Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
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.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

- Jelalludin Rumi

After the Wilderness

May 3, 1863

When Clifford wasn’t back to camp by nine,
I went to look among the fields of dead
before we lost him to a common grave.
But I kept tripping over living men
and had to stop and carry them to help
or carry them until they died,
which happened more than once upon my back.
And I got angry with those men because
they kept me from my search and I was out
still stumbling through the churned-up earth at dawn,
stopping to stare into each corpse’s face,
and all the while I was writing in my head
the letter I would have to send our father,
saying Clifford was lost and I had lost him.

I found him bent above a dying squirrel
while trying to revive the little thing.
A battlefield is full of trash like that —
dead birds and squirrels, bits of uniform.
Its belly racked for air. It couldn’t live.
Cliff knew it couldn’t live without a jaw.
When in relief I called his name, he stared,
jumped back, and hissed at me like a startled cat.
I edged up slowly, murmuring “Clifford, Cliff,”
as you might talk to calm a skittery mare,
and then I helped him kill and bury all
the wounded squirrels he’d gathered from the field.
It seemed a game we might have played as boys.
We didn’t bury them all at once, with lime,
the way they do on burial detail,
but scooped a dozen, tiny, separate graves.
When we were done he fell across the graves
and sobbed as though they’d been his unborn sons.
His chest was large — it covered most of them.
I wiped his tears and stroked his matted hair,
and as I hugged him to my chest I saw
he’d wet his pants. We called it Yankee tea.

- Andrew Hudgins

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

- Wilfred Owen

A Man's A Man for A' That
*
Is there for honest poverty
That hings his head, an a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by -
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an a' that,
Our toils obscure, an a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an a' that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine -
A man's a man for a' that.
For a' that, an a' that.
Their tinsel show, an a' that,
The honest man, tho e'er sae poor,
Is king o men for a' that.

Ye see you birkie ca'd 'a lord,'
What struts, an stares, an a' that?
Tho hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a cuif for a' that.
For a' that, an a' that,
His ribband, star, an a' that,
The man o independent mind,
He looks an laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an a' that!
But an honest man's aboon his might -
Guid faith, he mauna fa' that!
For a' that, an a' that,
Their dignities, an a' that,
The pith o sense an pride o worth.
Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may
[As come it will for a' that],
That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree an a' that.
For a' that, an a' that,
It's comin yet for a' that,
That man to man, the world, o'er
Shall brithers be for a' that.

- Robert Burns

*

Harvest

It's autumn in the market--
not wise anymore to buy tomatoes.
They're beautiful still on the outside,
some perfectly round and red, the rare varieties
misshapen, individual, like human brains covered in red oilcloth--

Inside, they're gone. Black, moldy--
you can't take a bite without anxiety.
Here and there, among the tainted ones, a fruit
still perfect, picked before decay set in.

Instead of tomatoes, crops nobody really wants.
Pumpkins, a lot of pumpkins.
Gourds, ropes of dried chilies, braids of garlic.
The artisans weave dead flowers into wreaths;
they tie bits of colored yarn around dried lavender.
And people go on for a while buying these things
as though they thought the farmers would see to it
that things went back to normal:
the vines would go back to bearing new peas;
the first small lettuces, so fragile, so delicate, would begin
to poke out of the dirt.

Instead, it gets dark early.
And the rains get heavier; they carry
the weight of dead leaves.

At dusk, now, an atmosphere of threat, of foreboding.
And people feel this themselves; they give a name to the season,
harvest, to put a better face on these things.

The gourds are rotting on the ground, the sweet blue grapes are finished.
A few roots, maybe, but the ground's so hard the farmers think
it isn't worth the effort to dig them out. For what?
To stand in the marketplace under a thin umbrella, in the rain, in the cold,
no customers anymore?

And then the frost comes; there's no more question of harvest.
The snow begins; the pretense of life ends.
The earth is white now; the fields shine when the moon rises.

I sit at the bedroom window, watching the snow fall.
The earth is like a mirror:
calm meeting calm, detachment meeting detachment.

What lives, lives underground.
What dies, dies without struggle.

- Louise Gluck

Ripeness

Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.
Not only the heavy apple,
the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.

To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.

And however sharply
you are tested --
this sorrow, that great love --
it too will leave on that clean knife.

