A Prayer for Every Day

 

Let me breathe only grace today, only
that which slows, steadies,
softens, sparks

only that which permits
and pardons and points
to the blossoms inside the broken,
the poetry inside the pain, the nourishing
newness inside the now
Let me breathe only grace
today, only that which invites
me to speak my very own
language for as long as I have breath,
only that which hums:

You can.
You will.

Let me breathe only grace today, only that which notices the tired
and says, lie back, Love—rest
for as long as you need to. It’s not
about how much you do
but how full you are.

And, my God, how beautiful you are when you are full.

--Julia Fehrenbacher

I Don't Want to Live a Small Life

 

I don’t want to live a small life. Open your eyes,
open your hands. I have just come
from the berry fields, the sun

 

kissing me with its golden mouth all the way
(open your hands) and the wind-winged clouds
following along thinking perhaps I might

 

feed them, but no I carry these heart-shapes
only to you. Look how many small
but so sweet and maybe the last gift

 

I will bring to anyone in this
world of hope and risk, so do

Look at me. Open your life, open your hands.

                        --Mary Oliver

 

Farewell Letter

(For All the Mothers Who Have Passed Away)

She wrote me a letter

after her death

and I remember

a kind of happy light

falling on the envelope

as I sat by the rose tree

on her old bench

at the back door,

so surprised by its arrival

wondering what she would say,

looking up before I could open it

and laughing to myself

in silent expectation.

Dear son, it is time

for me to leave you.

I am afraid that the words

you are used to hearing

are no longer mine to give,

they are gone and mingled

back in the world

where it is no longer

in my power

to be their first

original author

not their last loving bearer.

You can hear

motherly

words of affection now

only from your own mouth

and only

when you speak them

to those

who stand

motherless

before you.

As for me I must forsake

adulthood

and be bound gladly

to a new childhood.

You must understand

this apprenticeship

demands of me

an elemental innocence

from everything

I ever held in my hands.

I know your generous soul

is well able to let me go

you will in the end

be happy to know

my God was true

and I find myself

after loving you all so long,

in the wide,

infinite mercy

of being mothered myself.

P.S. All your intuitions were true.

--David Whyte

[Photo with my mother-in-law and 4th-grade teacher!]

For Longing

Blessed be the longing that brought you here

And quickens your soul with wonder.

May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire

That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

May you have the wisdom to enter generously into

your own unease

To discover the new direction your longing wants

you to take.

May the forms of your belonging -- in love, creativity

and friendship --

Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

--John O'Donohue

To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now

I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now. – Mary Oliver

Nobody here likes a wet dog.
No one wants anything to do with a dog
that is wet from being out in the rain
or retrieving a stick from a lake.
Look how she wanders around the crowded pub tonight
going from one person to another
hoping for a pat on the head, a rub behind the ears,
something that could be given with one hand
without even wrinkling the conversation.

But everyone pushes her away,
some with a knee, others with the sole of a boot.
Even the children, who don’t realize she is wet
until they go to pet her,
push her away
then wipe their hands on their clothes.
And whenever she heads toward me,
I show her my palm, and she turns aside.

O stranger of the future!
O inconceivable being!
whatever the shape of your house,
no matter how strange and colorless the clothes you
may wear,
I bet nobody there likes a wet dog either.
I bet everybody in your pub
even the children, pushes her away.

--Billy Collins

[Photo of Trekker and Tsali walking in the rain.]

Little Poem Written at Five O'Clock in the Morning

 

All this violence:  wars and cruelties--
collective and individual--
carnage of all kinds,
now as always
back to the beginning of time.

Our kind endlessly slaughters itself;
our appetite for self-destruction is boundless.

Yet and still every day the sun rises,
white clouds roll across the sky,
vegetables get planted and grow,
and late in the afternoon someone
sits quietly with a cup of tea.

--David Budbill

Sometimes

 

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

--Sheenagh Pugh