Hafiz: "Every Movement"

                                   I rarely let the word “No” escape
                                   From my mouth
                                   Because it is plain to my soul
                                   That God has shouted “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
                                   To every luminous movement in existence.


  
"Every Movement" by Hafiz. Text as published in I Heard God Laughing: Renderings of Hafiz (Sufism Reoriented, 1996). Purported to be translated from the original Persian (Farsi) by Daniel Ladinsky.

Please note that Ladinsky's "translations" are controversial, considered by many to be less Hafiz than Ladinsky himself.

Art credit: "Umbrella," image by unknown photographer.

 

Ginny Lowe Connors: "A Husband's Refuge"

           You stroll into the garage like an angel

diving into sudden grace; all the gears and gaskets

in the place shine brighter now, engines hum their low,

loving hymns to vroom and go, beauty of brawn

directed forward into flight. Whistling lightly, you caress

your tools, measure copper tubing, cut it down to size,

shoot thin flames to rearrange it, slowly shape and change it,

all according to some fine plan you have devised.

You study stacks of diagrams, handle metal by the sheet,

weld solutions thoughtfully. You are careful, useful, neat.

             Sometimes the snow demands to be shoveled;

it piles up, and bills drift into mountains that fall apart,

that swirl around your knees. When we turn up the heat,

Lord, how the pipes sigh and wheeze, but we must try

a little longer living with a furnace that’s antique. And now

your father needs to tell you something urgent, but since

the stroke, he can barely speak. What emerges when he tries

could break your heart. The strongest man in the world

has turned feeble, peevish, weak. And your son,

who’s far away, forgets to call, forgets to call, forget

            all that. Something crystal clear and perfect

is taking shape right here. The answers seek and find

you in this austere garage retreat, temple of True Value

tools, where you, my laboring lover, are lost

in pure, creative heat.

"A Husband's Refuge" by Ginny Lowe Connors. Text as published by The Atlanta Review (2001).

Art credit: "Noe Welding," photograph of welder Todd Noe, by Brandon Skinner.

Deng Ming-Dao: Untitled ["Even in temples"]

Even in temples
Where residents vow never to talk,
And silence is worshiped,
There is sound.
There are songs.
There is poetry.

Memories incarnated,
Lifetimes pulled through a thousand minds,
Cadences bearing time,
Rhymes connecting life,
Stanzas stacked like the generations.

Those who follow Tao write poetry.
Read poetry.
Live poetry.
And enter Tao through its lines.

Untitled ["Even in temples"] by Deng Ming-Dao. Text as published in Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony (HarperOne, 1996).

Art credit: Reblogged from this link. No other information available.

Naomi Shihab Nye: "At the Seven-Mile Ranch, Comstock, Texas"

I live like I know what I’m doing.

When I hand the horses a square of hay,
when I walk the road of stones
or chew on cactus pulp,
there’s a drumming behind me,
the day opens up to let me pass through.

I know the truth,
how always I’m following each small sign that appears.

This sheep that materialized behind a clump of cenizo bushes
knows I didn’t see him till he raised his head.

Out here it’s impossible to be lonely.
The land walking beside you is your oldest friend,
pleasantly silent, like already you’ve told the best stories
and each of you knows how much the other made up.

"At the Seven-Mile Ranch, Comstock, Texas" by Naomi Shihab Nye. Text as published in Hugging the Jukebox: Poems (E. P. Dutton, 1982).  

Art credit: "Giles Ranch Road [in Texas Hill Country] at dawn," photograph by D. K. Langford.

Mark Strand: "For Jessica, My Daughter"

in tribute
Mark Strand
1934-2014

















Tonight I walked,
lost in my own meditation,
and was afraid,
not of the labyrinth
that I have made of love and self
but of the dark and faraway.
I walked, hearing the wind in the trees,
feeling the cold against my skin,
but what I dwelled on
were the stars blazing
in the immense arc of sky.

Jessica, it is so much easier
to think of our lives,
as we move under the brief luster of leaves,
loving what we have,
than to think of how it is
such small beings as we
travel in the dark
with no visible way
or end in sight.

Yet there were times I remember
under the same sky
when the body's bones became light
and the wound of the skull
opened to receive
the cold rays of the cosmos,
and were, for an instant,
themselves the cosmos,
there were times when I could believe
we were the children of stars
and our words were made of the same
dust that flames in space,
times when I could feel in the lightness of breath
the weight of a whole day
come to rest.