- Jane Hirshfield

Reading Today's Paper

(a moment)
in and on a paper
still smelling ink
smelling like a dirty sink
mixed with coffee's
aroma I sit
reading the daily paper
now such old news
now so rehashed
around the world
a potpourri of words
until I come
to the obits
words of fame not one defamed
now all a closed book
history ends
none my friend
veterans, housewives,
teachers, farmers,
singers, dancers too
capsulated lives
fashioned and finished
tomorrow more
day after tomorrow more
more till
I stop reading mine.

- Bill McGee

For Guy Davenport

Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
we dance the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon

within the circles of the seasons,
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again, we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.
Only music keeps us here,

each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again.

And then we turn aside, alone
out of the sunlight gone

into the darker circles of return.

- Wendell Berry

Just To Feel Human

A single apple grew on our tree, which
was some kind of miracle because it was a
pear tree. We walked around it scratching
our heads. "You want to eat it?" I asked
my wife. "I'd die first," she replied. We
went back into the house. I stood by the
kitchen window and stared at it. I thought
of Adam and Eve, but I didn't believe in Adam
and Eve. My wife said, "If you don't stop
staring at that stupid apple I'm going to go
out there and eat it." "So go," I said, "but
take your clothes off first, go naked." She
looked at me as if I were insane, and then
she started to undress, and so did I.

- James Tate

Life

life is a garden,
not a road

we enter and exit
through the same gate

wandering,
where we go matters less
than what we notice

- Bokonon

In The House Of White Light

When my grandmother left the house
to live with my aunts, my grandfather,
who spent so much time in the sugar
cane fields, returned daily to the emptiness
of the clapboard house he built
with his own hands, and he sat in the dark
to eat beans he cooked right in the can.
There in the half-light he thought of all he'd lost,
including family, country, land, sometimes
he slept upright on that same chair,
only stirred awake by the restlessness
of his horse. One night during a lightning
storm, my grandfather stripped naked
and walked out into the fields around
the house saying "que me parta un rayo,"
may lightning strike me, and he stood
with his arms out, the hard rain pelted
his face, and then the lightning fell
about him, and he danced and cradled
lightning bolts in his arms, but they
kept falling, these flashes of white light,
and he ran back inside and brought out
an armful of large mason jars my grandmother
used for pickling, and he filled them
with fractal light. Like babies, he carried
the jars inside and set them all about the house,
and the house filled with the immense
blinding light that swallowed everything
including the memories of how each nail
sunk into the wood, the water level rose
in the well, the loss of this country,
the family who refused to accept him now,
that in this perpetual waking, the world
belonged to those who believed in the power
of electricity, those moments zapped
of anguish, isolation, this clean and pure
act of snatching lightning out of heavy air,
plucking lightning like flowers from a hillside.

- Virgil Suárez

Before the Rain

Minutes before the rain begins
I always waken, listening
to the world hold its breath,
as if a phone had rung once in a far
room or a door had creaked
in the darkness.

Perhaps the genes of some forebear
startle in me, some tribal warrior
keeping watch on a crag beside a loch,
miserable in the cold,

though I think it is a woman's waiting
I have come to know,
a Loyalist hiding in the woods,
muffling the coughing of her child
against her linen skirts, her dark head
bent over his, her fear spent
somewhere else in time,

leaving only this waiting,

and I hope she escaped
with her child, and I suppose she did.
If not, I wouldn't be lying here awake,
alive, listening for the rain to begin
so that she can run, the sound
of her footsteps lost, the sight
of them blotted away on the path.

- Lianne Spidel

Reunion

In winter bones
of sleeping trees
black shapes in twilit sky
I feel my destiny
coded in those gnarled fingers
a language
ancient as runes

And the silence
within me
stirs
as one recognizes
kin or friend
and is comforted
with the certainty
of belonging

And that day
in a crowd of people
the giant fern startling me
with our certain kinship
Locked in recognition
we shared
an ancient reunion

I find
my life
inscribed like this
everywhere
in the wild world
when
I am awake
enough
to look

