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Thanks for posting this extremely beautiful and relevant piece. I have had the good luck of meeting Geneen Marie through work that she does with her friend ,ecopsychologist and vision quest leader Bill Plotkin. She is an amazing writer and this piece gives us an excellent insight into her thought process. Where did you come across this at?Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
At Lake Scugog
1.
Where what I see comes to rest,
at the edge of the lake,
against what I think I see
and, up on the bank, who I am
maintains an uneasy truce
with who I fear I am,
while in the cabin’s shade the gap between
the words I said
and those I remember saying
is just wide enough to contain
the remains that remain
of what I assumed I knew.
2.
Out in the canoe, the person I thought you were
gingerly trades spots
with the person you are
and what I believe I believe
sits uncomfortably next to
what I believe.
When I promised I will always give you
what I want you to want,
you heard, or desired to hear,
something else. As, over and in the lake,
the cormorant and its image
traced paths through the sky.
- Troy Jollimore
The Wish to Be Generous
All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.
- Wendell Berry
Ode To That Green Harmonica
Oh, how you made my heart weep
that full moon night in the mountain pines.
Your sound crying the tears
of hundreds of blues players
who wailed their losses to the night
and the distant stars
Your sound carried enough loneliness
to make the heavens moan
and rain for months.
Oh, you beautiful green harmonica.
Your shine worn down by sliding hands -
the hands easing out low breathy shimmers
caressing the empty places, the broken hearts
of lonely sweethearts
weeping In the night.
I pick you up like the marvelous treasure
you are - and gently kiss
your lips.
You ask only my breath,
my simple breath,
that makes you nearly shiver
out of my hand.
You are full to bursting
with sorrowful blues
falling in the darkness.
Your sound calls in the love sick cowboy,
the tired cook,
the railroad man too tired to go to bed,
the little child too alive
to go to sleep while your sounds
curl in his ears.
With all your sad moans
your green is still the greenest green
that ever a harmonica was - let someone else
try to find a greener green
than you.
That's it! You beautiful green harmonica.
That's it!
Maybe you once were black
with all the sorrows of the world.
Perhaps those darkening tones
easing from such tiny holes,
like sand through a sieve,
filtered out the hurtful parts.
You took only the honeyed leavings
of bleeding passion
and allowed them into the air.
And the trees heard!
Yes, the trees heard and gave you back
their beauty, their greenest green
of praising spring.
Oh, you beautiful green harmonica
Oh! Oh! Oh-hh!
- Doug von Koss
Buckeye
Heading up the Tuolomne
one early July evening
the steep slopes slant back and away
from the movement of water
a pale tawny boneyard of trees
stretches river bank to ridgeline.
The skeletal clatter of limbs
sours the day, this encounter
with so much death. In the narrows,
those dry sculpted shapes become clear.
Like a dream the trouble melting
in a comedy of error.
It is the buckeye, thousands strong
summer deciduous, proud, bare.
Other trees beginning to bloom and fruit,
watch the buckeye leaves curl in the heat,
wonder what’s wrong, as the miscreant tree
papers the ground with fandangos of
spiraled, sunburned currency.
The buckeye, clearly out of step,
its towering white panicles
coming too late in the season
and rivaling each bride’s bouquet.
November buckeye is still bare
and bent with fruit, leathery pears
that drape then crack then let go
the smooth amber seed the Pomo
made a mash of these and poured it
into the river to stun the fish
and carried the nub of the nut
around like a lucky rabbit’s foot.
January finds other trees napping,
while buckeye opens her monkey’s fist
of leaves, each little open hand gestures
hang on, I am here to tell you
the others are coming, in time,
all will be coming in good time.
- Penelope La Montagne
On the Nature of Things
The squawking crow
flies down from the redwood tree
to tell me
he is not a crow.
Not bird, not passerine bird
of the family Corvidae,
nor mind nor body
nor thing.
And not a crow.
In fact, he says,
he hasn't even been
discovered yet.
When I was young I dreamt
I climber marble stairs
toward a room that held
The Book of What Each Thing Is.
Golden light poured down those stairs
from a room so high
I could never see it.
From that book
I would learn
what is crow,
what is redwood,
what am I.
Crow tells me
the black of his wings
is deeper than any book.
Friends, there are hours
I have no greater grief,
no greater joy.
I will never know
what I am.
Crow
flies down often
to tell me so.
- Len Anderson
Dead Pets
They come between dreams
soft focus tails wagging,
whiskers electric.
The ones we have named.
Wide-eyed refugees
we carried home in cars
or in arms curled around
trembling ribs.
