David Whyte: "The Opening of Eyes"

                   
                      That day I saw beneath dark clouds
                      the passing light over the water
                      and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
                      I knew then, as I had before
                      life is no passing memory of what has been
                      nor the remaining pages in a great book
                      waiting to be read.

                      It is the opening of eyes long closed.
                      It is the vision of far off things
                      seen for the silence they hold.
                      It is the heart after years
                      of secret conversing
                      speaking out loud in the clear air.

                      It is Moses in the desert
                      fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
                      It is the man throwing away his shoes
                      as if to enter heaven
                      and finding himself astonished,
                      opened at last,
                      fallen in love with solid ground.

"The Opening of Eyes" by David Whyte, from Songs for Coming Home. © Many Rivers Press, 1984.  

Photography credit: Detail from "Man Kisses the Ground," taken in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 30, 2007, by booksin (originally black and white).

John Masefield: "Tewkesbury Road"

It is good to be out on the road, and going one knows not where,

Going through meadow and village, one knows not whither or why;

Through the grey light drift of the dust, in the keen cool rush of the air,

Under the flying white clouds, and the broad blue lift of the sky.

And to halt at the chattering brook, in a tall green fern at the brink

Where the harebell grows, and the gorse, and the foxgloves purple and white;

Where the shifty-eyed delicate deer troop down to the brook to drink

When the stars are mellow and large at the coming on of the night.

O, to feel the beat of the rain, and the homely smell of the earth,

Is a tune for the blood to jig to, and joy past power of words;

And the blessed green comely meadows are all a-ripple with mirth

At the noise of the lambs at play and the dear wild cry of the birds.

"Tewkesbury Road" by John Masefield, from Poems of John Masefield. © Macmillan Company, 1918.

Photography credit: "Just can't stay on the ground," by Fred Miranda (originally color).

May Sarton: "A Glass of Water"

Here is a glass of water from my well.
It tastes of rock and root and earth and rain;
It is the best I have, my only spell,
And it is cold, and better than champagne.
Perhaps someone will pass this house one day
To drink, and be restored, and go his way,
Someone in dark confusion as I was
When I drank down cold water in a glass,
Drank a transparent health to keep me sane,
After the bitter mood had gone again.

"A Glass of Water" by May Sarton, from Collected Poems: 1930-1993. © W. W. Norton, 1993.

Image credit: "Water Glass and Orange," oil on panel, by Jeff Hayes (originally color).

 

Sara Teasdale: "Morning"

                                      I went out on an April morning
                                          All alone, for my heart was high,
                                      I was a child of the shining meadow,
                                          I was a sister of the sky.

                                      There in the windy flood of morning
                                          Longing lifted its weight from me,
                                      Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,
                                          Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.

"Morning" by Sara Teasdale, from The Collected Poems. © Digireads.com Publishing, 1951.

Image credit: "Windy Morning," Po Mo painting by Virginia Lloyd-Davies (originally color).

e. e. cummings: "i am a little church"

i am a little church (no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor
of hurrying cities—i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are the prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying) children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

I am a little church (far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish) at peace with nature
—i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, I lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)



"i am a little church" by e. e. cummings, from E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962, edited by George James Firmage. © Liveright, 1994.

Photography credit: "Mountain Shrine, Yakushima, Kagoshima, Japan," by Rob Tilley (originally color).

Chris Forhan: "Joy"

It seized me—never mind the circumstance: sudden
scent in the breeze like cinnamon, sun silvering
a roof as the unicycle parade began—it seized me

as sickness does, wholly, with no mercy,
all of my body obeisant to its law as though none of it
were mine, finally: not the joy or the body.

"Joy" by Chris Forhan, from Ransack and Dance: Poems. © Silver Birch Press, 2013.

Photography credit: "Sunlight Shine," vector photo by AllonzoInc (originally color).

Robert Cording: "Peregrine Falcon, New York City"

On the 65th floor where he wrote
Advertising copy, joking about
The erotic thrall of words that had
No purpose other than to make
Far too many buy far too much,
He stood one afternoon face to face
With a falcon that veered on the blade
Of its wings and plummeted, then
Swerved to a halt, wings hovering.

