Barbara Ras: "You Can't Have It All"

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam's twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man's legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who'll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can't bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can't count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother's,
it will always whisper, you can't have it all,
but there is this.

"You Can't Have It All" by Barbara Ras, from Bite Every Sorrow. © Louisiana State University Press, 1998.

Art credit: "Black Swan," photograph by Ken Ohsawa  (originally color).

 

Kabir: "07" ["Hiding in this cage"]

 
hiding in this cage

of visible matter

is the invisible

lifebird

pay attention

to her

she is singing

your song

 

"07" ["Hiding in this cage"], attributed to Kabir, from Beloved, May I Enter: Short Poems. Translated from the original Hindi by Sushil Rao. © Hrdai Press, 1996.  

Art credit: "Bird, Cage and the Girl," oil on canvas, by Ivona Torovin (originally color).

John O'Donohue: "For Love in a Time of Conflict"

When the gentleness between you hardens
And you fall out of your belonging with each other,
May the depths you have reached hold you still.

When no true word can be said, or heard,
And you mirror each other in the script of hurt,
When even the silence has become raw and torn,
May you hear again an echo of your first music.

When the weave of affection starts to unravel
And anger begins to sear the ground between you,
Before this weather of grief invites
The black seed of bitterness to find root,
May your souls come to kiss.

Now is the time for one of you to be gracious,
To allow a kindness beyond thought and hurt,
Reach out with sure hands
To take the chalice of your love,
And carry it carefully through this echoless waste
Until this winter pilgrimage leads you
Towards the gateway to spring.

"For Love in a Time of Conflict" by John O'Donohue, from Benedictus: A Book of Blessings. © Bantam Books, 2007.

Art credit: "Lovers Knot," painting by Christine Wilson.

 

Curator's Note: Thanks to Ruby Wilson, with a Shameless Plug

My deep thanks to poet and friend Ruby Wilson for managing A Year of Being Here while I was indulging with my family in the beauties of Glacier National Park.

Since Ruby refuses to accept compensation for her labor, let me plug her latest chapbook, "At the Rim of the Horizon" (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Learn more about Ruby and her work here. 

(Ruby, I'm sure that you'll get even for my doing this. Someday.)

Deep peace,
PCD

Dan Gerber: "Advice"

You know how, after it rains,
my father told me one August afternoon
when I struggled with something
hurtful my best friend had said,
how worms come out and
crawl all over the sidewalk
and it stays a big mess
a long time after it’s over
if you step on them?

Leave them alone,
he went on to say,
after clearing his throat,
and when the rain stops,
they crawl back into the ground.

"Advice" by Dan Gerber, from Sailing through Cassiopeia. © Copper Canyon Press, 2012.

Art credit: Untitled image attributed to Sharlini/Flickr (originally color).

Osip Mandelstam: "A Body Was Given to Me"

A body was given to me—what to do with it,
So unique and so much my own?

For the quiet joy of breathing and living,
Who is it, tell me, that I must thank?

I am the gardener, I am the flower as well,
In the dungeon of the world I am not alone.

On the glass of eternity has already settled
My breathing, my warmth.

A pattern prints itself on it,
Unrecognizable of late.

Let the lees of the moment trickle down—
The lovely pattern must not be wiped away.

"A Body Was Given to Me" by Osip Mandelstam, from 20th Century Russian Poetry: Silver And Steel, edited and translated from the original Russian by Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward. © Nan A. Talese, 1993.

Art credit: "So I write your name in my breath on the window...," photograph by © ϟroorz, July 11, 2009 (originally color).

 

Thich Nhat Hanh: "Walking Meditation"

Take my hand.
We will walk.
We will only walk.
We will enjoy our walk
without thinking of arriving anywhere.
Walk peacefully.
Walk happily.
Our walk is a peace walk.
Our walk is a happiness walk.

Then we learn
that there is no peace walk;
that peace is the walk;
that there is no happiness walk;
that happiness is the walk.
We walk for ourselves.
We walk for everyone
always hand in hand.

Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom under our feet.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Print on Earth your love and happiness.

Earth will be safe
when we feel in us enough safety.

"Walking Meditation" by Thich Nhat Hanh, from Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh. © Parallax Press, 1999.  

Art credit: "Monks Passing Vietnam’s Pongua Falls," photograph by Lilly Calandrello, taken March 26, 2012 (originally color).

Philippe Jaccottet: "Distances"

Swifts turn in the heights of the air;
higher still turn the invisible stars.
When day withdraws to the ends of the earth
their fires shine on a dark expanse of sand.

We live in a world of motion and distance.
The heart flies from tree to bird,
from bird to distant star,
from star to love; and love grows
in the quiet house, turning and working,
servant of thought, a lamp held in one hand.

