Mindful Poetry
MARY OLIVER 🔹 Wild Geese
WENDELL BERRY 🔹 Our Real Work
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN 🔹 Radical Gratitude Spell
i greet you with wonder
in a world which seeks to own
your joy and your imagination
you have chosen to be free,
every day, as a practice.
i can never know
the struggles you went through to get here,
but i know you have swum upstream
and at times it has been lonely
i honor the choices you made in solitude
and i honor the work you have done to belong
i honor your commitment to that which is larger than yourself
and your journey
to love the particular container of life
that is you
your work is enough
you are needed
your work is sacred
you are here
and i am grateful
DEREK WALCOTT 🔹 Love After Love
The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
OCTAVIO PAZ 🔹 Between Going and Staying
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause
RUMI 🔹 2 Kinds of Intelligence
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more marks on your preserving tablets.
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness in the center of the chest. This other intelligence does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside through the conduits of plumbing-learning.
RUMI 🔹 There Is A Life-Force Within Your Soul
NADINE STAIR 🔹 If I Had My Life to Live Over
I'd relax. I would limber up.
I would be sillier than I have been this trip.
I would take fewer things seriously.
I would take more chances.
I would take more trips.
I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers.
I would eat more ice cream and less beans.
have fewer imaginary ones.
and sanely hour after hour, day after day.
again, I'd have more of them. In fact,
I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments.
years ahead of each day.
without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat
and a parachute.
earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.
I would go to more dances.
I would ride more merry-go-rounds.
I would pick more daisies.
JACQUELINE WOODSON 🔹 Absolute
named Kim butterflied my hair. Cornrows
curling into braids
behind each ear.
I wasn’t beautiful. The magic
in something as once ordinary
as hair that for too long
had not been good enough
now winged and amazing
now connected
to a long line of girls
moving through Brooklyn with our heads
held so high, our necks ached. You must
know this too – that feeling
you once believed yourself to be
too-skinny arms
and too-big feet and
too-long fingers and
too-thick and stubborn hair
suddenly seen
the trick mirror that had us believe
we weren’t truly beautiful
suddenly shifts
ourselves before? So much more
DANNA FAULDS 🔹 Whatever Doesn’t Serve
MAX EHRMANN 🔹 Desiderata
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
MARY OLIVER 🔹 Don't Hesitate
DANNA FAULDS 🔹 Self-Observation Without Judgement
WENDELL BERRY 🔹 The Peace of Wild Things
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.
MARY OLIVER 🔹 Snow Geese
MARY OLIVER 🔹 When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn,
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
MARY OLIVER 🔹 The Fist
PABLO NERUDA 🔹 Keeping Quiet
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language,
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves
with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead in winter
and later proves to be alive.
Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
LEONARD COHEN 🔹 Ring The Bells
Ring the bells that can still ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
DANNA FAULDS 🔹 Walk Slowly
RANIER MARIE RILKE 🔹 Be Patient
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON 🔹 Our Deepest Fear
MARY OLIVER 🔹 The Journey
RUMI 🔹 The Waterwheel
LYNN UNGAR 🔹 Pandemic
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
MARTHA POSTLEWAITE 🔹 Clearing
MARY OLIVER 🔹 Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
that were also themselves
at the moment,
at which moment
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
imagine! imagine!
the wild and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.
HAFIZ 🔹 Curfews
Is a cruel ruler
Curfews.
Stillness and quiet
Break open the vintage
Bottles,
Band.
DAVID KOHN 🔹 Pandemic
I feel like getting on my rooftop and yelling through a megaphone that can be beamed into every annoyed, irritated, weary, stressed, scared, struggling person’s heartspace:
DAVID WAGONER 🔹 Lost
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.
RUMI 🔹 The Beauty We Love
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
WILLIAM HUTCHINSON MURRAY 🔹 On Commitment
the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help that would never otherwise have occurred.
raising to one’s favor all manner of unforeseen accidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed
would come his way.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
DANNA FAULDS 🔹 Allow
There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado. Dam a
stream and it will create a new
channel. Resist, and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow, and grace will carry
you to higher ground. The only
safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes
CAVERLY MORGAN 🔹 Your Doorway In
JUDY BROWN 🔹 The Fire
RUMI 🔹 The Breeze At Dawn
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
MARY OLIVER 🔹 Mindful
I see or I hear
that more or less
with delight,
inside this soft world—
and acclamation.
about the exceptional,
with such teachings
the untrimmable light
the ocean’s shine,
ROGER KEYS 🔹 Hokusai Says
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.
He says look forward to getting old
He says keep changing, you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself as long as it’s interesting.
He says keep doing what you love.
He says keep praying.
He says every one of us is a child, every one of us is ancient, every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear.
He says everything is alive –shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees.
