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Death Poem
This human body truly is the entire cosmos
Each breath of mine is equally one of yours, my darling
This tender abiding in "my" life
Is the fierce glowing fire of inner earth
Linking with all pre-phenomena
Flashing to the distant horizon
From "right here now" to "just this"
Now the horizon itself
Drops away -
Bodhi!
Svaha.
- Myogen Steve Stucky
(Steve Stucky, the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, died on New Year's Eve. He wrote this poem three days before his death.)
DEAD ZEN MASTERS
The guru says
Death dies and life lives.
The Roshi says that the horizon drops away.
Who is this seeing thus?
The seen is made by the seer.
Where no thoughts is no dust.
Where no thinking,
No bear scat, no eschatology.
found somewhere within beleif,
the shards of loss, our grief
by Michael Gest
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
To Be Of Use
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
- Marge Piercy
I've broken through to longing
Now, filled with a grief I have
Felt before, but never like this.
The center leads to love.
Soul opens the creation core.
Hold on to your particular pain.
That too can take you to God.
- Jellaludin Rumi
Spanish Ballad
That barista, Mother,
with the dark-roast eyes
and the silver nail
through her left eyebrow,
who pulls the handle
of the espresso machine
with such imperial ennui
– Mom, does she not know
that she is killing me?
I have heard she is a pagan
though of noble family born,
related to the Grossmans of Detroit
or the Shaughnesseys of Darien
– but she is finer that that tribe,
with her dragon-tattooed arms
and her skin as smooth and pale
as the end page of a
vampire novella.
She scares me speechless with desire,
but I would give a million
to see her smile
and even more to tell a joke
that would make her actually
choke in laughter
and send the spray
of that eight-ounce energy drink
uncontrollably bursting
from her beautiful nose.
- Tony Hoagland
In This Season of Waiting
Under certain conditions,
when the moon in the western sky
seems frozen there, for instance
even as the sun is rising in the east,
so that soon two sides of the coin
will be facing each other;
or when the snow
which is a stranger here
fills our trees with its cold flowers;
when the single
bluejay at the feeder
is so still
it could be enameled there,
then the earth becomes an emblem
for whatever we believe.
- Linda Pastan
Future Perfect
Where you were
before you were born,
and where you are
when you're not anymore
might be very close.
Might be the same place,
though neither is
as slippery
as being here but
imagining where
you will have been-
that point
where things land,
are finished, over, and
gone but not yet.
- Lia Purpura
New Year’s Prayer 2014
As I have encountered the Dharma in this life,
And from time to time been interested in practising it,
I must have accumulated some merit during my past lives.
Throughout this life I have admired, been inspired by,
And, on occasion, had the courage to emulate my master,
So I must have gathered a little more merit.
Though shallow, my trust in the Three Jewels is absolute,
And I am convinced that they alone will not mislead me –
Surely a sign of their unfailing blessings.
From time to time I am moved
By the teachings of the Buddha and his followers,
Which must mean that, at some point, I’ve done something right.
Now and then, when required to make an offering,
I feel ashamed of my own miserliness,
And so the Dharma must have entered my mind to some extent.
As, once in a blue moon,
I catch myself trying to impress others,
My random condemnation of ego must have had some effect.
Although the feeling is rare and short-lived,
I have empathized with those who are destitute,
So, however seldom, I must have some heart.
By the power of all this merit and virtue,
May I not attain enlightenment
Until every other sentient being has reached enlightenment before me.
By the power of the merit of not wanting enlightenment
Ahead of all other suffering beings,
May I not become enlightened
Until everyone else has reached enlightenment before me.
- Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
Thomas
“What shall I do with the life left to me?”
I didn’t need proof. Any more.
He had blessed me with His gaze.
Many times. Many times he had looked.
Into me. And His look made me
look back into Him. All the others.
All the others put on their clothing.
But I – He gave me
The Immaculate Dispensation. Above
All. Above all.
No job. Just this. Examine it. This Gift.
Doubt. This Immense Gift.
Two Things. Doubt. And
Looking in it. You can erase everything
you think you know about me. And
to help you, I shall remove to Chennai.
In the luxury of a cave on Little Mount
I sit and putter. On the beach, I preach.
I tell them what I do and Who
looked at me and Whose look was A Word.
“Christianity came to India first.”
Too bad. I offered the distillation
of that Look. Too bad about Christianity.