But tonight
it is different.
Afraid of the dark
in which we drift or vanish altogether,
I imagine a light
that would not let us stray too far apart,
a secret moon or mirror,
a sheet of paper,
something you could carry
in the dark
when I am away.



"For Jessica, My Daughter" by Mark Strand. Text as published in Collected Poems (Knopf, 2014).

Curator's note: Mark Strand, one of our mindfulness poets and one-time Poet Laureate of the U.S., died on Saturday at the age of 80. He died in his daughter Jessica's home not long after entering hospice care, suffering from liposarcoma. Here are two quotes for us to remember him by. First, "The future is always beginning now." And, "Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. / There is no happiness like mine. / I have been eating poetry."

Art credit: Detail from photograph of Mark Strand by Ezequiel Zaidenwerg.

John Brehm: "Landscape Survey"

And what about this boulder,
knocked off the moutaintop and
tumbled down a thousand years ago

to lodge against the streambank,
does it waste itself with worry
about how things are going

to turn out? Does the current
slicing around it stop itself mid-
stream because it can’t get past

all it’s left behind back at
the source or up in the clouds
where its waters first fell

to earth? And these trees,
would they double over and
clutch themselves or lash out

furiously if they were to discover
what the other trees really
thought of them? Would the wind

reascend into the sky forever,
like an in-drawn breath,
if it knew it was fated simply

to sweep the earth of windlessness,
to touch everything and keep
nothing and be beheld by no one?

"Landscape Survey" by John Brehm. Text as published in Poetry (August 1999).

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.

Carrie Newcomer: "Every Little Bit of It" [sung poem]

Just beyond my sight,
Something that I cannot see,
I've been circling around a thought,
That’s been circling around me.
Like the vapor of a song,
That is just out of earshot,
And I thought I knew the question,
But I guess not.

Chorus:
There it is just below the surface of things,
In a flash of blue, and the turning of wings.
Drain the glass, drink it down, every moment of this,
Every little bit of it!

I swam against the tide,
I tripped on my own pride,
So I'll try again today,
To get out of my own way.
The face was always in the stone,
Said Michelangelo,
You just have to chip and clear,
To see what is already there.

There it is just below the surface of things,
In a flash of blue, and the turning of wings.
Drain the glass, drink it down, every moment of this,
Every little bit of it!

There it is in the apple of every new notion,
There it is in the scar healed over what was broken,
In the branches, in the whispering, in the silence and the sighs,
And the curious promise of limited time!

It's true although it’s hard,
A shadow glides over the ridge.
And one fast beating heart,
Tries with all its might to live.
We sense but can’t describe,
From the corner of our eye
Something nameless and abiding,
And so we keep transcribing.

There it is just below the surface of things,
In a flash of blue, and the turning of wings.
Drain the glass, drink it down, every moment of this,
Every little bit of it, every little bit!



"Every Little Bit of It" [sung poem], words and music by Carrie Newcomer. © 2014.

Art credit: Music composed and performed by Carrie Newcomer, together with her musical collaborators. From her album A Permeable Life, produced and engineered by Paul Mahern. © Available Light Records, 2014. Video uploaded on January 26, 2014.
Note: If you can't see the viewer above, click here to watch. 

 

Janet Jerve: "Evening Vespers"

I cross the doorway to his room,
tell him it’s time for bed.
My son, only three,
is losing his buddha belly
and he is not listening to me.

He sees beyond my face,
finds comfort in his universe.
From his covers he chants:
I love myself, I like myself,
I love myself, I like myself.

I surrender to the teacher
with turtle blanket and mantra.



"Evening Vespers" by Janet Jerve. Text as published in Excavation (North Star Press, 2013). Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: "Toddler playing on bed," photograph by Lauren Mitchell.

Susan Meyers: "Mother, Washing Dishes"

                              She rarely made us do it—
we’d clear the table instead—so my sister and I teased
that some day we’d train our children right
and not end up like her, after every meal stuck
with red knuckles, a bleached rag to wipe and wring.
The one chore she spared us: gummy plates
in water greasy and swirling with sloughed peas,
globs of egg and gravy.

                               Or did she guard her place
at the window? Not wanting to give up the gloss
of the magnolia, the school traffic humming.
Sunset, finches at the feeder. First sightings
of the mail truck at the curb, just after noon,
delivering a note, a card, the least bit of news.

