does not make you falter
now, arriving in magic, flying and finally insane for the light,
you are the butterfly, and you are gone.
And so long as you haven’t experienced
this: To die, and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.
___________________________________________________________
By Rainier Maria Rilke
I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make every hour holy. I am too small in the world, and yet not tiny enough just to stand before you like a thing, dark and shrewd. I want my will, and I want to be with my will as it moves towards deed; and in those quiet, somehow hesitating times, when something is approaching, I want to be with those who are wise or else alone. I want always to be a mirror that reflects your whole being, and never to be too blind or too old to hold your heavy, swaying image. I want to unfold. Nowhere do I want to remain folded, because where I am bent and folded, there I am lie. And I want my meaning true for you. I want to describe myself like a painting that I studied closely for a long, long time, like a word I finally understood, like the pitcher of water I use every day , like the face of my mother, like a ship that carried me through the deadliest storm of all.