Water is alive.
Everything has its own life.
Everything lives inside us.
He says live with the world inside you.
He says it doesn’t matter if you draw, or write books.
It doesn’t matter if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn’t matter if you sit at home and stare at the ants on your verandah
or the shadows of the trees and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.
Contentment is life living though you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength is life living through you.
Peace is life living through you.
He says don’t be afraid,
Don’t be afraid.
Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.
Let life live through you.
RUMI 🔹 Birdwings
The two as beautifully balanced and coordinated As birdwings.
WENDELL BERRY 🔹 To Go Into the Dark
To know the dark, go dark,
go without sight.
that the dark too
blooms and sings
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
RANIER MARIE RILKE 🔹 Must Not Be Frightened
MARK NEPO 🔹 Unglove
NATIVE AMERICAN ELDER STORY 🔹 Stand Still
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
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.
MARY OLIVER 🔹 The Summer Day
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
JENNIFER PAINE WELWOOD 🔹 Unconditional
WENDELL BERRY 🔹 What We Need Is Here
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
JOHN AUSTIN 🔹 Awareness
Awareness-
her gaze is so constant,
our every move
watched
with such affection,
a ceaseless vigil
without condition
or agenda,
silent,
patient,
unrelenting in her
embrace.
There is endless room in
the heart of this lover,
infinite space for whatever
foolishness we may
toss her way.
But she is also
crafty, this one-
a thief who will steal away
everything we ever cherished,
all our beliefs,
all our ideas,
all our philosophies,
until nothing is left
but her shimmering
wakefulness,
this simple love
for what is.
JEFF FOSTER 🔹 Victory
You only have to be yourself.
You only have to be real.
And speak from the heart.
And know that you have the right
to see how you see,
and think how you think,
and feel what you feel,
and desire what you desire.
You don't have to be a success
in the eyes of the world
and you don't have to be an expert.
You only have to offer what you offer,
breathe how you breathe,
make mistakes and fuck up and
learn to love your stumbling and
say the wrong thing and stop
worrying so much about
impressing anyone,
because in the end you
only have to live with yourself,
and joy is not given but found
in the deepest recesses of your being,
so there can be joy in falling
and joy in making mistakes
and joy in making a fool of yourself
and joy in forgetting joy
and then holding yourself as you crumble
to the ground and weep out
the old dreams.
Joy is closeness
with the one you love:
You.
You don't have to be the best.
You don't have to win.
You only have to remember
this intimacy with
the sky, the nearness of the
mountains and feel the warmth
of the sun on your face
and know that you are alive,
and that you are a success,
and victorious,
without having to prove
a damn
thing.
WILLIAM STAFFORD 🔹 Yes
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.
and look out — no guarantees
in this life.
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
JOHN O'DONOHUE 🔹 On Waking
Safely in a new dawn,
For the gift of eyes
To see the world,
The gift of mind
To feel at home
In my life.
The waves of possibility
Breaking on the shore of dawn,
The harvest of the past
That awaits my hunger,
And all the furtherings
This new day will bring.
KABIR 🔹 The Guest
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
The blue sky opens out farther and farther.
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.
JOHN O'DONOHUE 🔹 For A New Beginning
JANE KENYON 🔹 Otherwise
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
MARY OLIVER 🔹 Why I Wake Early
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.
in happiness, in kindness.
MARK NEPO 🔹 Live Slow Enough
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE 🔹 Shoulders
A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.
No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.
This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.
His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.
We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.
The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.
JOHN DANIEL 🔹 A Prayer Among Friends
with one another, we walk here
in the light of this unlikely world
that isn't ours for long.
May we spend generously
the time we are given.
May we enact our responsibilities
as thoroughly as we enjoy
our pleasures. May we see with clarity,
may we seek a vision
that serves all beings, may we honor
the mystery surpassing our sight,
and may we hold in our hands
the gift of good work
and bear it forth whole, as we
were borne forth by a power we praise
to this one Earth, this homeland of all we love.
JOHN WELWOOD 🔹 Forget About Enlightenment
HELEN M. LUKE 🔹 "Important"
MARY OLIVER 🔹 In Blackwater Woods
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
MARY OLIVER 🔹 Mornings at Blackwater
For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.
And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.
What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what will be, darling citizen.
So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.
LINDA FRANCE 🔹 Dreaming the Real
MARY OLIVER 🔹 When I Am Among the Trees
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
WU MEN 🔹 Best Season of Your Life
Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.
MARY OLIVER 🔹 I Worried
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shally
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
HAFIZ 🔹 Admit Something
Love me.
Of course you do not do this out loud;
Otherwise,
Someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about this,
This great pull in us
To connect.
Why not become the one
Who lives with a full moon in each eye
That is always saying,
With that sweet moon language,
What every other eye in this world
Is dying to Hear.