Regret? No. They heard many words.
I heard the One He never spoke.
- Bruce Moody
Moon Path
(To my wife, Betty)
A pearl floating in a cloudless sky,
the moon has paved the bay.
It has laid down a path of rippling silver across the water
leading from here to where?
Beyond beyond.
From my window in the hills
I watch an unreal world
toy-sized cars and ships and trains
movement without sound
noisy engines beyond hearing
calm and silent.
Not really.
I know the people who drive the distant freeway
are troubled souls drowning in the daily terror and trivia
as I have for a lifetime.
Official lies, bleak prophesies.
The soils of Africa are planted with the bones of children.
Mad Arabs have turned their god into a butcher.
The head of Citibank insists he deserves every penny he stole.
Rich and poor, lives driven by the fuel of greed and desperation.
Do they ever catch a glimmer of the moon path
and the great quiet that waits to be found
on the far side of the horrors?
There beyond Mount Tam and the Golden Bridge
the world of stars that bless us with lordly beauty and indifference.
Always there.
Always there, waiting.
The moon. The path. The quiet.
I remember another moon-bright night like this years past.
The old Dodge parked up a dark street in Thousand Oaks,
the best young lovers could do to find seclusion.
You leaned across me in the car to look out the window.
"What a beautiful moon," you said.
I can remember the warm softness of your body pressed against me
and the countless kisses that followed
each, though we did not know it at the time, a pledge that said
"I will stay with you. I will be here at the last."
Were we ever that young?
Did I know at some level of the mind
when I chose you to be my one love
that you would do more to lead me to the path
than any words of wisdom?
Sensitive and innocent, we deserved a better world.
But what we got was a swamp of illusions
where madmen contend for the dross of life.
"Do you know this samsara?" Baker Roshi once asked me, smiling,
as if laughter were the best answer to despair.
You don't escape it. You don't work your way out.
Then what?
You wait.
Until?
Until you realize, "hey, I'm already on the path."
No place to go.
Nothing to do.
Wait.
- Theodore Roszak (1933-2011)
Prayer/Poem
Would it be too much to ask:
Put paper on the roll.
Don’t let the door slam.
Close the window.
Ask and listen.
See people.
Have a care.
Would that be too much to ask?
Would it be too much to ask:
Let the turtle cross.
Give the skunk room.
Look out for the raccoon.
Welcome the bear on the trail.
Offer the wolf a lake.
Leave the glacier in the pass.
Would that be so much to ask?
Would it be too much to ask:
Heal my memory.
Find me fifty hugs.
Make me prehensile feet.
Resurrect my dog.
Bring back John Lennon.
Undo chestnut blight.
Is that so much to ask?
Would it be too much to ask:
Multiply birdsong.
Unfreeze our obsession with leaders.
Keep bees on the flowers.
Supply many orgasms.
Insure sweet fruit.
Decrease greed.
Really, is that so much to ask?
Would it be too much to ask:
Emblazon our feathers with color.
Encourage the playfulness of our young.
Increase our knowledge of languages.
Awaken poetry.
Deify beauty.
Raise up truth.
Is that too much to ask?
Would it be too much to ask:
Stop violence against children.
Preserve the oceans.
Cause hope to flourish.
Steer earth on course.
Prevent us destroying everything.
Teach us to love life.
After all, is that so much to ask?
- Dale Rosenkrantz
Candle Hat
In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Sampson.
But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.
He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
a device that allowed him to work into the night.
You can only wonder what it would be like
to be wearing such a chandelier on your head
as if you were a walking dining room or concert hall.
But once you see this hat there is no need to read
any biography of Goya or to memorize his dates.
To understand Goya you only have to imagine him
lighting the candles one by one, then placing
the hat on his head, ready for a night of work.
Imagine him surprising his wife with his new invention,
the laughing like a birthday cake when she saw the glow.
Imagine him flickering through the rooms of his house
with all the shadows flying across the walls.
Imagine a lost traveler knocking on his door
one dark night in the hill country of Spain.
"Come in, " he would say, "I was just painting myself,"
as he stood in the doorway holding up the wand of a brush,
illuminated in the blaze of his famous candle hat.
- Billy Collins
here's another HAT for ye, Larry..thanks for the poem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3zmcg0VOk0
Mark B.
Hokusai Says
Hokusai says Look carefully.
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.
Wood is alive.
