Against Certainty

There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us.
Each time I think “this,” it answers “that.”
Answers hard, in the heart-grammar’s strictness.

If I then say “that,” it too is taken away.

Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity.
When the cat waits in the path-hedge,
no cell of her body is not waiting.
This is how she is able so completely to disappear.

I would like to enter the silence portion as she does.

To live amid the great vanishing as a cat must live,
one shadow fully at ease inside another.

--Jane Hirshfield

[Photo from Newgrange, Ireland--June 2018]

A Morning Offering

There is a quiet light
that shines in every heart.
It draws no attention to itself
though it is always secretly there.
It is what illuminates
our minds to see beauty,
our desire to seek possibility
and our hearts to love life.
Without this subtle quickening
our days would be empty and wearisome,
and no horizon would ever
awaken our longing.
Our passion for life is quietly sustained
from somewhere in us
that is wedded to the
energy and excitement of life.
This shy inner light
is what enables us
to recognize and receive
our very presence here as blessing.
We enter the world as strangers
who all at once become
heirs to a harvest of memory,
spirit, and dream
that has long preceded us
and will now enfold,
nourish, and sustain us.

--JOHN O'DONOHUE

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

--Elizabeth Bishop

[Photo of Glencoe, Scotland, July 2018]