DANNA FAULDS 🔹 Limitless
Sun says, “Be your own illumination”.
Wren says, “Sing your heart out, all day long”.
Stream says, “Do not stop for any obstacle”.
Oak says, “When the wind blows, bend easily, and trust your roots to hold”.
Stars say, “What you see is one small slice of a single modest galaxy. Remember that vastness cannot be grasped by mind”.
Ant says, “Small does not mean powerless”.
Silence says nothing.
In the quiet, everything comes clear.
I say, “Limitless”.
I say, “Yes”.
ORIAH MOUNTAIN DREAMER 🔹 Prelude
VICTORIA SAFFORD 🔹 The Gates of Hope
“Everything is gonna’ be all right.”
JUAN RAMON JIMENEZ 🔹 I Am Not I
I am this one
Walking beside me whom I do not see,
Whom at times I manage to visit,
And at other times I forget.
The one who remains silent when I talk,
The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
The one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
The one who will remain standing when I die.
RUMI 🔹 I'll Meet You There
there is a field. I will meet you there.
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE 🔹 Kindness
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
PORTIA NELSON 🔹 Autobiography In Five Short Chapters
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there.
I still fall in… it’s a habit… but,
my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
MARY OLIVER 🔹 Lingering in Happiness
After rain after many days without rain,
it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,
and the dampness there, married now to gravity,
falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground
where it will disappear - but not, of course, vanish
except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share,
and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss;
a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole's tunnel;
and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years,
will feel themselves being touched.
MARY OLIVER 🔹 Today
not saying a word
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.
into the temple.
DAVID WHYTE 🔹 Enough
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
we have refused
again and again
until now.
JUAN RAMON JIMENEZ 🔹 Oceans
Has struck, down there in the depths,
Against a great thing.
And nothing happens!
Nothing.Silence.Waves.
--Nothing happens?
Or has everything Happened,
And are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?
DAVID WHYTE 🔹 The Well of Grief
the still surface of the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown away by those who wished for something else.
CHEROKEE PARABLE 🔹 Two Wolves
HAFIZ 🔹 This Sky
This sky
WILLIAM STAFFORD 🔹 You Reading This, Be Ready
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
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 –
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
ROSS GAY 🔹 A Small Needful Fact
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.
KAVERI PATEL 🔹 Dear You
You who always have
so many things to do
so many places to be
your mind spinning like
fan blades at high speed
each moment always a blur
because you’re never still.
I know you’re tired.
I also know it’s not your fault.
The constant brain-buzz is like
a swarm of bees threatening
to sting if you close your eyes.
You’ve forgotten something again.
You need to prepare for that or else.
You should have done that differently.
Would the world fall
apart without you?
Or would your mind
become the open sky,
a flock of thoughts
flying across the sunrise
as you just watched and smiled.
RUMI 🔹 Link Your Spirit to Love
open your heart to existence,
choose Love as your spiritual journey
and you will never be disappointed in humans.
JOHN O'DONOHUE 🔹 For One Who Is Exhausted, A Blessing
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
When it falls slow and free.
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.
ANNIE LIGHTHART 🔹 The Second Music
DANUSHA LAMÉRIS 🔹 Small Kindnesses
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
ED KLEIN 🔹 Go There Now
train of thought
there always is
a quiet car
mostly unused
waiting
MARY OLIVER 🔹 The World I Live In
locked in the orderly house of
reasons and proofs.
The world I live in and believe in
is wider than that. And anyway,
what’s wrong with Maybe?
twice I have seen. I’ll just
tell you this:
only if there are angels in your head will you
ever, possibly, see one.
RUMI 🔹 The Guest House
Every morning a new arrival.
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
MARY OLIVER 🔹 Prayer
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
another voice may speak.
ANTONIO MACHADO 🔹 Is My Soul Asleep?
Have those beehives that work
in the night stopped. And the water-
wheel of thought, is it
going around now, cups
empty, carrying only shadows?
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,
its eyes wide open,
far-off things, and listens
at the shores of the great silence.
ANTONIO MACHADO 🔹 Last Night As I Was Sleeping
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
MAY SARTON 🔹 The Work of Happiness
Out of the silence in the empty house each day
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.
So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours
And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:
The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,
White curtains softly and continually blown
As the free air moves quietly about the room;
A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall––
These are the dear familiar gods of home,
And here the work of faith can best be done,
The growing tree is green and musical
For what is happiness but growth in peace,
The timeless sense of time when furniture
Has stood a life's span in a single place,
And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir
The shining leaves of present happiness?
No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,
But where people have lived in inwardness
The air is charged with blessing and does bless;
Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.
ED KLEIN 🔹 Time
ED KLEIN 🔹 Pockets of Silence
ANNE MEREWOOD 🔹 Dropping the Banana