Collection

Had it not been for 

a near-death experience,

I might never have discovered

this new way with words--

gathering them like seashells;

picking through the tidal debris

and selecting only the best;

rolling them around

in my head; arranging

and rearranging them in rows;

studying their shapes and colors,

their relationship to each other

and the effects of proximity.

As shells house the life 

of the sea, so words

house the life of the mind.

And in the time left

to me, it is what

I want to do--

sort through my collection.

--Sydney Eddison

Return to Yourself

Stillness is vital to the world of the soul. If as you age you become more still, you will discover that stillness can be a great companion. The fragments of your life will have time to unify, and the places where your soul-shelter is wounded or broken will have time to knit and heal. You will be able to return to yourself. In this stillness, you will engage your soul. Many people miss out on themselves completely as they journey through life. They know others, they know places, they know skills, they know their work, but tragically, they do not know themselves at all. Aging can be a lovely time of ripening when you actually meet yourself, indeed maybe for the first time. There are beautiful lines from T. S. Eliot that say:

'And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.'

--John O'Donohue

[Photo of Iva Baasch on Lough Corrib in Connemara, Ireland]

In the Evening

The heads of roses begin to droop

The bee who has been hauling her gold

all day finds a hexagon in which to rest.

In the Sky, traces of clouds,

the last few darting birds,

watercolors on the horizon.

The white cat sits facing a wall.

The horse in the field is asleep on its feet.

I light a candle on the wood table.

I take a sip of wine.

I pick up an onion and a knife.

And the past and the future?

Nothing but an only child with two different masks.

--Billy Collins

This Poem Belongs to You

This poem
belongs to you
and is already finished,

it was begun
years ago
and I put it away

knowing it would come
into the world
in its own time.

In fact
you have already
read it,
and closing the pages
of the book,

you are now
abandoning the projects
of the day and putting
on your shoes and coat
to take a walk.

It has been long years
since you felt like this.

You have remembered
what we all remember,
when we first begin to write.

--David Whyte

[Photo taken in Florence, Italy]

Out Beyond Ideas

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense.

--Rumi

{Photo of Wallingford, Vermont]

The Chairs That No One Sits In

You see them on porches and on lawns

down by the lakeside,

usually arranged in pairs implying a couple

who might sit there and look out

at the water or the big shade trees.

The trouble is you never see anyone

sitting in these forlorn chairs

though at one time it must have seemed   

a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.

Sometimes there is a little table

between the chairs where no one   

is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.

It might be none of my business,

but it might be a good idea one day

for everyone who placed those vacant chairs

on a veranda or a dock to sit down in them

for the sake of remembering

whatever it was they thought deserved

to be viewed from two chairs   

side by side with a table in between.

The clouds are high and massive that day.

The woman looks up from her book.

The man takes a sip of his drink.

Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking,

the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird

then another, cries of joy or warning—

it passes the time to wonder which.

--Billy Collins

The Charm Against the Language of Politics

Say over and over the names of things, 

the clean nouns: weeping birch, bloodstone, tanager, 

Banshee damask rose. Read field guides, atlases, 

gravestones. At the store, bless each apple 

by kind: McIntosh, Winesap, Delicious, Jonathan. 

Enunciate the vegetables and herbs: okra, calendula. 

 Go deeper into the terms of some small landscape: 

spiders, for example. Then, after a speech on 

compromising the environment for technology, 

recite the tough, silky structure of webs: 

tropical stick, ladder web, mesh web, filmy dome, funnel, 

trap door. When you have compared the candidates’ slippery

platforms, chant the spiders: comb footed, round headed, 

garden cross, feather legged, ogre faced, black widow. 

Remember that most short verbs are ethical: hatch, grow, 

spin, trap, eat. Dig deep, pronounce clearly, pull the words 

in over your head. Hole up 

for the duration.

--Veronica Patterson