An office of computers clicked
Behind him. Below, the silence
Of the miniature lunch time crowds
And toy-like taxis drifting without
Resolve to the will of others.
This bird’s been brought in, he thought,
To clean up the city’s dirty problems
Of too many pigeons. It’s a hired beak.

Still he remained at the tinted glass
Windows, watching as the falcon
Gave with such purpose its self
To the air that carried it, its sheer falls
Breaking the mirrored self-reflections
Of glass office towers. He chided
Himself: this is how the gods come
To deliver a message or a taunt,
And, for a moment, the falcon
Seemed to wait for his response,
The air articulate with a kind of
Wonder and terror. Then it was gone.

He waited at the glass until he felt
The diminishment of whatever
Had unsettled him. And though
The thin edge of the falcon’s wings
Had opened the slightest fissure in him
And he’d wandered far in thought,
He already felt himself turning back
To words for an ad, the falcon’s power
Surely a fit emblem for something.

"Peregrine Falcon, New York City" by Robert Cording, from Common Life: Poems. © Cavenkerry, 2006.

Photography credit: Untitled photograph by Patrick Cashin of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, taken May 25, 2012, at East Atlantic Beach, New York (originally color). 

Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi: "There Was a Time"

                     There was a time I would reject those
                     who were not of my faith.
                     But now, my heart has grown capable
                     of taking on all forms.
                     It is a pasture for gazelles,
                     An abbey for monks.
                     A table for the Torah,
                     Kaaba for the pilgrim.
                     My religion is love.
                     Whichever the route love’s caravan shall take,
                     That shall be the path of my faith.

"There Was a Time," by Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, from The Interpreter of Longings (Turjumdn al-Ashwdq). Published here as presented at this link. The source might have been an edition edited and translated from the Arabic by R. A. Nicholson. © Dar Sadar, 1348/1929.

Photography credit: "Camel Caravan Crossing Desert Dunes," by Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

 

Mary Oliver: "The Sun"

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed—
or have you too
turned from this world—

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

"The Sun" by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems: Volume One. © Beacon Press, 2004.

Image credit: "Clear Dreams," painting by Osnat Tzadok

(originally color).

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).

Rebecca Baggett: "Testimony"

    














                                  for my daughters

I want to tell you
that the world is still beautiful.
I tell you that despite
children raped on city streets,
shot down in school rooms,
despite the slow poisons seeping
from old and hidden sins
into our air, soil, water,
despite the thinning film
that encloses our aching world.
Despite my own terror and despair.

I want you to look again and again,
to recognize the tender grasses,
curled like a baby's fine hairs
around your fingers, as a recurring
miracle, to see that the river rocks
shine like God, that the crisp
voices of the orange and gold
October leaves are laughing at death.
I want you to look beneath
the grass, to note
the fragile hieroglyphs
of ant, snail, beetle. I want
you to understand that you are
no more and no less necessary
than the brown recluse, the ruby-
throated hummingbird, the humpback
whale, the profligate mimosa.

I want to say, like Neruda,
that I am waiting for
"a great and common tenderness,"
that I still believe
we are capable of attention,
that anyone who notices the world
must want to save it.

"Testimony" by Rebecca Baggett, from Rebecca Baggett: Greatest Hits: 1981-2000. © Pudding House Publications, 2001.  

Photography credit: "Mother and Calf 2" (humpback whales), by Vanessa Mignon, taken Sept. 6, 2013 (originally color).

 

Jean-Paul de Dadelsen: "Exercise for the Evening"

Stop. Instead of panting and gasping from second to second
Like a torrent hurtling from rock to rock with no special merit,
Breathe
More slowly, without moving, ankles crossed, hands clasped,
Observe, as if it were the whole world at once,
An object, slight and domestic, for example
This cup.

Ignore its curve, its undulating surface, this blue pattern.
Only consider the interior, this white cavity, this surface's
Smoothness.
Water is only smooth like this on evenings of exceptional calm
After a day that gathers and holds back its joy
At the center of the silence where its breath
Stops.

Can you cite a day, an hour, with no echo of yesterday,

No haste for tomorrow, when your soul was as
Smooth as this?