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 through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
are 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.
- Roger Keyes
Fugitive
This body, like a caved-in greenhouse,
no longer craves the sun nor traps the heat.
This body is pungent of loam,
crushed petals, the rot of leaves and roots,
the fading breath of summer.
This body, shape-shifted, is fugitive.
They will seek it in the sun-blasted hothouse.
They will find the broken frame, the shards of glass.
They will finger the shape of absence.
This body burns with the moon,
aflame along the path of beaten silver.
This body reclaims its larger self upon the map of the sky.
Releasing its scant purchase, this body
finds its satisfaction in smaller and smaller wonders.
- Susan Lamont
Orion by the agate sea
by the drive where the old dogwood tree
stands with raucous birds in her hair
and spider fairies sail into the wind
Orion in your backdrop of solid crows
where the moon climbs through plums
and shimmering scales of robins sleep
waiting for the sun's slick tongue -
the rip of darkness, the opening of its veins,
the pulse of dreams rustling like straw-
you witness everything - a woman's body -
delineated by wind and silk moving smoke,
a lone man in a yellow window
counting dreams,
the ways that sunlight falls.
- Katherine Hastings
(Katherine Hastings is Sonoma County's Poet Laureate)
Stories
Let me think of the way that story goes
About the king of time and his long robes.
The world is breathless for good storytelling.
Always words find their way out of us
And our mouths shape them firm and forever.
Sometimes songs come into us flowing from streams
Towards places sounds have never been.
Always other voices are speaking through us.
Stories wander the royal road of dreams
With their silent language. Words arrive
The way the shaman came, the first teller,
Then came the prophets and their retelling.
Many sounds faded, forgotten or ripened to return
Again when synchronicity could acquire its sense of timing.
Words find their warmth in the moist mouth of revelation.
These stories cross the far horizons and in time find each other.
That occurrence is a gift as written records tell the tales
On stone, on leaf, parchment and on the page of living memory.
Stories are our eternal bread. They reveal the divine passwords
At the gates that open to the center of our lives.
- Richard Meyers
After Finding the Body
The report always says, "the body
was found by a hiker…a fisherman…a camper in the back country, gathering firewood."
Stops there, cuts
to family, an official speaking in regretful, solemn sentences.
The victim's face smiles from a wedding photo, a passport, a family video—twirling on a backyard swing.
The hiker, fisherman, or camper who abandoned routine life,
Returns to an altered world, staggering
with the weight of unexpected death.
The body forever carried in a heart.
- Rebecca del Rio
I Went into the Maverick Bar
I went into the Maverick Bar
In Farmington, New Mexico.
And drank double shots of bourbon
backed with beer.
My long hair was tucked up under a cap
I’d left the earring in the car.
Two cowboys did horseplay
by the pool tables,
A waitress asked us
where are you from?
a country-and-western band began to play
“We don’t smoke Marijuana in Muskokie”
And with the next song,
a couple began to dance.
They held each other like in High School dances
in the fifties;
I recalled when I worked in the woods
and the bars of Madras, Oregon.
That short-haired joy and roughness—
America—your stupidity.
I could almost love you again.
We left—onto the freeway shoulders—
under the tough old stars—
In the shadow of bluffs
I came back to myself,
To the real work, to
“What is to be done.”
- Gary Snyder
To the Garbage Collectors in Bloomington, Indiana, the First Pickup of the Year
(the way bed is in winter, like an aproned lap,
like furry mittens,
like childhood crouching under tables)
The Ninth Day of Xmas, in the morning black
outside our window: clattering cans, the whir
of a hopper, shouts, a whistle, move on ...
I see them in my warm imagination
the way I’ll see them later in the cold,
heaving the huge cans and running
(running!) to the next house on the street.
My vestiges of muscle stir
uneasily in their percale cocoon:
what moves those men out there, what
drives them running to the next house and the next?
Halfway back to dream, I speculate:
The Social Weal? “Let’s make good old
Bloomington a cleaner place
to live in—right, men? Hup, tha!”
Healthy Competition? “Come on, boys,
let’s burn up that route today and beat those dudes
on truck thirteen!”
Enlightened Self-Interest? “Another can,
another dollar—don’t slow down, Mac, I’m puttin’
three kids through Princeton?”
Or something else?
Terror?
