Tree
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.
Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.
The great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books —
Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
~ Jane Hirshfield
How the Light Comes
I cannot tell you
how the light comes.
What I know
is that it is more ancient
than imagining.
That it travels
across an astounding expanse
to reach us.
That it loves
searching out
what is hidden,
what is lost,
what is forgotten
or in peril
or in pain.
That it has a fondness
for the body,
for finding its way
toward flesh,
for tracing the edges
of form,
for shining forth
through the eye,
the hand,
the heart.
I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will.
That it works its way
into the deepest dark
that enfolds you,
though it may seem
long ages in coming
or arrive in a shape
you did not foresee.
And so
may we this day
turn ourselves toward it.
May we lift our faces
to let it find us.
May we bend our bodies
to follow the arc it makes.
May we open
and open more
and open still
to the blessed light
that comes.
~ Jan Richardson
For the Bird Singing before Dawn
Some people presume to be hopeful
when there is no evidence for hope,
to be happy when there is no cause.
Let me say now, I’m with them.
In deep darkness on a cold twig
in a dangerous world, one first
little fluff lets out a peep, a warble,
a song – and in a little while, behold:
the first glimmer comes, then a glow
filters through the misty trees,
then the bold sun rises, then
everyone starts bustling about.
And that first crazy optimist, can we
forgive her for thinking, dawn by dawn,
“Hey, I made that happen!
And oh, life is so fine.”
~ Kim Stafford
Wait
Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. The desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.
~ Galway Kinnell
It’s This Way
I stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.
My eyes can’t get enough of the trees —
they’re so hopeful, so green.
A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I’m at the window of the prison infirmary.
I can’t smell the medicines —
carnations must be blooming nearby.
It’s this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.
~ Nazim Hikmet
(translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk)
Afternoon
The ocean is in me now,
blue distance and white depth,
and their eternal flame.
The tides arc in me now,
rocked by the sphere
of the round song.
And that child on the sand
with his pail of toys,
looking out,
it is me he contemplates;
and in the white shell
of his ear,
it is me he hears.
From the beginning this was so,
and is so again.
~ Sandy Lyne
What Did?
What did the carrot say to the wheat?
” ‘Lettuce’ rest, I’m feeling ‘beet.’ ”
What did the paper say to the pen?
“I feel quite all ‘write,’ my friend.”
What did the teapot say to the chalk?
Nothing, you silly . . . teapots can’t talk!
~ Shel Silverstein
Burning the Old Year
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
~ Naomi Shihab Nye
** will be back to correct this **
Numbers
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,they are willing to countanything or anyone:two pickles, one door to the room,eight dancers dressed as swans.
I like the domesticity of addition–add two cups of milk and stir–the sense of plenty: six plumson the ground, three more falling from the tree.
And multiplication’s schoolof fish times fish,whose silver bodies breedbeneath the shadowof a boat.
Even subtraction is never loss,just addition somewhere else:five sparrows take away two,the two in someone else’s garden now.
There’s an amplitude to long division,as it opens Chinese take-outbox by paper box,inside every folded cookiea new fortune.
And I never fail to be surprised by the gift an an odd remainder,footloose at the end:forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,with three remaining.
Three boys beyond their mothers’ call,two Italians off to the sea,one sock that isn’t anywhere you look
~ Mary Cornish