Don't listen to your heart, don't measure your pulse, don't envision

Time moving through you toward death, only
While holding your breath look at this pure and only quality
Of smoothness.

If you learned now to fix your gaze, your thought,

Your soul without blinking on a few square centimeters of
Smoothness,
Perhaps, without leaving the world or the company of women,
With no change in your health, your country, your diet,
You might aspire one day to begin to understand
The whole world.

It's a cup of no value, bought at a dry-goods-and-grocery shop

In a Savoyard village near Boëge and Séchemouille.
It isn't smooth.
A microscope would reveal Himalayas of cracks.
What makes it smooth is the light, is your ingenuous fingers.
To a different gaze, perhaps, a cup is worth
A head.

As much as the solemn organ or the electronic machine,

As much as the equatorial storm or the Pacific tides,
This cup
Honors the Holy Name. If you were exiled tomorrow, you would not
Need, provided that you had looked at it long enough, provided
You were able to reconstruct this smoothness in your heart, to bring
This shard along.

Here is the entrance, not to wisdom, nor to silence,

Nor to perfect control of yourself and your shadow,
But to a first
Cavity smooth enough to hold a handful of peace.
Now you can sleep, your feet together so as not to cut
The current, hands clasped, now you can
Rise.

Slowly, calmly, a little higher than your body, recumbent

And loosed, as if you inhabited only your head
Or your nostrils
Or the immediate vicinity of the pineal gland;
Now, above your pacified body, above
Your box of balderdash, in the smooth fluid of your outstretched body,
       you can
Keep watch.

"Exercise for the Evening" by Jean-Paul de Dadelsen, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker. Published in A Public Space, Issue 20, 2013.

The French text is available here.

Photography credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer (originally color).

Jane Hirshfield: "The Weighing"

                          The heart's reasons
                          seen clearly,
                          even the hardest
                          will carry
                          its whip-marks and sadness
                          and must be forgiven.

                          As the drought-starved
                          eland forgives
                          the drought-starved lion
                          who finally takes her,
                          enters willingly then
                          the life she cannot refuse,
                          and is lion, is fed,

                          and does not remember the other.

                          So few grains of happiness
                          measured against all the dark
                          and still the scales balance.

                          The world asks of us
                          only the strength we have and we give it.
                          Then it asks more, and we give it.



"The Weighing" by Jane Hirshfield, from October Palace. © Harper Perennial, 1994. 

Photography credit: Photo #1 by Rick Brightman of "a lion attacking an eland in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in South Africa," from the Telegraph's "Pictures of the Day, 6 December 2012" (originally color).

Louis MacNeice: "Snow"

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes—
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands—
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

                                                                                             January, 1935

"Snow" by Louis MacNeice, from Collected Poems. © Louis MacNeice, 2002.

Photography credit: "First Snow of the Season," by Ann Torrence © 2008 (originally color).

 

William Stafford: "Cutting Loose"

For James Dickey


Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose from
all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell where it is, and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path—but that's when
you get going best, glad to be
lost, learning how real it is
here on the earth, again and again.

"Cutting Loose" by William Stafford. Originally published as a broadside by Palaemon, 1983. Presented here as published in Dancing with Joy: 99 Poems, edited by Roger Housden. © Random House, 2009.

Photography credit: Detail from "Remembering Haiti Earthquake," by Pat Greenhouse/Boston Globe staff (originally color).

 

Alberto Ríos: "Who Has Need, I Stand with You"

In this hour, let us grant to each other the grace that is ours to give.
In each other, let us see ourselves, and ourselves again,

That all the times we have looked at our faces in a mirror
Should have added up—each face our own, but a reminder as well

We are more than ourselves, that our eyes can see
Into that silver world as far as, and beyond, what we understand.

Looking into a mirror, into a window pane, into the water of a lake,
A photograph—we are here and over there as well. In that moment

All things are more possible. In this hour of ourselves, you and I,
One stronger than the other, let us speak evenly, and make plain

The hope that all this time has held us. Let us extend ourselves
Beyond ourselves into the silver, ourselves bigger and farther,

Ten thousand bodies to choose from suddenly in that mirror, us
Needing only one, so that things seem again so simple.