A half hour later, dawn comes edging over
Clark Street: layers of color, laid out like
a flattened rainbow—red, then yellow, green,
and over that the black-and-blue of night
still hanging on. Clark Street maples wave
their silhouettes against the red, and through
the twiggy trees, I see a solid chunk
of garbage truck, and stick-figures of men,
like windup toys, tossing little cans—
and running.
All day they’ll go like that, till dark again,
and all day, people fussing at their desks,
at hot stoves, at machines, will jettison
tin cans, bare evergreens, damp Kleenex, all
things that are Caesar’s.
O garbage men,
the New Year greets you like the Old;
after this first run you too may rest
in beds like great warm aproned laps
and know that people everywhere have faith:
putting from them all things of this world,
they confidently bide your second coming.
- Phillip Appleman
The clock struck
The clock struck twelve times. . .and it was a spade
knocked twelve times against the earth.
. . .”It’s my turn!” I cried. . .The silence
answered me: Do not be afraid.
You will never see the last drop fall
that now is trembling in the water clock.
You will still sleep many hours
here on the beach,
and one clear morning you will find
your boat tied to another shore.
- Antonio Machado
(translated by Robert Bly)
Discontinuous Poems
The frightful reality of things
Is my everyday discovery.
Each thing is what it is.
How can I explain to anyone how much
I rejoice over this, and find it enough?
To be whole, it is enough to exist.
I have written quite a number of poems
And may write many more, of course.
Each poem of mine explains it,
Though all my poems are different,
Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it.
Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone,
I don't begin thinking whether it feels.
I don't force myself to call it my sister,
But I enjoy it because of its being a stone,
I enjoy it because it feels nothing,
I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me.
At times I also hear the wind blow by
And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes
it worth having been born.
I don't know what others will think who read this;
But I find it must be good because I think it
without effort,
And without the idea of others hearing me think,
Because I think it without thoughts,
Because I say it as my words say it.
Once they called me a materialist poet
And I admired myself because I never thought
That I might be called by any name at all.
I am not even a poet: I see.
If what I write has any value, it is not I who am
valuable.
The value is there, in my verses.
All this has nothing whatever to do with any will
of mine.
- Alberto Caeiro
(Fernando António Nogueira Pêssoa, 1888 - 1935. Translated By Edouard Roditi)
Rough Metaphors
Someone said, "There is no dervish, or if there is a dervish,
that dervish is not there."
Look at a candle flame in the bright noon sunlight
if you put cotton next to it, the cotton will burn,
but its light has become completely mixed
with the sun.
That candlelight you can't find is what's left of a dervish.
If you sprinkle one ounce of vinegar over
two hundred tons of sugar,
no one will ever taste the vinegar.
A deer faints in the paws of a lion. The deer becomes
another glazed expression on the face of the lion.
These are rough metaphors for what happens to the lover.
There's no one more openly irreverent than a lover. He, or she,
jumps up on the scale opposite eternity
and claims to balance it.
And no one more secretly reverent.
A grammar lesson: "The lover died."
"Lover" is subject and agent, but that can't be!
The lover is defunct.
Only grammatically is the dervish-lover a doer.
In reality, with he or she so overcome,
so dissolved into love,
all qualities of doingness
disappear.
- Jelalludin Rumi
(Version by Coleman Barks)
Turn! Turn! Turn!
To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven
A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones
A time to gather stones together
To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven
A time of war, a time of peace
A time of love, a time of hate
A time you may embrace
A time to refrain from embracing
To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven
A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time to love, a time to hate
A time of peace, I swear it's not too late!
- Pete Seeger (1919-2014)
The Singer & His Banjo
for Pete Seeger
How can I keep from singing?
he asked hefting his banjo,
machine he claimed
surrounded hate
and forced it to surrender.
We sang with him
that we would overcome
(someday),
asked where
had all the flowers gone,
& as we marched imagined
all sorts of things
to do if we had a hammer.
Gone the way of flowers now,
the old comrade leaves us
to our singing, our marching
with our little hammers
to bring down citadels of injustice,
our teaspoons to weight and make
the see-saw of power teeter
our way, overcome the demons
and armies of cold angels,
and keep despair at bay.
- Rafael Jesús González
Becoming A Redwood
Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds
start up again. The crickets, the invisible
toad who claims that change is possible,
And all the other life too small to name.
First one, then another, until innumerable
they merge into the single voice of a summer hill.
