Sarah Salway: "You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book"

Just get up from your desk
and open the window,
keep silent until you hear three
sounds you've never heard before,
run your tongue around your mouth,
smell the air.
I tell you what, put down this book
and do this one thing now:
let your hands drift out and touch,
then drift again;
run your fingers
over rough wood, then let them fall
against your own soft skin. I met a woman once
who told me to touch her jumper,
Expensive, she said. It bobbled
under my hand so she told me
I wasn't feeling it right,
and for too long I believed her
because she said quality spoke.
I didn't see how beautiful
the world is
with its only wish
that I belong,
and how my touch,
my smell, hearing, sight,
so different from hers
is the only one that matters.

"You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book" by Sarah Salway, from You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book. © Pindrop Press, 2012.

Photography credit: "Touching Cloth," by Jimmy Magnetic (originally black and white).

Touching Cloth by Jimmy Magnetic

Touching Cloth by Jimmy Magnetic

Teddy Macker: "Prayer"

dear lord in this time of darkness

help us see the darkness

dear lord help us to not pretend

no more pretending

dear lord may our gaze be defenseless

and unshardable

teach us the piety of the open eye

dear lord in this time of darkness

may we be unafraid to mourn and together and hugely

may dignity lose its scaffolding

faces crumble like bricks

dear lord let grief come to grief

and then o lord help us to see the bees yet in the lavender

the spokes of sunlight down through the oaks

and the sleep-opened face of the beloved

and the afternoon all around her

and her small freckled hands  

“Prayer” by Teddy Macker. Text as published in This World (White Cloud Press, 2015). © Teddy Macker. Reprinted by permission of the poet.  

Art credit: Untitled image from an unknown photographer in this news story about Thursday's mass shooting in Roseburg, Oregon (USA).

Curator's note: All my thanks to the poet Teddy Macker for helping me prepare this post late last night, my time. I had another poem scheduled for today, but then I got word of the horrific shooting at Umpqua Community College. A different poem was needed. I emailed Teddy (a wonderful poet I've never met) in the off-chance I might get his permission to use his poem at the last minute. As it happened, he was just then reading online about the tragedy. At once he graciously agreed.

This project concerns poetry, not politics. But it also concerns mindfulness, which is as much about others as about the self. So allow me to say that President Obama is right: We need to offer everyone affected by this violence our thoughts and prayers, but our thoughts and prayers aren't enough.

We must mourn, but as Teddy says, we must also see "with the piety of the open eye." Let us vow: "No more pretending." For the sake of the beloved, let us demand action to address the underlying causes of these shootings.

Alicia Ostriker: "Dear God"

It used to be
I would fall to the floor and press my forehead to it
in moments of despair

I would say help me
help me

but listen
I am ok
though I just now found myself pressing my forehead
to the carpet of my stairs

about the waters in the flooded cities
poisoned by oil spill, chemicals, the dead
about the survivors forever traumatized
dear god
I am alive I am alive
help them

 

"Dear God" by Alicia Ostriker, from The Book of Seventy. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009.

Art credit: Untitled image (# 17 of 37) by Tim Wimborne / Reuters (originally color). Caption: "Oil swirls around vehicles submerged by flood waters in an industrial area of Brisbane [Australia] on Jan. 13 [2011]."

A Note from the Curator

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: 

Can you submit mindfulness poems

that you have written or read to "A Year of Being Here"?

ANSWER:  

Yes, please do. Help this collection grow!

To submit poems for consideration, either use the contact form on this website or write me at phyllis[@]phylliscoledai.com (after first deleting the brackets in the address, included here to frustrate spambots).

Since curating this collection is a labor of love, not my primary work, it would help me if you would please

• limit the number of poems you send to a courteous number; 
• understand that my decision to accept or reject a poem will be very subjective, and final, and made without comment (but with gratitude for your submission); and 
• be aware that if I accept a poem, I won't be able to tell you exactly when it will be posted. Given the collection's size, publication might take a while. I thank you for your patience.
  
  

Please let me know if you have additional questions. I'll do my best to answer!

Thanks to all of you for reading along.

Wendell Berry: "The Peace of Wild Things"

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

"The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry. Text as published in New Collected Poems (Counterpoint Press, 2012).

Curator's note: So many tragedies in the world. I can't acknowledge them all with a poem. But I can't let pass the earthquake and aftershocks that have recently terrorized countless people in Nepal, India and Tibet. May memory hold in its golden cup all those who have perished. May the survivors somehow rest in the peace they need to go on. May we on the outside help bear them up, help carry them to still waters.