- Kay Crista

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

- Mary Oliver

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

Snapshot

El Salvador, 2008

A poet in a busload of poets,
I write the name of the town
the tour guide offers: Aguacayo.
Travel books give it brief mention,

alongside Guazapa, the sleeping
volcano we drive up to get here,
past holes in its side guerillas gouged
to shoot from, past a bookshop

guarded by a man with a machine
gun, small shacks of cinderblocks,
shells of buildings grown through
with weeds. “The army never gained

control of it,” the guide grins.
There is the talk of friends, uncles
disappeared, impossible to translate
because in English one disappears,

is not disappeared. This morning
we climbed a pyramid, a heap
of stone and scrub, dedicated
to the Great Flayed One, where

enemies’ skins were worn inside
out after sacrifice. We take turns
snapping photos of each other
at the top, then on to Sochitoto,

where we find a postcard heart,
huge and veined, jutting up
as a church spire. In the park
I shoot a shrine: the tail

of a helicopter brought down
by snipers, its missile fixed
below it, prey in a taloned claw,
always about to, but still not

dropping it over this pristine,
colonial town, where kids giggle
at dogs fucking, locked together
as they strain to come unstuck,

while a thin girl swings a Kermit
the Frog doll. Here in Aguacayo,
no town, no tourists, just a few men
leaning in thresholds and us poets,

scribbling notes. Ivy outside
of what was a church refuses
to root inside, three decades
after a bomb flattened all

who took shelter. Only the floor,
bits of wall, remain, the elevation
of what must have been the altar.
A camera flashes in the ash

of twilight. The men look up
from their card game, the deck
thick with dust. I turn away
to stop them from watching me

watch them, framed by debris,
and look back at my daughter
who tries to walk through the ruins,
but wobbles, plops—not quite grown

enough to balance. She bends
forward, pats the ground
with her palms, taps her dirt-
covered fingers to her tongue.

- Andy Young

After Rain

I drink this delicious morning,
spread my arms wide,
grateful,
my steps slowed,
my ears muffled by mists,
my eyes by falling dew are
drawn up,
to see again
for the first time
these ancient twisted pines
I’ve walked beneath
for twenty years.

From deepest green dew-tipped
needles hangs
a brilliant arachnoid
structure, strung
improbably from one low
branch up to where,
carelessly at risk
to the next strong wind, it speaks
silent
tribute to the
unnameable source
from which it arose, and
to its quiet center
where awaits
the hungry,
hopeful
artist.

- Scott O'Brien

Dream On

Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church
as if that were a natural part of life.
Investing money is second nature to them.
They contribute to political campaigns
that have absolutely no poetry in them
and promise none for the future.
They sit around the dinner table at night
and pretend as though nothing is missing.
Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall
and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing.
The family dog howls all night,
lonely and starving for more poetry in his life.
Why is it so difficult for them to see
that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial.
Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations,
croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets,
their cocktails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't
forget the good deeds, the charity work,
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeders all winter,
helping the stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.
They walk around erect like champions.
They are smooth-spoken and witty.
When alone, rare occasion, they stare
into the mirror for hours, bewildered.
There was something they meant to say, but didn't:
"And if we put the statue of the rhinoceros
next to the tweezers, and walk around the room three times,
learn to yodel, shave our heads, call
our ancestors back from the dead--"
poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt.
You haven't scribbled a syllable of it.
You're a nowhere man misfiring
the very essence of your life, flustering
nothing from nothing and back again.
The hereafter may not last all that long.
Radiant childhood sweetheart,
secret code of everlasting joy and sorrow,
fanciful pen strokes beneath the eyelids:
all day, all night meditation, knot of hope,
kernel of desire, pure ordinariness of life
seeking, through poetry, a benediction
or a bed to lie down on, to connect, reveal,
explore, to imbue meaning on the day's extravagant labor.
And yet it's cruel to expect too much.
It's a rare species of bird
that refuses to be categorized.
Its song is barely audible.
It is like a dragonfly in a dream--
here, then there, then here again,
low-flying amber-wing darting upward
then out of sight.
And the dream has a pain in its heart
the wonders of which are manifold,
or so the story is told.

- James Tate

Escape

In Palestine, in the days
before anything but God,
the believers prepared two goats.
One was sacrificed.
The second was allowed to run away
as if by accident into the mountains:
the escape-goat,
with everybody's sins on its back.