Yes, it’s hard to stand still, hour after hour,
fixed as a fencepost, hearing the steers
snort in the dark pasture, smelling the manure.
And paralyzed by the mystery of how a stone
can bear to be a stone, the pain
the grass endures breaking through the earth’s crust.
Unimaginable the redwoods on the far hill,
rooted for centuries, the living wood grown tall
and thickened with a hundred thousand days of light.
The old windmill creaks in perfect time
to the wind shaking the miles of pasture grass,
and the last farmhouse light goes off.
Something moves nearby. Coyotes hunt
these hills and packs of feral dogs.
But standing here at night accepts all that.
You are your own pale shadow in the quarter moon,
moving more slowly than the crippled stars,
part of the moonlight as the moonlight falls,
Part of the grass that answers the wind,
part of the midnight’s watchfulness that knows
there is no silence but when danger comes.
- Dana Gioia
- Barbara Brinson Curiel
Mexican Jenny
1.
Girls like me
come from alleys
from dirt floors
from cold kitchens
from one thin blanket.
Girls like me
come from fists
from passing strangers
from wandering fathers
from mothers with one heel
hooked on the bar stool.
Girls like me
come from drought
from war.
2.
When I was a child in Acapulco
I worked for a rich family
sweeping their kitchen
washing their dishes.
One day, after a few nips, the cook,
who was my mother's friend,
had said, Come, work for me
in the big house.
I stood on a wooden box
washed dishes stamped with indigo
trees and flowers, with birds
like none I'd seen.
I stood elbow
deep in dirty water, dreamed
of far places without greasy pans
nor the boss's wandering hands.
3.
The boss's wife had a red
silk shawl embroidered
with many-colored swallows.
She draped it like a flag on the back of her chair.
It had come on a ship from Manila,
from that land of ship builders and sailors,
of travelers who, years before, brought
Chinese porcelain and silk to Acapulco.
Every time I walked by
I fingered its edges
and felt like I was dipping my fingers
into the tide.
After I'd found the fault lines
in one cup too many,
when I'd daydreamed one
dish too many to pieces,
the cook ran me off,
but not before I'd pinched that shawl,
wrapped it around my waist
under my dirty skirt.
Running home
the silk rubbed
my legs,
a river current.
Keats
When Keats, at last beyond the curtain
of love’s distraction, lay dying in his room
on the Piazza di Spagna, the melody of the Bernini
Fountain “filling him like flowers,”
he held his breath like a coin, looked out
into the moonlight and thought he saw snow.
He did not suppose it was fever or the body’s
weakness turning the mind. He thought, “England!”
and there he was, secretly, for the rest
of his improvidently short life: up to his neck
in sleigh bells and the impossibly English cries
of street vendors, perfect
and affectionate as his soul.
For days the snow and statuary sang him so far
beyond regret that if now you walk rancorless
and alone there, in the piazza, the white shadow
of his last words to Severn, “Don’t be frightened,”
may enter you.
- Christopher Howell
Hi there -
I am a student of Jennifer Welwood's and this is actually her poem, not "Joyce Wellwood". Can you please change the attribution so it reads "Jennifer Welwood", format the poem correctly to match this formatting and create a link here: https://jenniferwelwood.com/poetry/the-dakini-speaks/
Thank you in advance, much appreciated.
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
On Hearing a Poem Recited, Not Read*
The poem flew at me
Little darts, pricking my skin
piercing my belly, my arms, my eyes
Flew at me on swift, black wings
trailing a smoky blur past my ears
Flew all around me
furious, then curiously quiet
No words sounded like words
read from a page
They had been lifted
the night before, years before
Flipped up, one by one
letter by letter let fall
on the tongue and dissolved
like melting snowflakes trickling down
through the heart, into the belly
to the toes, the fingertips
Pulled back through the blood
through the brain
down into the back of the throat
into the cheeks and spit out
Little darts of words
big wings of words
charging the air all around me
There were no words, only language
Tongue moved by muscle and blood
The poem entered me and exited
leaving little points of pain and light
soft feathery strokes on my skin and hair
Leaving me empty of words
- Christine Walker
*For those of you who appreciate hearing poems recited, not read, you will love tonight's Poetry Out Loud event at Santa Rosa's Glaser Center. Students from 11 high schools will compete in poetry recitation to see who will represent Sonoma County at the state level. This free event begins at 7:00 PM and is an absolute delight.