Joyce Sutphen: "From Out the Cave"

When you have been
at war with yourself
for so many years that
you have forgotten why,
when you have been driving
for hours and only
gradually begin to realize
that you have lost the way,
when you have cut
hastily into the fabric,
when you have signed
papers in distraction,
when it has been centuries
since you watched the sun set
or the rain fall, and the clouds,
drifting overhead, pass as flat
as anything on a postcard;
when, in the midst of these
everyday nightmares, you
understand that you could
wake up,
you could turn
and go back
to the last thing you
remember doing
with your whole heart:
that passionate kiss,
the brilliant drop of love
rolling along the tongue of a green leaf,
then you wake,
you stumble from your cave,
blinking in the sun,
naming every shadow
as it slips.



"From Out the Cave" by Joyce Sutphen, from Straight Out of View. © Beacon Press, 1995.

Photograph credit: Unknown.

Betty Adcock: "January"

Dusk and snow this hour
in argument have settled
nothing. Light persists,
and darkness. If a star

shines now, that shine is
swallowed and given back
doubled, grounded bright.
The timid angels flailed
by passing children lift
in a whitening wind
toward night. What plays
beyond the window plays
as water might, all parts
making cold digress.
Beneath iced bush and eave,
the small banked fires of birds
at rest lend absences
to seeming absence. Truth
is, nothing at all is missing.
Wind hisses and one shadow
sways where a window's lampglow
has added something. The rest
is dark and light together tolled
against the boundary-riven
houses. Against our lives,
the stunning wholeness of the world.

"January" by Betty Adcock, from Intervale: New and Selected Poems by Betty Adcock. Copyright © 2001 by Betty Adcock. Published by Louisiana State University Press.

Photograph: "Snow Angel" (originally black and white), by Melissa Terry.

Wendell Berry: "The Watchers"

The horses graze the winter slope

and then go to the high ground
and stand, watching the traffic
along the road, the slow river,
the trees leaning and straightening
in the wind. The day's time
is their time. They do not move
toward it or away. Their minds
are at home in this world,
diminished by no question.

"The Watchers" by Wendell Berry. Published in Harper's Magazine, September 1977.

Photograph: "Bachelor Band of Wild Horses Face into the Wind Picking Up Scents" (originally black and white), by Melissa Farlow.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: "Action Plan"

Consider the yellow post-it pad
before the pen riddles it blue.

Blank. Stack of blank.
Stack of yellow blank with glue.
Pray that blank might stick to you.
Imagine you might enter rooms
with so little plan of your own.
To be the slate, not the list,
the void, not the litany of Things To Do.
To cultivate an emptiness.
To let whatever's next
come next.

"Action Plan" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. No further bibliographic information available.

Photography credit: Unknown.

William Stafford: "You Reading This, Be Ready"

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life––

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

"You Reading This, Be Ready" by William Stafford, from The Way It Is. © Graywolf Press, 1998.

Photograph (originally black and white) by Daniel Slaughter.

May Sarton: "New Year Resolve"

The time has come
To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.

Time for a change,
Let silence in like a cat
Who has sat at my door
Neither wild nor strange
Hoping for food from my store
And shivering on the mat.

Let silence in.
She will rarely speak or mew,
She will sleep on my bed
And all I have ever been
Either false or true
Will live again in my head.

For it is now or not
As old age silts the stream,
To shove away the clutter,
To untie every knot,
To take the time to dream,
To come back to still water.

"New Year Resolve" by May Sarton, from Collected Poems 1930-1993. © W.W. Norton & Co., 1993.

Photography credit: Unknown.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "The Guest House"

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

"The Guest House" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne. © HarperCollins Publishers, 1995.