I can move through your streets feigning
an exact destination
but our eyes never touch. You know me.
I have fled my homeland, hopeful
as a lizard pulling clean from an old skin.

My nation has doors as wide as granaries
to turn the believers out
to run here on dark hooves,
through your cities,
where red cascades of flowers
sigh of the conquest.
Our feet click on your stones
but we've carried off nothing.
The sins
are still back there, staining the altar.

- Barbara Kingsolver

The First Artichoke

Though everyone said no one could grow
artichokes in New Jersey, my father
planted the seeds and they grew one magnificent
artichoke, late-season, long after the squash,
tomatoes, and zucchini.

It was the derelict in my father's garden,
little Buddha of a vegetable, pinecone gone awry.
It was as strange as a bony-plated armadillo.

My mother prepared the artichoke as if preparing
a miracle. She snipped the bronzy winter-kissed tips
mashed breadcrumbs, oregano, parmesan, garlic,
and lemon, stuffed the mush between the leaves,
baked, then placed the artichoke on the table.
This, she said, was food we could eat with our fingers.
The First Artichoke

When I hesitated, my father spoke of beautiful Cynara,
who'd loved her mother more than she'd loved Zeus.
In anger, the god transformed her
into an artichoke. And in 1949 Marilyn Monroe
had been crowned California's first Artichoke Queen.

I peeled off a leaf like my father did,
dipped it in melted butter, and with my teeth
scraped and sucked the nut-flavored slimy stuff.
We piled up the inedible parts, skeletons
of leaves and purple prickles.

Piece by piece, the artichoke came apart,
the way we would in 1959, the year the flowerbuds
of the artichokes in my father's garden bloomed
without him, their blossoms seven inches wide
and violet-blue as bruises.

But first we had that miracle on our table.
We peeled and peeled, a vegetable striptease,
and worked our way deeper and deeper,
down to the small filet of delectable heart.

- Diane Lockward

my dream about the second coming


mary is an old woman without shoes.
she doesn’t believe it.
not when her belly starts to bubble
and leave the print of a finger where
no man touches.
not when the snow in her hair melts away.
not when the stranger she used to wait for
appears dressed in lights at her
kitchen table.
she is an old woman and
doesn’t believe it.

when Something drops onto her toes one night
she calls it a fox
but she feeds it.

- Lucille Clifton

The Fox and the Smile

a great fox tawny as gold
carried me away
over the jeweled hills of spring
to his hole on the edge of day


he was agile and beautiful as wind
but tears ran down my face
I am not ready yet I said
to come to this lonely place

and then the shining fox was gone
and a presence smiled in the luminous air
and I too smiled at the setting sun
and the night came on, and the night was fair.

- Hester G. Storm

The Well Rising

The well rising without sound,
the spring on a hillside,
the plowshare brimming through deep ground
everywhere in the field—

The sharp swallows in their swerve
flaring and hesitating
hunting for the final curve
coming closer and closer—

The swallow heart from wingbeat to wingbeat
counseling decision, decision:
thunderous examples. I place my feet
with care in such a world.

- William Stafford

For the Traveler

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.

- John O'Donohue

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

The Time Has Come

the time has come
to break all my promises
tear apart all chains
and cast away all advice

disassemble the heavens
link by link
and break at once
all lovers' ties
with the sword of death

put cotton inside
both my ears
and close them to
all words of wisdom

crash the door and
enter the chamber
where all sweet
things are hidden

how long can i
beg and bargain
for the things of this world
while love is waiting

how long before
i can rise beyond
how i am and
what i am

- Jelalludin Rumi
Ghazal 1591
Translated by Nader Khalili

Again, Again!

Again, again, even if we know the countryside of love,
and the tiny churchyard with its names mourning,
and the chasm, more and more silent, terrifying, into which

the others dropped: we walk out together anyway
beneath the ancient trees, we lie down again,
again, among the flowers, and face the sky.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Let's Go Home

Late and starting to rain, it's time to go home.
We've wandered long enough in empty buildings.
I know it's tempting to stay and meet those new people.
I know it's even more sensible
to spend the night here with them,
but I want to be home.

We've seen enough beautiful places with signs on them
saying "This Is God's House".
That's seeing the grain like the ants do,
without the work of harvesting.
Let's leave grazing to cows and go
where we know what everyone really intends,
where we can walk around without clothes on.