"Mother, Washing Dishes" by Susan Meyers. Text as published in Tar River Poetry (Fall, 2008).

Art credit: "Farmhouse Sink," photograph taken on September 20, 2008, by Corey Leopold (originally black and white).

 

W. S. Merwin: "Just Now"

In the morning as the storm begins to blow away
the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me
that there has been something simpler than I could ever believe
simpler than I could have begun to find words for
not patient not even waiting no more hidden
than the air itself that became part of me for a while
with every breath and remained with me unnoticed
something that was here unnamed unknown in the days
and the nights not separate from them
not separate from them as they came and were gone
it must have been here neither early nor late then
by what name can I address it now holding out my thanks

"Just Now" by W. S. Merwin. Text as published in The Pupil: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001).

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.

Glen Sorestad: "Making a Salad"

      I find in this small task
      the peace of what I have
      and what I’ll someday lose.
      —Tim Bowling, “Washing Dishes”


What a pleasant state of contentment

to stand in the kitchen at the counter top,
the lettuce, bell peppers, tomatoes, zucchini
all laid out on the altar before me, awaiting
transformation—the rinsing and peeling,
slicing or dicing, required of each
separate veggie that will metamorphose
the random green host into the oneness
that is salad, the way a vegetable
both loses its own self yet becomes
a distinctive part of the whole,
as each child brings its uniqueness
to a classroom. Such pleasure
I find in this small task.

I didn’t always feel this way.
Once, the making of a meal
or any dish was purely functional.
It wasn’t until I was a father I understood
that food and who prepares it and how
is special and holy in the eyes of a child.
I grew in the kitchen, donned chef’s apron,
not from sense of duty, but because
doing it and doing it well revealed
the peace of what I have.

Our children are now parents themselves.
They don their own family rites like aprons,
their own ways to show how important
little rituals are in the life of a healthy family.
From the sidelines, as I watch my own sons
assume their fatherly kitchen roles, I  smile
and am grateful for all I’ve had
and what I’ll someday lose.

  

"Making a Salad" by Glen Sorestad, from What We Miss: Poems. © Thistledown Press, 2010.

Art credit: Detail from "Aprons Hanging on Hooks with Vintage Feel," photograph by Sandra Cunningham, uploaded on January 24, 2103.

Joy Harjo: "Remember"

Remember the sky you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

 

"Remember" by Joy Harjo, from How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems: 1975-2001. © W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

Art credit: "Fancy Shawl Dancer," acrylic painting by Donald Brewer.

Jane Kenyon: "Apple Dropping Into Deep Early Snow"

A jay settled on a branch, making it sway.
The one shrivelled fruit that remained
gave way to the deepening drift below.
I happened to see it the moment it fell.

Dusk is eager and comes early. A car
creeps over the hill. Still in the dark I try
to tell if I am numbered with the damned,
who cry, outraged, Lord, when did we see you?

"Apple Dropping Into Deep Early Snow" by Jane Kenyon, from American Poetry Review (online edition, March/April 1985).

Art credit: "Apple in the Snow," photograph by Roger Lynn.

Leah Browning: "Any Day Now"

The test results are due back
any day now.

Life is like a mouse,
sniffing around me,

and I am a doll,
on the floor on my side,

lying where someone
has flung me.

At some point
the telephone will ring

and the wooden hinge
of my arm

will bend in its direction,
but I will let it go on ringing

for a moment
with that face at my neck

because I want to remember
at least once more

the scent of the lemon tree
in the back yard

and the view of the shoreline
on a windy day

and everything else
I’ve ever seen

in this world, which is so frightening
and wondrous

"Any Day Now" by Leah Browning, from In the Chair Museum. © Dancing Girl Press, 2013. Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: "Vintage Ideal Doll," photograph by StylishPiggy.

Martin Willitts, Jr.: "When everything that ticked —has stopped"

—Emily Dickinson, # 510

It is not anything that stopped; but me.
It was not Death’s hearse of autumn leaves
slowing down to find my Last Testament.

If I made the smallest dent, I hope it was with Love.
Nothing in this reflective silence is long enough.
Nothing stops ticking in order to speak of me.

I came into the world with nothing except in Love;
and I leave behind nothing of value except Love.
Love—Love never stops. It keeps on going.