Art credit: Untitled photograph by Omar Havana/Getty Images. Caption: "A Buddha statue is surrounded by debris from a collapsed temple in the UNESCO world heritage site of Bhaktapur on April 26, 2015 in Bhaktapur, Nepal."

Anonymous: "Song for Going to the Water" [Cherokee]

If your heart is not well,
If your spirit is not well,
These words may help you.

Wake in the hour
Just before dawn.
Wake in the hours
Before first light.
Wake when the animals of the night
Have ended their songs,
When the animals of the day
Have not yet begun their songs.

Walk without words.
Follow the path
That leads to the stream.

Then, as the first light
Touches the stream,
Bend to the water,
Speak these words:

"Long Person, I come to ask your help."

Then hold up
A cup of that water
And drink the dawn.



"Song for Going to the Water," purportedly from the Cherokee tradition. Text as published in ISTEP + English/Language Arts Test Preparation and Practice Workbook, Glencoe Language Arts Grade 7, Teacher's Annotated Edition (The McGraw-Hill Companies, undated).

Art credit: "River Stour [near Wimborne] at Dawn," photograph by Andrew Child.

Frederick Smock: "Moon"

The day lengthens,
the old earth tips its hat
to the moon.

The changeful moon
goes through many phases,
even in a single night,

though it is the same
moon as ever, we know this.
We are the changes.



"Moon" by Frederick Smock. Text as published in The Bounteous World: Poems (Broadstone Books, 2013). Reprinted by permission of the poet.

Art credit: Untitled photograph by Suppakij1017/Shutterstock.

Curator's note: Please take my two-minute survey before A Year of Being Here concludes on January 1. It will help me (and any potential publishers) decide upon an anthology of mindfulness poetry.

C. K. Williams: "Droplets"

Even when the rain falls relatively hard,
only one leaf at a time of the little tree
you planted on the balcony last year,
then another leaf at its time, and one more,
is set trembling by the constant droplets,

but the rain, the clouds flocked over the city,
you at the piano inside, your hesitant music
mingling with the din of the downpour,
the gush of rivulets loosed from the eaves,
the iron railings and flowing gutters,

all of it fuses in me with such intensity
that I can't help wondering why my longing
to live forever has so abated that it hardly
comes to me anymore, and never as it did,
as regret for what I might not live to live,

but rather as a layering of instants like this,
transient as the mist drawn from the rooftops,
yet emphatic as any note of the nocturne
you practice, and, the storm faltering, fading
into its own radiant passing, you practice again.

"Droplets" by C. K. Williams, from Love About Love. © Ausable Press, 2001.

Photography credit: Still shot of rain falling on a piano keyboard, from a video uploaded by xYaKkUzAx (originally black and white).

 

Mary Oliver: "Clam"

Each one is a small life, but sometimes long, if its
place in the universe is not found out. Like us, they
have a heart and a stomach; they know hunger, and
probably a little satisfaction too. Do not mock them
for their gentleness, they have a muscle that loves
being alive. They pull away from the light. They pull
down. They hold themselves together. They refuse to
open.

But sometimes they lose their place and are tumbled
shoreward in a storm. Then they pant, they fill
with sand, they have no choice but must open the
smallest crack. Then the fire of the world touches
them. Perhaps, on such days, they too begin the
terrible effort of thinking, of wondering who, and
what, and why. If they can bury themselves again in
the sand they will. If not, they are sure to perish,
though not quickly. They also have resources beyond
the flesh; they also try very hard not to die.

"Clam" by Mary Oliver. Text as published in What Do We Know: Poems and Prose Poems (Da Capo Press, 2002).

Art credit: "Winter Clam Scene," photograph taken on 1/08/2013 by Roger Golub. Caption: "Ice crystals on Butter Clams."

Curator's note: Have you given me the gift of your wisdom yet? Please take my two-minute survey before January 1. It will help me (and any potential publishers) decide upon an anthology of mindfulness poetry.