- Rumi
Version by Coleman Barks

The Way of Pain
1.
For parents, the only way
is hard. We who give life
give pain. There is no help.
Yet we who give pain
give love; by pain we learn
the extremity of love.
2.

I read of Abraham's sacrifice
the Voice required of him,
so that he led to the altar
and the knife his only son.
The beloved life was spared
that time, but not the pain.
It was the pain that was required.
3.

I read of Christ crucified,
the only begotten Son
sacrificed to flesh and time
and all our woe. He died
and rose, but who does not tremble
for his pain, his loneliness,
and the darkness of the sixth hour?
Unless we grieve like Mary
at His grave, giving Him up
as lost, no Easter morning comes.
4.
And then I slept, and dreamed
the life of my only son
was required of me, and I
must bring him to the edge
of pain, not knowing why.

I woke, and yet that pain
was true. It brought his life
to the full in me. I bore him
suffering, with love like the sun,
too bright, unsparing, whole.

- Wendell Berry

The Silence of the Stars

When Laurens van der Post one night
In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen
He couldn't hear the stars
Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him,
Half-smiling. They examined his face
To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men
Who plant nothing, who have almost
Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
But themselves, led him away
From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
And listened. One of them whispered,
Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
To disbelieve, but had to answer,
No. They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
Circle of firelight and told him
They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
For himself and blamed his ancestors
For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now. On some clear nights
When nearby houses have turned off their visions,
When the traffic dwindles, when through streets
Are between sirens and the jets overhead
Are between crossings, when the wind
Is hanging fire in the fir trees,
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove
Between calls is regarding his own darkness,
I look at the stars again as I first did
To school myself in the names of constellations
And remember my first sense of their terrible distance,
I can still hear what I thought
At the edge of silence where the inside jokes
Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic,
The C above high C of my inner ear, myself
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are:
My fair share of the music of the spheres
And clusters of ripening stars,
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods
Still tending even tone-deaf creatures
Through their exiles in the desert.

- David Wagoner

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

Summer’s End

At 4:38 a.m. a mockingbird wakes to begin her concert. She prefers the topmost branches of the sycamore tree next door where she’s taken up residence. Throughout the day she entertains with a rapid succession of trills and chirps.

Meanwhile, in the fig tree

a blue jay wipes its beak

against a branch


From April to October the “national pastime” follows the long arc of the growing season. The highs and lows, wins and losses. Now, baseball is reaching its climax with the World Series and it too will soon go dormant.

Game-ending error

shortstop stares into his glove

-- the crowd … stunned silent


This afternoon entire trees are on fire. The liquidambars in the neighborhood proclaim the season with a spectacle of trees aglow in yellow, russet, and crimson.

Falling maple leaf

catches the sun’s failing light

for the last time


It’s time once again for the autumnal ritual of cleaning the gutters—another reminder that the road ahead is shorter than the one I’ve already traveled.

- andrew zarrillo

A Song on the End of the World

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

- Czeslaw Milosz
(translated by Anthony Milosz)

Praying For Rain

The rain is here — political as ever —
Whose lack withers nations,
Whose excess, regimes.

You, rain, will turn into buds near the running streams of spring.
You will turn into cows
And into canyons.

You will turn into immortality —
Bays, clouds, drizzle — circling
Everlastingly.

You will turn into my teeth
Chilled by iced-water
Becoming me.

Your drops are the many prayers not said,
An overlooked hoard
Conquering China
And the steep street downtown.

You are The Queen of Taken-For-Granted,
As sparse as sand and as particular.

The boughs of trees open their arms in gladness.

- Bruce Moody

We Have Not Come To Take Prisoners

We have not come here to take prisoners,
But to surrender ever more deeply
To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend
Those aspects of obedience
That stand outside of our house
And shout to our reason
"O please, O please,
Come out and play."

For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and ever more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom and
Light!

- Hafiz

Be Like A Tree

Be like a tree.
Just be.
Storms will come,
The stars and the sun.
The seasons will pass through, while you
host your nest of young birds.

Turn the cold of fall mornings
into gold greetings,
falling jewels.
Feel your sap tending down,
allow it to descend.
It knows
to gather in winter
your roots to rebuild.