"Who Has Need, I Stand with You" by Alberto Ríos. Published online by Orion Magazine, May/June 2010. © Alberto Ríos.

Photography credit: "Train Ride," by Larry Kolvoord, Austin American-Statesman, taken January 18, 2011 (originally color).

 

Leslie Harrison: "Tea"

Nearly dawn, I’m watching the trees
march out of night, surround again
this house; the dogs

twitch in final dreams; the stove—
this orange, unsteady heat and black iron box

breathes warm mirage into the cold,
into the sky; the yellow enamel teapot
does the same inside.

The tea leaves in their white paper pouch
in their skyblue mug—I’ve brewed thousands of cups

like this: wood house, wood fire, the woods
leaning out of the night, of their stubborn life,

the taste of leaves
hot on my tongue.



"Tea" by Leslie Harrison, from Displacement: Poems. © Mariner Books, 2009.

Photography credit: "Winter Dawn Through the Woods," by Steve Thompson, November 20, 2010.

Barbara Kingsolver: "Hope; An Owner's Manual"

Look, you might as well know, this thing
is going to take endless repair: rubber bands,
crazy glue, tapioca, the square of the hypotenuse.
Nineteenth century novels. Heartstrings, sunrise:
all of these are useful. Also, feathers.

To keep it humming, sometimes you have to stand
on an incline, where everything looks possible;
on the line you drew yourself. Or in
the grocery line, making faces at a toddler
secretly, over his mother's shoulder.

You might have to pop the clutch and run
past all the evidence. Past everyone who is
laughing or praying for you. Definitely you don't
want to go directly to jail, but still, here you go,
passing time, passing strange. Don't pass this up.

In the worst of times, you will have to pass it off.
Park it and fly by the seat of your pants. With nothing
in the bank, you'll still want to take the express.
Tiptoe past the dogs of the apocalypse that are sleeping
in the shade of your future. Pay at the window.
Pass your hope like a bad check.
You might still have just enough time. To make a deposit.

"Hope; An Owner's Manual" by Barbara Kingsolver. Taken from "How to be Hopeful," Kingsolver's commencement address at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, May 11, 2008. Published online by Duke Today, May 11, 2008. © Barbara Kingsolver.

Image credit: "Hope," watercolor portrait by Svetlana Novikova (originally color).

LeeAnne McIlroy Langton: "The Tree of Knowledge"

I noticed that most of my students
Were gazing longingly out the window
On an unusually beautiful
Southern California morning
I paused in my lecture to discover
That they were collectively noticing the unusual fruit
Exploding on the tree just outside our window
“What kind of fruit is that?”
They wondered with more curiosity than
They had ever shown for Plato or Rousseau
And so I told them about the pomegranate
How according to the Q’uran, it filled the gardens of paradise
How its image had once adorned the temples of Solomon
How it doomed Persephone to Hades
How it symbolizes prosperity and fertility in Hinduism
How it came here to us:
From the Iranian Plateaus to Turkey
Across the Mediterranean and transported across the oceans
By the Spanish conquistadors
How the city of Kandahar—now bombed and ravaged—
Was once reputed to have the finest pomegranates in the world
I told them that this was my favorite tree
And then we all went outside for a moment—
To marvel at this tree
Just staring for a moment
While the wind blew
Across our faces, a tender caress across the ages
And then the moment was gone—
The next day I walked into class
And someone, anonymously, had placed a single pomegranate
On my desk at the front of the class,
An altar before thirty students,
All newly baptized—
The red stain of pomegranate seeds outlining
Their smiles

"The Tree of Knowledge" by LeeAnne McIlroy Langton. Published online by Silver Birch Press, May 21, 2013. © LeeAnne McIlroy Langton.

Image credit: "Pomegranate Tree," painting by Marat Margarian (originally color).

Jim Harrison & Ted Kooser: Untitled ["Sometimes all it takes"]

                                             Sometimes all it takes
                                             to be happy
                                             is a dime on the sidewalk.

Untitled ["Sometimes all it takes"] by Jim Harrison & Ted Kooser, from Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry. © Copper Canyon Press, 2003.

Photography credit: Untitled image in a series called "Storm Lichens," by John Pearson (originally color).