They return like blood
to fill again a thick vein
on the surface of sensation.
The tactile plasma
of Patch, Lucky, and Tigger
still checking our pulse.
Those we once called mine,
understand
it is we who were once theirs.
They see us now
as children see ghosts
and other lost souls.
- Eric Ashford
Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith
Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun’s brass and even
in the moonlight, but I can’t hear
anything, I can’t see anything -----
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,
nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,
the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker -----
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.
Ans so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing -----
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,
the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet ----
all of it
happening
beyond all seeable proof, or hearable hum.
And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in dirt
swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?
One morning,
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body
is sure to be there.
- Mary Oliver
Snake
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.
- D.H. Lawrence
Taormina, 1923
The Barefoot Boy
Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;
Blessings on thee, little man,Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
From my heart I give thee joy,—
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art,—the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye,—
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood’s painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools,
Of the wild bee’s morning chase,
Of the wild-flower’s time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole’s nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine;
Of the black wasp’s cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans!
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy,—
Blessings on the barefoot boy!
Oh for boyhood’s time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!
Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread;
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O’er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs’ orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!
Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt’s for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!
- John Greenleaf Whittier
The Supple Deer
The quiet opening
between fence strands
perhaps eighteen inches.
Antlers to hind hooves,
four feet off the ground,
the deer poured through.
No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.
I don't know how a stag turns
into a stream, an arc of water.
I have never felt such accurate envy.
Not of the deer:
To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.
- Jane Hirshfield
Having Come This Far
I've been through what my through was to be
I did what I could and couldn't
I was never sure how I would get there
I nourished an ardor for thresholds
for stepping stones and for ladders
I discovered detour and ditch
I swam in the high tides of greed
I built sandcastles to house my dreams
I survived the sunburns of love
No longer do I hunt for targets
I've climbed all the summits I need to
and I've eaten my share of lotus
Now I give praise and thanks
for what could not be avoided
and for every foolhardy choice
I cherish my wounds and their cures
and the sweet enervations of bliss
My book is an open life
I wave goodbye to the absolutes
and send my regards to infinity
I'd rather be blithe than correct
Until something transcendent turns up
I splash in my poetry puddle
and try to keep God amused.
- James Broughton
Into These Knots
Tell us how the soul is bound and bent
into these knots, and whether any ever
frees itself from such imprisonment.
—Canto XII, Inferno
I say, Without a God there is no hell.
There’s only this—. She rustles for her keys.
The apple tree sheds petal after petal.
She says, Let’s take you to the hospital.
The petals spin like sparks. I close my eyes
and say, Without a God there is no hell,
and there is only this. It’s just as well.
The lawn is red and white. She asks, Who says?
How do you know? The wind fells every petal.
She says, Let’s take you to the hospital.
I cannot breathe. I cannot tell her, Yes—.
Because without a God there is no hell,
as she whispers, Talk to me, I know I will
clamber—but not toward heaven, toward the sky,
eyes winking behind petal after petal.
The rope-burnt bark will flake away and fall.
Knot on my neck, the rest would be so easy:
I’ll pray, Without a God there is no hell,
then slip through petals—through petal after petal.
- Ashley Anna McHugh
The Sign in My Father's Hands
- for Frank Espada
The beer company
did not hire Blacks or Puerto Ricans,
so my father joined the picket line
at the Schaefer Beer Pavilion, New York World’s Fair,
amid the crowds glaring with canine hostility.
But the cops brandished nightsticks
and handcuffs to protect the beer,
and my father disappeared.
In 1964, I had never tasted beer,
and no one told me about the picket signs
torn in two by the cops of brewery.
I knew what dead was: dead was a cat
overrun with parasites and dumped
in the hallway incinerator.
I knew my father was dead.
I went mute and filmy-eyed, the slow boy
who did not hear the question in school.
I sat studying his framed photograph
like a mirror, my darker face.
Days later, he appeared in the doorway
grinning with his gilded tooth.
Not dead, though I would come to learn
that sometimes Puerto Ricans die
in jail, with bruises no one can explain
swelling their eyes shut.
I would learn too that “boycott”
is not a boy’s haircut,
that I could sketch a picket line
on the blank side of a leaflet.
That day my father returned
from the netherworld
easily as riding the elevator to apartment 14-F,
and the brewery cops could only watch
in drunken disappointment.
I searched my father’s hands
for a sign of the miracle.
- Martin Espada
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
- Wallace Stevens
Hatred
See how efficient it still is,
how it keeps itself in shape -
our century's hatred.
How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.
How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down.
It's not like other feelings.