Stand barren and bare
through the dark cold of winter
while underground your spark
is kept alive.

Feel the quiet glow
of spring’s first melt
rose cast through the orchard
warmth welcoming tiny buds
from your winter-armored brown.

Nothing to do
through the heat of summer,
but shade your small estate, simply
allow your fruit forth, and share.

Hold your nest.
Hold your ground.
Just be
a tree.

- Scott O'Brien

Still Point

Leaving home
for work
each day

I hear the trees
say “What’s your hurry?”
Rooted, they
don’t understand

how in my world
we have to rush
to keep in step.

I haven’t even time
to stop and tell them
how on weekends, too,
schedules wait
like nets.

It’s only on a sick day
when I have to venture out
to pick up medicine

that I understand the trees,
there in all their fullness
in a world unpatterned

full of moments,
full of spaces,
every space
a choice.

This day
has not
been turned yet
on the lathe

this day
lies open, light
and shadow. Breath
fills the body easily.
I step

into a world
waiting like
a quiet lover.

- Max Reif

Psalm for a Lost Summer

By the rivers of Estes Park, there we sat down, yes, we sighed, when we
remembered Italy.
We pressed our pens against paper, and we sat under the pine trees,
listening to the crows.
For there in Colorado we were captive at a high altitude, required
to write without breath; and if we could not write, our consciences
required us to read, and improve our minds.
How shall we write our poems in this strange land?
If I forget you, Venice, let my right hand forget to wind the fettuccini
around the fork.
If I do not remember balmy Sorrento, let me never taste lemons again;
if I prefer not Capri above my chief joy.
Remember, O Muse, the couple who strolled about Assisi; who said,
How lovely this is, but next year let's vacation at home.
O Citizens of Assisi, do not blame us for the earthquake that destroyed
your basilica; how happy we were, looking at your frescos during a
thunderstorm.
Happy we shall be again, when we dash from this rented cabin, and
drive down from these great stone mountains forever, Amen.

- Maura Stanton

Enriching the Earth

To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. Against the shadow
of veiled possibility my workdays stand
in a most asking light. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind's service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.

- Wendell Berry

5200*

Slapping their way through nature’s bath water,
sea lion and great white in their rear view,
salt water still purging as they advance,
in a mystical mitochondrial alignment,
they come. Frothing in the shallows
facing off with water’s potent wisdom,
vaulting themselves into jagged, uncertain
winter creeks, in upcountry backyards
to set a constellation of eyeballs
into the gravel bed, that finally
dams them in too, and becomes
an altar of reddened flesh,
while the garnet bark of western dogwood
stands witness to the ritual.

They come, undone, and in their slipstream,
the eagle, long since missing from these parts.
The sight of him snags our breath,
those wide wings, the bullet body,
the single focus – the waiting banquet.
The seduction of his winning pose
distracts us from the mass grave,
drenched in new world crimson.
The last golden leaves of willow create
a shroud of calico light, flickering.
They come, undaunted, into our midst,
showing us what is savory and wild
in us, around us, about us – chinook,
swimming up from the beginning of time.

- Penelope La Montagne


*The headlines of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 14, 2002, touting the return of 5200 chinook salmon that passed under the Wohler Bridge in the Russian River, on the way to their breeding grounds upstream. Chinook were thought not to be native to this area because of their prolonged absence, until DNA testing showed that this is indeed home territory for them.

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

- Jane Kenyon

How Could She Not

in memory of Jane Kenyon, 1947-1995

The air glitters. Overfull clouds
slide across the sky. A short shower,
its parallel diagonals visible
against the firs, douses and then
refreshes the crocuses. We knew
it might happen one day this week.
Out the open door, east of us, stand
the mountains of New Hampshire.
There, too, the sun is bright,
and heaped cumuli make their shadowy
ways along the horizon. When we learn
that she dies this morning, we wish
we could think: how could could it not
have been today? In another room,
Kiri Te Kanawa is singing
Mozart's Laudate Dominum
from far in the past, her voice
barely there over the swishing of scythes,
and rattlings of horse-pulled
mowing machine dragging
their cutter bar's little reciprocating
triangles through the timothy.

