Are You Saved?

All this talk of saving souls,

Souls weren't meant to save,

Like Sunday clothes that

give out at the seams.

They're made for wear;

they come with a lifetime guarantee.

Don't save your soul.

Pour it out like rain

on cracked, parched earth.

Give your soul away,

or pass it like a candle flame.

Sing it out,

or laugh it up the wind.

Souls were meant for hearing

breaking hearts, for puzzling dreams,

remembering August flowers,

forgetting hurts.

These folk who talk of saving souls?

They have the look of bullies

who blow out candles before you

sing happy birthday,

and want the world to be in alphabetical order.

I will spend my soul,

Playing it out like sticky string

Into the world...

So I can catch every last thing I touch.

Next time someone asks, "Is your soul saved?"

Say, "No, it's spent, spent, spent!"

--Linder Unders

[Photo of remembered August flowers.]

On Winter's Margin

On winter’s margin, see the small birds now
With half-forged memories come flocking home
To gardens famous for their charity.
The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins
Hang at the entrance to the silent wood.

With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs;
By snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing
Like children for their sire to walk abroad!
But what I love, is the gray stubborn hawk
Who floats alone beyond the frozen vines;
And what I dream of are the patient deer
Who stand on legs like reeds and drink that wind; -

They are what saves the world: who choose to grow
Thin to a starting point beyond this squalor.

--Mary Oliver

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about…

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

--Pablo Neruda

[Photo of Tennessee River, TN]

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
                  
or press an ear against its hive.
                
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
                  
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
                 
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
                 
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

—Billy Collins

[Photo from Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum, Seattle, WA]

You Should Avoid Young Children

Because they fill their diapers
with reliable ease, sitting on your lap
or spread out on your best mattress.
Guilt is as foreign to them as vichyssoise.

Because they spread sticky fingers
over the piano keys, looking for you
to hoist them onto your lap. They slam
the ivories for the racket they can make.
Re-think your nap.

Because they are blank slates
on which so much waits to be written,
their eyes opened wide to take everything in,
including the lines around your eyes,
the pouches under your chin.

Because they manipulate the controls
on the TV, finger the holes in the electric socket,
stomp the cat’s switching tail only to smile
and gaze at you as if you held the keys to joy.

Because you can embrace them, but
you can’t bind them. Because they have nothing
to give you—and everything. Because
something loosens when they come around.
Something opens you didn’t know was shut.

--Claire Keyes

It Must Be

…It must be
we are waiting
for the perfect moment.

It must be
under all the struggle
we want to go on.

It must be,
that deep down,
we are creatures
getting ready
for when we are needed.

It must be that waiting
for the listening ear
or the appreciative word,
for the right
woman or the right man
or the right moment
just to ourselves,

we are getting ready
just to be ready

and nothing else.

Like this moment
just before the guests arrive
working
alone in the kitchen
sensing a deep
down symmetry
in every blessed thing.

The way
that everything
unbeknownst
to us
is preparing
to meet us too.

Just on the other
side of the door
someone
is about to knock
and our life
is just
about to change

and finally
after all these
years rehearsing,
behind
the curtain,

we might
just be
ready
to go on.

--David Whyte

Halleluiah

 

Everyone should be born into this world happy

and loving everything.

But in truth it rarely works that way.

For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.

Halleluiah, anyway I'm not where I started!

 

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes

almost forgetting how wondrous the world is

and how miraculously kind some people can be?

And have you too decided that probably nothing important

is ever easy?

Not, say, for the first sixty years.

 

Halleluiah, I'm sixty now, and even a little more,

and some days I feel I have wings.

 

~ Mary Oliver

Appalachian Autumn

No, I'm not as old as the hills

that rise around me as I rest

amid the tawny grasses of this

holler.  But here in late October

of my seventy-third year, they

feel like age-mates to me.  The

greens of spring and summer

are long-gone from the trees.

Leaves of crimson, burnt

umber and amber flare against

the darkening sky, defying

with beauty the soon-to-end

cycle of one more round of

life and love in this long-

time landscape of suffering.

The ancient earth takes it all in,

compassionate and indifferent

in the same breath.  This is how

I want to live, my failings and 

lost opportunities forgiven

as they are under this sun--

released in their triviality,

resurrected as new life--

en route to dying with

thanks and praise and no

mind-begotten regrets.

--Parker J. Palmer

[Photo of Wallingford, VT]

The World I Live In

I have refused to live
locked in the orderly house of
    reasons and proofs.
The world I live in and believe in
is wider than that. And anyway,
    what's wrong with Maybe? 

You wouldn't believe what once or
twice I have seen. I'll just 
  tell you this:
only if there are angels in your head will
    you ever, possibly, see one.

- -Mary Oliver 

Manifesto of the Brave and Brokenhearted

There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers 

Than those of us who are willing to fall 

Because we have learned how to rise.

With skinned knees and bruised hearts; 

We choose owning our stories of struggle, 

Over hiding, over hustling, over pretending.

When we deny our stories, they define us.

When we run from struggle, we are never free. 

So we turn toward truth and look it in the eye.

We will not be characters in our stories. 

Not villains, not victims, not even heroes.

We are the authors of our lives. 

We write our own daring endings.

