Saturday, December 22, 2018

1028. For The Traveler - John O'Donohue

.
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 you know 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 a 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. 


From: To Bless the Space Between Us

Thursday, October 25, 2018

1027. Song For The First People - David Wagoner

.
When you learned that men were coming, you changed into rocks.
Into fish and birds, into flowers and rivers in despair of us.
The tree under which I bend may be you,
That stone by the fire, the nighthawk swooping
And crying out over the swamp reeds, the reeds themselves.
Have I held you too lightly all my mornings?
I have broken your silence, dipped you up
Carelessly in by hands and drunk you, burnt you,
Carved you, slit your calm throat and danced on your skin,
Made charms of your bones. You have endured
All of it, suffering my foolishness
As the old wait quietly among clumsy children.
Now others are coming, neither like you nor like men.
I must change, First People. How do I change myself?
If no one can teach me the long will of the cedar,
Let me become Water Dog, Bitteroot, or Shut Beak.
Change me. Forgive me. I will learn to crawl, stand, or fly

Anyshere among you, forever, as though among great elders.

Thursday, August 23, 2018

1026. Photograph - Cynthia Rylant


From: Something Permanent 
Photo by Walker Evans

He washed his feet for the picture,
even his knees,
and wondered about that man
who cared enough to want him to sit there
for a photograph
even though he didn’t have
nothing good to hold in his hands,
nor even a dog to sit by his chair.
It gave him, briefly,
some sort of feeling
of just being
enough.


Saturday, July 14, 2018

1025. The Old Poets of China - Mary Oliver

Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high

into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

Wednesday, June 06, 2018

1024. A Small Eternity - Robert Penn Warren

.
The time comes when you count the names—whether
dim or flaming in the head’s dark, or whether
In stone cut, time-crumbling or moss-glutted.
You count the names to reconstruct yourself.

But a face remembered may blur, even as you stare
At a headstone. Or sometimes a face, as though from air,
Will stare at you with a boyish smile—but, not
Stone-moored, blows away like dandelion fuzz.

It is very disturbing. It is as though you were
The idiot boy who ventures out on pond-ice
Too thin and hears here—hears there—the creak
And crackling spread. That is the sound Reality

Makes as it gives beneath your metaphysical
Poundage. Memory dies. Or lies. Time
Is a wind that never shifts air. Pray only
That, in the midst of selfishness, some

Small act of careless kindness, half-unconscious, some
Unwitting smile or brush of lips, may glow
In some other mind’s dark that’s lost your name, but stumbles
Upon that momentary Eternity.

Monday, April 30, 2018

1023. A Cup Of Coffee - Gene Fowler


From: A Solo In Tom-Toms - Gene Fowler

Such a small and homely and peasant-like thing
seems a cup of coffee.
Still, some of us know that nothing really is small
and nothing actually large, but of an entity,
and of no dimensions whatsoever except as our
imaginations make it seem large or small.
For everything is one thing and of one thing.
And the thing is not a thing at all, but an idea.
Perhaps this idea is both the creator and the created, 

Timeless, endless, and inscrutable.

Friday, March 30, 2018

1022. Harvey Ellis - Harvey Ellis

Harvey Ellis - Harvey Ellis

my ancestors surround me
like walls of a canyon
quiet
stone hard
their ideas drift over me
like breezes at sunset

we gather sticks
and make settlements
what we do is only partly
our own
and partly continuation
down through the chromosomes

my son
my baby sleeps behind me
stirring in the night
for the touch
that lets him continue

he is arranging 
in his small form the furniture
and windows of his home

it will be a lot like mine

it will be a lot like theirs

Friday, March 16, 2018

1021. To The Son - Jorge Luis Borges

Translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid

It was not I who begot you. It was the dead—
my father, and his father, and their forebears,
all those who through a labyrinth of loves
descend from Adam and the desert wastes
of Cain and Abel, in a dawn so ancient
it has become mythology by now,
to arrive, blood and marrow, at this day
in the future, in which I now beget you.
I feed their multitudes. They are who we are,
and you among us, you and the the sons to come
that you will beget. The latest in the line
and in red Adam’s line. I too am those others.
Eternity is present in the things
of time and its impatient happenings

Monday, January 29, 2018

1020. The Bed by the Window - Robinson Jeffers

.
I chose the bed downstairs by the sea-window for a good death-bed
When we built the house, it is ready waiting.
Unused unless by some guest in a a twelvemonth, who hardly  suspects
Its later purpose. I often regard it,
With neither dislike nor desire; rather with both, so equaled
That they kill each other and a crystalline interest
Remains alone. We are safe to finish what we have to finish,
And then it will sound rather like music
When the patient daemon behind the screen of sea-rock and sky
Thrumps with his staff, and calls thrice: “Come,  Jeffers