"When everything that ticked—has stopped" by Martin Willitts, Jr., from The Heart Knows Simply What It Means: Poems Based on Emily Dickinson, Her Life and Poetry. © Aldrich Press, 2012.

Art credit: "Ocean Waves and Beach," still from a video by AnaMarques.

Mahmoud Darwish: "Think of Others"

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others
       (do not forget the pigeon's food).
As you conduct your wars, think of others
       (do not forget those who seek peace).
As you pay your water bill, think of others
      (those who are nursed by clouds).
As you return home, to your home, think of others
       (do not forget the people of the camps).
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others
       (those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others
       (those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself
       (say: “If only I were a candle in the dark").



The original Arabic:


فكِّر بغيركَ

وأنتَ تُعِدُّ فطورك، فكِّر بغيركَ
لا تَنْسَ قوتَ الحمام
وأنتَ تخوضُ حروبكَ، فكِّر بغيركَ
لا تنس مَنْ يطلبون السلام
وأنتَ تسدد فاتورةَ الماء، فكِّر بغيركَ
مَنْ يرضَعُون الغمامٍ
وأنتَ تعودُ إلى البيت، بيتكَ، فكِّر بغيركَ
لا تنس شعب الخيامْ
وأنت تنام وتُحصي الكواكبَ، فكِّر بغيركَ
ثمّةَ مَنْ لم يجد حيّزاً للمنام
وأنت تحرّر نفسك بالاستعارات، فكِّر بغيركَ
مَنْ فقدوا حقَّهم في الكلام
وأنت تفكر بالآخرين البعيدين، فكِّر بنفسك
قُلْ: ليتني شمعةُ في الظلام


 

"Think of Others" by Mahmoud Darwish, from Almond Blossoms and Beyond. Translated from the original Arabic by Mohammed Shaheen. © Interlink Books, 2010.  

Art credit: Video created by Tamim Fares and uploaded April 4, 2011. Music by Secret Garden. Note that this video uses a slightly different English translation of the poem. (Click here if you can't see the viewer above.)

Randall Jarrell: "Well Water"

What a girl called “the dailiness of life”
(Adding an errand to your errand. Saying,
“Since you're up . . .” Making you a means to
A means to a means to) is well water
Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.
The pump you pump the water from is rusty
And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel
A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny
Inexorable hours. And yet sometimes
The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty
Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear
Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands
And gulp from them the dailiness of life.

"Well Water" by Randall Jarrell, from The Complete Poems. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981.

Art credit: "Man standing under waterfall, arms outstretched," photograph by Sami Sarkis/Getty Images.

Wislawa Szymborska: "Under One Small Star"

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from
     the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep
     today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful
     of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the
     same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional
     thread from your train.
Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and
     each man.
I know I won't be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.



"Under One Small Star" by Wislawa Szymborska, from Poems New and Collected. Translated from the original Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. © Mariner Books, 2000.

Art credit: "Rigel (a single star) through the 60" [telescope]," image by unknown photographer at the Sahuaro Girl Scout Leaders' Astronomy Camp, April 4-6, 2003.

 

Dorianne Laux: "Break"

We put the puzzle together piece
by piece, loving how one curved
notch fits so sweetly with another.
A yellow smudge becomes
the brush of a broom, and two blue arms
fill in the last of the sky.
We patch together porch swings and autumn
trees, matching gold to gold. We hold
the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair
of brown shoes. We do this as the child
circles her room, impatient
with her blossoming, tired
of the neat house, the made bed,
the good food. We let her brood
as we shuffle through the pieces,
setting each one into place with a satisfied
tap, our backs turned for a few hours
to a world that is crumbling, a sky
that is falling, the pieces
we are required to return to.

"Break" by Dorianne Laux, from Awake. © Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary Series, 2013.

Art credit: "The Last Piece," photograph by Al Magnus.

David Ignatow: "Above Everything"

I wished for death often
but now that I am at its door
I have changed my mind about the world.
It should go on; it is beautiful,
even as a dream, filled with water and seed,
plants and animals, others like myself,
ships and buildings and messages
filling the air—a beauty,
if ever I have seen one.
In the next world, should I remember
this one, I will praise it
above everything.

"Above Everything" by David Ignatow, from Whisper to the Earth: New Poems. © Little, Brown & Company, 1981.

Art credit: "Yee Peng Festival, Chiang Mai," photograph by Karl Davies.