Richard Schiffman: "Late March"

Again the trees remembered
to make leaves.
In the forest of their recollection
many birds returned
singing.
They sang, they sang
because they forgave themselves
the winter, and all that remained
still bitter.
Yet it was early spring,
when the days were touch and go,
and a late snow could nip a shoot,
or freeze a fledgling in its nest.
And where would we be then?
But that’s not the point.
Do you think the magpie doesn’t know
that its chicks are at risk,
or the peach trees, their too-frail blossoms,
the new-awakened bees, all that is
incipient within us?
We know, but we can’t help ourselves
any more than they can,
any more than the earth can
stop hurtling through the night
of its own absence.
Must be something in the sap,
the blood, a force like gravity,
a trick called memory.
You name it. Or leave it nameless
that’s better—
how something returns
and keeps on returning
through a gap,
through a dimensional gate,
through a tear in the veil.
And there it is again.
Another spring.
To woo loss into song.

"Late March" by Richard Schiffman, from Grey Sparrow Journal (Winter, 2015). Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: Photograph of Australian magpie-lark chicks by Stephen Michael Barnett from Darwin, Australia.

 

Curator's Note: Requesting the Gift of Your Wisdom

Many of you have been asking me for an anthology of mindfulness poetry. I’m considering it.

Please take two minutes to take this survey. Help me decide whether or not to do such a book.

No time right now? That’s okay. The survey will be up until January 1, 2016 (the end of A Year of Being Here).

What a gift your input will be! Thank you!

Deep peace,
Phyllis Cole-Dai

W. S. Merwin: "Exercise"

First forget what time it is
for an hour
do it regularly every day

then forget what day of the week it is
do this regularly for a week
then forget what country you are in
and practice doing it in company
for a week
then do them together
for a week
with as few breaks as possible

follow these by forgetting how to add
or to subtract
it makes no difference
you can change them around
after a week
both will help you later
to forget how to count

forget how to count
starting with your own age
starting with how to count backward
starting with even numbers
starting with Roman numerals
starting with fractions of Roman numerals
starting with the old calendar
going on to the old alphabet
going on to the alphabet
until everything is continuous again

go on to forgetting elements
starting with water
proceeding to earth
rising in fire

forget fire

"Exercise" by W. S. Merwin, from Migration: New & Selected Poems. © Copper Canyon Press, 2007.  

Photography credit: "There Is No Such Thing as Time," by Dan Berry (originally color).


 

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "That Lives in Us"

If you put your hands on this oar with me,
they will never harm another, and they will come to find
they hold everything you want.

If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer
lift anything to your
mouth that might wound your precious land—
that sacred earth that is your body.

If you put your soul against this oar with me,
the power that made the universe will enter your sinew
from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm
that lives in us.

Exuberant is existence, time a husk.
When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;
love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.

Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and the future?
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself, dear—to our innocent follies.
Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.
You will come to see that all evolves us.

"That Lives in Us" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, edited by Daniel Ladinsky. © Penguin Books, 2002.

Photography credit: Untitled image shot in Vietnam by Lex Linghorn (originally color).


 

Jeanne Lohmann: "Invocation"

Let us try what it is to be true to gravity,
to grace, to the given, faithful to our own voices,

to lines making the map of our furrowed tongue.
Turned toward the root of a single word, refusing

solemnity and slogans, let us honor what hides
and does not come easy to speech. The pebbles

we hold in our mouth help us to practice song,
and we sing to the sea. May the things of this world

be preserved to us, their beautiful secret
vocabularies. We are dreaming it over and new,

the language of our tribe, music we hear
we can only acknowledge. May the naming powers

be granted. Our words are feathers that fly
on our breath. Let them go in a holy direction.



"Invocation" by Jeanne Lohmann, as published online by Gratefulness. Earlier published in print in Shaking the Tree. © Fithian Press, 2010.

Art credit: "Flurry of Flying Feathers," photograph by Sean Tomlinson, uploaded February 12, 2012 (originally black and white).

David Allan Evans: "Turning 70"

         —remembering Okoboji, Iowa, 1957

 











…click, click, click, click, click went the wheels

of our little roller coaster car taking us slowly,

irrevocably upward to the top of the carnival until,

click         click         click — we slowed more, hesitated,

then, cresting out, began to fall, my guts whirling,

my primate grip strangling the safety bar,

my eyes locked shut on what we couldn’t help

being headed for, straight down—

then, picking up speed, the inevitable letting go

because we had no other choice, against a force

huger than carnivals, planets, universes—

so we all opened our eyes and reached as high

as we could for moons, for stars, then came

our avalanching screams…

That’s it—exactly what I need to get back to:

that letting go (minus the giddy guts), with my eyes

fiercely wide open, each day seconding Prospero’s

“be cheerful, sir,” and Lao Tzu’s tree bending

in the wind, each day looking forward to enjoying

what’s left of the ride, the carnival, the life.