This morning did she wake
in the dark, almost used up
by her year of pain? By first light
did she glimpse the world
as she had loved it, and see
that if she died now, she would
be leaving him in a day like paradise?
Near sunrise did her hold loosen a little?

Having these last days spoken
her whole heart to him, who spoke
his whole heart to her, might she not
have felt that in the silence to come
he would not feel any word
was missing? When her room filled
with daylight, how could she not
have slipped under a spell, with him
next to her, his arms around her, as they
had been, it may then have seemed,
all her life? How could she not
presse her cheek to his cheek,
which presses itself to hers
from now on? How could she not
rise and go, with sunlight at the window,
and the drone, fading, deepening, hard to say,
of a single-engine plane in the distance,
coming for her, that no one else hears?

- Galway Kinnell

Mute Millennial


We gape at
the Wall
the mall
tall towers
twin flowers
deserted lots
hot spots
fantasy lovers

Alone, eyes inward
her writhing
belly ripples.
Waves of groans
circle her globe -
feet braced
teeth on edge
gasping furnace red
beads of sweat pouring
contraction after contraction
grip her throat

We goggle at
the war
the pall
heroes
faces
stained spots
neighbors
hoped-for saviors

Alone, eyes inward
her writhing
belly ripples.

- Raphael Block

Somewhere, there is a healing…

At water’s edge
a green glass bottle
smashed on a rock
a small act of war
against all things living.
She collects the shards,
thinking of raccoon –
the tracks nearby –
those soft pads
carrying them down
to wash their food in the dark,
children pushing off
on doughy feet
as they run to the river.
This little mound of rage
puts them all in peril.
She makes a bowl of her hand
and fills it with the glass,
each little bayonet
dormant and dangerous.
She senses the hand that did this,
striking out from a do-not-enter heart,
a shadowy, slivered thing, she imagines.
In her mind’s eye,
she pieces the vessel together,
making a jigsaw heart,
one not so very different
from her own. A drop of blood
forms between her fingers
and disappears
into the thirsty sand.
She cradles her cargo
and back at the house,
over the trash,
she arches her bloodstained palm
and lets a handful of hate
fall away.

- Penelope La Montagne

Love After Love

The day 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 yourself.



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.


- Derek Walcott

Is my soul asleep?
Have those beehives that labor
at night stopped? And the water
wheel of thought,
is it dry, the cups empty,
wheeling, carrying only shadows?

No my soul is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,
its clear eyes open,
far-off things, and listens
at the shores of the great silence.

- Antonio Machado

The Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over the fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, 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.

- Wendell Berry

What To Remember When Waking

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.
What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.
What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.
To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.
To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.
You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.
Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

- David Whyte

CLEAR MIND WILD HEART: Finding Courage and Clarity through Poetry

WHEN Friday, Nov 20, 6pm – Saturday, Nov 21, 2009, 5pm
WHERE IONS
101 San Antonio Road
Petaluma, CA 94952
PRESENTER(S) David Whyte
SUMMARY This workshop should be a time to engage with the frontier on which we find ourselves at this particular point in our lives, to understand again the very personal nature of our conversation with the future and to strike out boldly for that horizon.

We are also hosting an evening of open mic poetry and conversation that is open to the public, beginning on Saturday, November 21.
DESCRIPTION Click here to find out more about IONS Transformative Learning Workshops.

Throughout the ages, the language of poetry has held a special power to lend us courage, to give us the vision of those who endured and to hazard ourselves boldly in the world we must inhabit. The insights and imagery of poetry can take us beyond any small perimeter we have made for ourselves and call us to look life straight in the eyes. Once we establish ourselves at this conversational frontier, we find ourselves living amidst revelation, the recipients of visible and invisible help we could not previously recognize. Poetry tells us we can not only be found by a greater world, but also enlarge ourselves to become a participating element in that new future.

The task of the poet is to articulate the “it” in our lives, or our society’s lives - whatever “it” happens to be at any given time - and to try and overhear ourselves say something from which we cannot retreat.