We craft love from heartbreak, 

Compassion from shame, 

Grace from disappointment, 

Courage from failure.

Showing up is our power. 

Story is our way home. 

Truth is our song. 

We are the brave and brokenhearted.

We are rising strong.

--Brené Brown

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

--Mary Oliver

Separation

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

--W. S. Merwin

The Journey

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again,

painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes
of your life.

You are not leaving.
Even as the light
fades quickly now,
you are arriving.

--David Whyte

Enough

Enough.
These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to life
we have refused
again and again
until now.

Until now.

--David Whyte

[Photo taken at Petit Manan Wildlife Refuge in Steuben, ME]

Season

This hour along the valley this light at the end
     of summer lengthening as it begins to go
this whisper in the tawny grass this feather floating
     in the air this house of half a life or so
this blue door open to the lingering sun this stillness
     echoing from the rooms like an unfinished sound
this fraying of voices at the edge of the village
     beyond the dusty gardens this breath of knowing
without knowing anything this old branch from which
     years and faces go on falling this presence already
far away this restless alien in the cherished place
     this motion with no measure this moment peopled
with absences with everything that I remember here
     eyes the wheeze of the gate greetings birdsongs in winter
the heart dividing dividing and everything
     that has slipped my mind as I consider the shadow
all this has occurred to somebody else who has gone
     as I am told and indeed it has happened again
and again and I go on trying to understand
     how that could ever be and all I know of them
is what they felt in the light here in this late summer

— W.S. Merwin, from The Vixen.

[Photo of Wallingford, VT]

The Best Are Like Water

The best, like water,
Benefit all and do not compete.
They dwell in lowly spots that everyone else scorns.
Putting others before themselves,
They find themselves in the foremost place
And come very near to the Tao.
In their dwelling, they love the earth;
In their heart, they love what is deep;
In personal relationships, they love kindness;
In their words, they love truth.
In the world, they love peace.
In personal affairs, they love what is right.
In action, they love choosing the right time.
It is because they do not compete with others
That they are beyond the reproach of the world.

--Lao Tzu

[Photo of Big Branch River in Mt. Tabor, VT]

MY DAUGHTER ASLEEP

Carrying a child,
I carry a bundle of sleeping
future appearances.
I carry
my daughter adrift
on my shoulder,
dreaming her slender
dreams
and
I carry her
beneath
the window,
watching
her moon lit
palm
open
and close
like a tiny
folded
map,
each line
a path that leads
where I can't go,
so that I read her palm
not knowing
what I read

and
walk with her
in moon light
on the landing,
not knowing
with whom I walk,
making
invisible prayers
to go on
with her
where I can't
go,
conversing
with so many
unknowns
that must know her
more intimately
than I do.

And so to these
unspoken shadows
and this broad night
I make
a quiet
request
to the
great parental
darkness
to hold her
when I cannot,
to comfort her
when I am gone,
to help her learn
to love
the unknown
for itself,
to take it
gladly
like
a lantern
for the way
before her,
to help her see
where ordinary
light will not help her,
where happiness has fled,
where faith
cannot reach.

My prayer tonight
for the great
and hidden symmetries
of life
to reward this
faith I have
and twin
her passages
of loneliness
with friendship,
her exiles
with home coming,
her first awkward
steps with
promised onward leaps.

May she find
in all this,
day or night,
the beautiful
centrality
of pure opposites,
may she discover
before she grows
old,
not to choose
so easily
between past
and present,
may she find
in
one or the other
her gifts
acknowledged.

And so
as I helped
to name her
I help to name
these
powers,
I bring
to life
what is needed,
I invoke
the help she'll
want
following
those moonlit lines
into a future
uncradled
by me but
parented
by all
I call.

As she grows
away
from me,
may these life lines
grow with her,
keep her safe,
so
with my open palm
whose lines
have run before her
to make a safer way,
I hold her smooth cheek
and bless her
this night
and beyond it
and for every unknown
night to come.

--David Whyte

The Storm

Beneath our clothes, our reputations, our pretensions,

beneath our religion or lack of it,

we are all vulnerable both to the storm without

and to the storm within,

and if ever we are to find true shelter,

it is with the recognition of our tragic nakedness

and need for true shelter that we have to start. 

--Frederick Buechner (excerpt from Telling the Truth)

I BOW TO THE LARK

I bow to the lark
and its tiny
lifted silhouette
fluttering
before infinity.

I promise myself
to the mountain
and to the foundation
from which
my future comes.

I make my vow
to the stream
flowing beneath,
and to the water
falling
toward all thirst,

and
I pledge myself
to the sea
to which it goes
and to the mercy
of my disappearance,

and though
I may be
left alone
or abandoned by
the unyielding present
or orphaned
in some far
unspoken place,

I will speak
with a voice
of loyalty
and faith
to the far shore
where everything
turns to arrival,
if only in the sound
of falling waves

and I will listen
with sincere
and attentive
eyes and ears
for a final invitation,
so that I can
be that note half-heard
in the flying lark song,
or that tint
on a far mountain
brushed with the subtle
grey of dawn

even a river gone by
still looking
as if it hasn’t…

--David Whyte (excerpt)

The Great Affair

The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

--Diane Ackerman