At once both older and younger.
It gives birth itself to the reasons
that give it life.
When it sleeps, it's never eternal rest.
And sleeplessness won't sap its strength; it feeds it.
One religion or another -
whatever gets it ready, in position.
One fatherland or another -
whatever helps it get a running start.
Justice also works well at the outset
until hate gets its own momentum going.
Hatred. Hatred.
Its face twisted in a grimace
of erotic ecstasy.
Oh these other feelings,
listless weaklings.
Since when does brotherhood
draw crowds?
Has compassion
ever finished first?
Does doubt ever really rouse the rabble?
Only hatred has just what it takes.
Gifted, diligent, hard working.
Need we mention all the songs it has composed?
All the pages it has added to our history books?
All the human carpets it has spread
over countless city squares and football fields?
Let's face it:
it knows how to make beauty.
The splendid fire-glow in midnight skies.
Magnificent bursting bombs in rosy dawns.
You can't deny the inspiring pathos of ruins
and a certain bawdy humor to be found
in the sturdy column jutting from their midst.
Hatred is a master of contrast -
between explosion and dead quiet,
red blood and white snow.
Above all, it never tires
of its leitmotif - the impeccable executioner
towering over its soiled victim.
It's always ready for new challenges.
If it has to wait awhile, it will.
They say it's blind. Blind?
It has a sniper's keen sight
and gazes unflinchingly at the future
as only it can.
- Wislawa Szymborska
Inclination
One's throat must be like a garden
And one's eyes like windows
through which love passes;
And one's stature
Must be like a tree
that rises out of rocks;
And poetry must be like a singing bird,
Perching on the highest branch of a tree,
Breaking the heavy silence of the world.
- Hamid Reza Rahimi
Overland to the Islands
Let's go—much as that dog goes,
intently haphazard. The
Mexican light on a day that
‘smells like autumn in Connecticut’
makes iris ripples on his
black gleaming fur—and that too
is as one would desire—a radiance
consorting with the dance.
Under his feet
rocks and mud, his imagination, sniffing,
engaged in its perceptions—dancing
edgeways, there's nothing
the dog disdains on his way,
nevertheless he
keeps moving, changing
pace and approach but
not direction—‘every step an arrival.’
- Denise Levertov
An Affirming Flame
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
- W.H. Auden
Listening
You wept in your mother’s arms
and I knew that from then on
I was to forget myself.
Listening to your sobs,
I was resolved against my will
to do well by us
and so I said, without thinking,
in great panic, To do wrong
in one’s own judgment,
though others thrive by it,
is the right road to blessedness.
Not to submit to error
is in itself wrong
and pride.
Standing beside you,
I took an oath
to make your life simpler
by complicating mine
and what I always thought
would happen did: I was lifted up in joy.
- David Ignatow
How Beautiful It Is
It flows out of mystery into mystery: there is no beginning—
How could there be? And no end—how could there be?
The stars shine in the sky like the spray of a wave
Rushing to meet no shore, and the great music
Blares on forever, but to us very soon
It will be blind. Not we, nor our children nor the human race
Are destined to live forever, the breath will fail,
The eyes will break—perhaps of our own explosive vile
Vented upon each other—or a stingy peace
Makes parents fools—but far greater witnesses
Will take our places. It is only a little planet
But how beautiful it is.
- Robinson Jeffers
The Old Interior Angel
Young, male and
immortal as I was,
I stopped at the first sight
of that broken bridge.
The taut cables snapped
and the bridge planks
concertina-ed
into a crazy jumble
over the drop,
four hundred feet
to the craggy
stream.
I sat and watched
the wind shiver
on the broken planks,
as if by looking hard
and long enough
the life-line
might spontaneously
repair itself
-- but watched in vain.
An hour I sat
in the clear silence,
checking each
involuntary movement
of the body toward
that trembling
bridge
with a fearful mind,
and an emphatic
shake of the head.
Finally, facing defeat
and about to go back
the way I came
to meet the others.
Three days round
by another pass.
Enter the old mountain woman
with her stooped gait,
her dark clothes
and her dung basket
clasped to her back.
Small feet shuffling
for the precious
gold-brown
fuel for cooking food.
Intent on the ground
she glimpsed my feet
and looking up
Said "Namaste"
"I greet the God in you"
the last syllable
held like a song.
I inclined my head
and clasped my hands
to reply, but
before I could look up
she turned her lined face
and went straight across
that shivering chaos
of wood
and broken steel
in one movement.
One day the hero
sits down,
afraid to take
another step,
and the old interior angel
limps slowly in
with her no-nonsense
compassion
and her old secret
and goes ahead.