"Turning 70" by David Allan Evans, from A Harvest of Words: Contemporary South Dakota Poetry, edited by Patrick Hicks. © Center for Western Studies, 2010.

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).


 

Dennis Camire: "Encounter with Roofer"

When he drops his hammer for a noon sandwich

He’s like a Buddha atop a grand stuppa
As bare feet set over the eaves while he reads
Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Peace is Every Step.”

And thinking his earlier noise bad karma
For making my morning writing an uphill rhyme
I sherpa into the sacred space of his lunch break
And discover he’s read the whole of Kornfield

And, like me, practices that walking meditation
Where he imagines the soles of his feet
Massaging the vertebrae of mother earth’s
Tectonic plates. Now, sharing cool aid

And khoans, we’re like Tu fu and Li Po high
Atop some remote mountain peak shading
A river below eroding time and stone.
Later that afternoon, in the silence

Which announces the end of his work day,
I’ll climb a second time with the gift of a Hahn line
Decreeing “rainwater is the master bodhisattva.”
He’ll reply “those who say they know, don’t know;

Those who say they don’t know, know.”
And though we won’t exchange emails
To meet for a tea ceremony
Or to play our Tibetan bowls

As I help him throw the remaining shingles
Into the backed up truck below
Then gladly tie down the sliding ladder,
I know the leak of a future sadness has been sealed

"Encounter with Roofer" by Dennis Camire. © Dennis Camire. Presented here by poet submission. This poem was first published in Cardinal Flower, an online journal celebrating rural living in New England.

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.

Tom Montag: "Winter Afternoon, Early December"

The grey lid has been
lifted off the day.

Sun spills everywhere—
on snow, on house, on

me at the window.
No wind in the willow,

no birds in bare branches,
no sadness in the absence.

Only the shine, instead,
the spin and dalliance

of every amazing
particular thing

in the long, the lovely
the almost perfect light.

"Winter Afternoon, Early December" by Tom Montag. Text as published in In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013 (Tom Montag, 2014). Reprinted by permission of the poet.

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.

Curator's note: Please take my two-minute survey before A Year of Being Here concludes on January 1. It will help me (and any potential publishers) decide upon an anthology of mindfulness poetry.

Naomi Shihab Nye: "Gate A-4" [Prose Poem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning

my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement:
"If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately."

Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just
like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. "Help,"
said the flight service person. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We
told her the flight was going to be late and she did this."

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly.
"Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-
se-wee?" The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly
used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled
entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the
next day. I said, "No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is
picking you up? Let's call him."

We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would
stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to
her—Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just
for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a
while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I
thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know
and let them chat with her? This all took up about two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee,
answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
nuts—out of her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered
sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free beverages from huge coolers and two
little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice and they
were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend—
by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-
tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed apprehensive about
any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other
women, too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.


"Gate A-4" [Prose Poem] by Naomi Shihab Nye, from Honey Bee: Poems & Short Prose. © Greenwillow Books, 2008.

Photography credit: "Date Filled Cookies or Ma'amoul," by Sanjeeta KK, who provides a recipe on her blog (originally color).

Gary Lawless: "when the animals"

When the animals come to us

     asking for our help,

     will we know what they are saying?

When the plants speak to us

     in their delicate, beautiful language,

     will we be able to answer them?

When the planet herself

     sings to us in our dreams,

     will we be able to wake ourselves, and act?

 
"when the animals" by Gary Lawless, from First Sight of Land. © Blackberry Books, 1990. Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: Untitled photograph by Marcus & Kate Westberg posted on A Voice for Elephants, April 25, 2013. From the text: "[At the Living with Elephants Foundation in Botswana] we witnessed firsthand the strong bond between the elephant trio and their human guardians as Doug [Groves] and Jabu stood hand-in-trunk against the setting sun."

Czeslaw Milosz: "Hope"

Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all things you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.

You cannot enter. But you're sure it's there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
These are the ones who have no hope.
They think that the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.

"Hope" by Czeslaw Milosz, from The World (1943). Text as published in New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001 (Ecco, 2003). Translated from the original Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass.

Art credit: "Follow Me," photograph by Andrea Clare.

Please take two minutes to take this survey and help the curator decide whether or not to create an anthology of mindfulness poetry. No time right now? The survey will be up until January 1, 2016, when A Year of Being Here concludes after a wonderful three-year run.  This website and associated social media will remain online as resources.