Great poetry tells us that the stakes in life are very high and that failure is possible, yet it does not treat living as a burden. Suffering has its place in any human life, and in many ways is inescapable, yet it is also the hallmark of our incarnation, and one of the tasks of poetry is to show us how to walk into the middle of it and make a home, thus emboldening and deepening our generosity to others.
SCHEDULE Friday
6:00 PM Dinner
7:30—9:30 PM Evening Program
Saturday
8:00—9:00 AM Breakfast
9:00 AM—12:15 PM Morning Session
12:30—1:30 PM Lunch
2:00—5:00 PM Afternoon Program
5:00 Departure
Arrival and Departure: Check-in and access to accommodations begins on Friday at 4:00 pm. You are welcome to arrive earlier in the afternoon to enjoy the campus vistas, wildlife, meandering trails, and oak groves before check-in. Guests are requested to be checked out of their rooms on Saturday by 11 am.
PRESENTER(S) BIOS David Whyte is a poet, author and lecturer, who grew up among the hills and valleys of Yorkshire, England. A captivating speaker with a compelling blend of profound poetry and insightful commentary, he is one of the few poets to take his perspectives on creativity into the field of organizational development. He holds a degree in Marine Zoology, and is an Associate Fellow of the Said Business School at the University of Oxford.

David Whyte is the author of six volumes of poetry and three books of prose. He lives with his family in the Pacific Northwestern United States.
TYPE OF EVENT Weekend Workshop
EVENT CATEGORY IONS Transformative Learning Workshops
IONS CONNECTION Sponsored by IONS
FEES The weekend workshop fee, including meals, is $275 up to one month prior to the workshop date, and $325 thereafter. Overnight lodging for two nights is $70 per night for a shared double room or $95 per night for a single room. Ten continuing education credits are available for most workshops; the CE credit processing fee is $25.
CE CREDITS Ten continuing education credits available.

The Institute of Noetic Sciences (101 San Antonio Road, Petaluma, CA 94952-9524), sponsor of this program, certifies that this continuing education workshop meets the criteria for Continuing Education Credit for:

Marriage Family Therapists and Licensed Clinical Social Workers — The California Board of Behavioral Sciences, provider #PCE 3885, (expires December 31, 2010)
National Certified Counselors — The National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) provider #5492 (expires April 30, 2011).
Nurses — The California Board of Registered Nursing (BRN), provider #10318 (expires May 31, 2010).
Social Workers — State of Illinois, Registered Social Worker Continuing Education Sponsor, License No. 159.000435 (expires November 30, 2009)

There is a $25 processing fee to receive Continuing Education Credit.
MORE INFORMATION www.noetic.org…
PLEASE REGISTER Registration is required for this event. Please use the registration link to register.
REGISTRATION www.regonline.com…
PHONE 707-775-3500
EMAIL [email protected]
CONTENT AREAS Art Culture & Consciousness, Wisdom Teachings

Worldling

In a world of souls I set out to find them.
They who first must find each other,
be each other’s fate.
There, on the open road,
I gazed into each traveler’s face.

"Is it you?" I would ask.

"Are you the ones?"

"No, no," they said, or said nothing at all.


How many cottages did I pass,
each with a mother, a father,
a firstborn, newly-swaddled, crying:
or sitting in its little chair,
dipping a far wooden spoon
into a steaming bowl,
its mother singing it a foolish song,
One, one, a lily’s my care…
Through seasons I searched,
through years I can’t remember,
reading the lichens and stones
as if one were marked
with my name, my face, my form.
By night and day I searched,
never sleeping, not wanting to fail,

not wanting to be simply a star.



Finally in a town like any other town,
in a house foursquare and shining,
its door wide open to the moon,
did I find them.
There, at the top of the winding stairs,
asleep in the big bed,
the sheets thrown off, curled
like question marks into each other’s arms.

Past memory, I beheld them,
naked, their bodies without flaw.

"It is I," I whispered,

"I, the nameless one."
And my parents, spent by the dream
of creation, slept on.

- Elizabeth Spires

Who Built The Seven Gates of Thebes?

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it kings who hauled the craggy loads of stone?
An Babylon, so many times destroyed,
Who raised that city up each time?
In which of Lima’s houses, glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
On the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished
Where did the masons go?
Philip of Spain wept when his fleet went down.
Was there no one else who wept?
Frederick the great won the Seven Years War.
Who won it with him?
A victory on every page.
Who cooked the victory feast?
A great man every ten years.
Who paid the cost?

- Berthold Brecht