"Namaste"
you say
and follow.
- David Whyte
When Your Ship
When your ship, long moored in harbor
gives you the illusion of being a house,
put out to sea.
Save your boat’s journeying soul,
and your own pilgrim soul,
cost what it may.
- Helder Camara
Animal Is Spiritual
she calls out in a loud bark
from her doorstep as she sees me walk her way,
still halfway up the block. It’s Nika,
the German Shepherd
who greets and licks everyone,
her slow, arthritic walk
and coat worn bare
to the black skin of her back, sign
of the sloughing off of the flesh.
I try to understand
what she means by this.
Animal is Spiritual,
she barks again and again, and as I approach
she walks out to the street,
does not look for traffic,
crosses to my side and waits for me.
She nuzzles my pant leg, I pet her and say,
You have a point—
the survival advantage of softened interpersonal boundaries
among kin in social animals could well drive a pleasure response
that might be conditioned by the touch of a hand, the nave of a
church, or a voice howling a hymn to the moon.
She licks my cool hand with her warm tongue.
But surely you would admit,
I go on,
the Animal embraces more
than the Spiritual and the Spiritual may well embrace more
than the Animal.
She looks up at me as if I have lost my mind.
I can read it in her eyes: Animal is Spiritual.
But then, what can I expect of anyone
with the limited symbolic capacity
of a Canis familiaris?
And I am embarrassed
to have even talked with her.
I take her by the collar back to her doormat,
tell her to be a good
spiritual dog and stay on her
side of the street. I go on with my walk.
At the end of the block I turn to see
a truck and a car stop and she
in the middle of the road,
as if she does not care
if she lives or dies. The drivers gesture,
but she pays them no mind. She just looks at me
with those eyes again—I,
another animal, a fifty-eight-year-old biped,
in the middle of the street, yelling,
Oh saint among dogs,
please get out of the road!
I, who still don’t know what
Animal is, what
Spiritual is.
- Len Anderson
To die singing!
To die singing! To pass into death through song!
I can think of no better way to die.
Let it be beautiful when I sing the last song.
Let it be day.
I would stand with my two feet singing,
I would look upward with my eyes singing,
I would have the winds envelop my body,
I would have the sun to shine upon my body,
Let it be beautiful when you would slay me,
(Thou wouldst)
O Shining One,
Let it be day when I sing the last song.
- Thomas Aquinas
(From 'Adore te devote')
Sonnet
The stars come out; the fragrant shadows fall
About a dreaming garden still and sweet,
I hear the unseen bats above me bleat
Among the ghostly moths their hunting call,
And twinkling glow-worms all about me crawl.
Now for a chamber dim, a pillow meet
For slumbers deep as death, a faultless sheet,
Cool, white and smooth. So may I reach the hall
With poppies strewn where sleep that is so dear
With magic sponge can wipe away an hour
Or twelve and make them naught. Why not a year,
Why could a man not loiter in that bower
Until a thousand painless cycles wore,
And then—what if it held him evermore?
- C.S. Lewis
For a New Beginning
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling your emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young agin with energy and dream,
A path of plentitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
- John O'Donohue
Life in a Body
Francis, who never intended
To be a saint, called his "Brother Ass",
An affectionate name for the beast
That houses our hearts and all the muscle, tissue,
Sinew and joints that grow drier and older,
Like late-summer grass, every day.
"I stretch every morning before
I get out of bed." She throws one leg
Over the other, by way of demonstration
And she is limber as her words
Are not, coming from vocal cords
Dry and salty as the Sonoran Desert
At the Sea of Cortez. My grandmother,
That same ninety-something years old,
Fell and broke a hip at sixty.
My mother, sixty-something then, tells
Me the story—an old woman as limber
As I am—all of twenty-something.
So I stretch and keep
Stretching until I reach
Central America, then east to Europe.
- Rebecca del Rio
Touched by An Angel
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
- Maya Angelou
Becoming
Nowhere is it the same place as yesterday.
None of us is the same person as yesterday.
We finally die from the exhaustion of becoming.
This downward cellular jubilance is shared
by the wind, bugs, birds, bears and rivers,
and perhaps the black holes in galactic space
where our souls will all be gathered in an invisible
thimble of antimatter. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Yes, trees wear out as the wattles under my chin
grow, the wrinkled hands that tried to strangle
a wife beater in New York City in 1957.
We whirl with the earth, catching our breath
as someone else, our soft brains ill-trained
except to watch ourselves disappear into the distance.
Still, we love to make music of this puzzle.
- Jim Harrison