 

"Distances" by Philippe Jaccottet, from The Selected Poems of Philippe Jaccottet, edited and translated from the original French by Derek Mahon © Wake Forest University Press, 1988.  

The French text can be read online on p. 96 of this book.

Art credit: Photograph of "a traditional lantern," by Helen Redding (originally black and white).

Ishihara Yoshiro: "Wheat"

Let a stalk of wheat

be your witness

to every difficult day.

Since it was a flame

before it was a plant,

since it was courage

before it was grain,

since it was determination

before it was growth,

and, above all, since it was prayer

before it was fruition,

it has nothing to point to

but the sky.

                                  
Remember the incredibly gentle wheat stalk

which holds its countless arrows fixed

to shoot from the bowstring—

you, standing in the same position

where the wind holds it.

"Wheat" by Ishihara Yoshiro, from Like Underground Water: The Poetry of Mid-Twentieth Century Japan. Translated from the original Japanses by Naoshi Koriyama and Edward Lueders. © Copper Canyon Press, 1995.  

Art credit: Untitled photograph of a stalk of wheat, by Todd Korol/Reuters (originally color).

 

Maya Stein: "Alliance"

“You have to make an alliance with your anguish,” he said,
“not wage war against it.” And I thought of all the fists
I had shaken at misfortune: games lost
because the shot clock ran out,
a good meal scorched in a forgotten oven,
money dropped on a dress worn only once,
the bully in 6th grade, the math test in 9th,
the wrong outfit at Halloween.
But of course, this isn’t what he meant.

If I were brave enough, I’d tell you how my heart
has raged for love, stretched thin as a high wire.
If I were brave enough, I’d tell you
how my body has been fighting to stay upright
on every precipitous downhill the city
throws at it. If I were brave enough,
I’d climb into your lap and weep with longing.
All I can say is that any attempt at beauty and hope
is land-mined with failure.
And so the perilous track-making begins.
Wending our way through,
there are possible clutches at sunlight, at windows, at yes.
We are each of us inches from death.
We are each of us inches from life.
We are each of us inches from one another.

"Alliance" by Maya Stein. Published on the poet's earliest blog on December 8, 2009. © Maya Stein.

Art credit: "Reaching out to make a difference," photograph attributed to this page (originally color).

 

Carolyn Miller: "A Warm Summer in San Francisco"

Although I watched and waited for it every day,

somehow I missed it, the moment when everything reached 

the peak of ripeness. It wasn’t at the solstice; that was only
the time of the longest light. It was sometime after that, when

the plants had absorbed all that sun, had taken it into themselves

for food and swelled to the height of fullness. It was in July,
in a dizzy blaze of heat and fog, when on some nights
it was too hot to sleep, and the restaurants set half their tables

on the sidewalks; outside the city, down the coast,
the Milky Way floated overhead, and shooting stars

fell from the sky over the ocean. One day the garden

was almost overwhelmed with fruition:
My sweet peas struggled out of the raised bed onto the mulch
of laurel leaves and bark and pods, their brilliantly colored

sunbonnets of rose and stippled pink, magenta and deep purple
pouring out a perfume that was almost oriental. Black-eyed Susans

stared from the flower borders, the orange cherry tomatoes

were sweet as candy, the corn fattened in its swaths of silk,

hummingbirds spiraled by in pairs, the bees gave up

and decided to live in the lavender. At the market,

surrounded by black plums and rosy plums and sugar prunes

and white-fleshed peaches and nectarines, perfumey melons
and mangos, purple figs in green plastic baskets,

clusters of tiny Champagne grapes and piles of red-black cherries

and apricots freckled and streaked with rose, I felt tears

come into my eyes, absurdly, because I knew
that summer had peaked and was already passing

away. I felt very close then to understanding 

the mystery; it seemed to me that I almost knew

what it meant to be alive, as if my life had swelled

to some high moment of response, as if I could

reach out and touch the season, as if I were inside

its body, surrounded by sweet pulp and juice,

shimmering veins and ripened skin.

"A Warm Summer in San Francisco" by Carolyn Miller, from Light, Moving. © Sixteen Rivers Press, 2009.  

Art credit: Untitled image from the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco, photographer unknown (originally color).

 

Nancy Ann Schaefer: "Ahimsa"

What is this you and I?
this division, separateness
struggling for supremacy
—hostile & mistrustful
fight-faced, fists raised,
one against the other,
discordant & destructive?

When really there
is only one—
the we of us, of all of us
our mystic core
immortal, enfolding
dove-winged
into cosmic divine

Let’s unlearn this way of war.

"Ahimsa" by Nancy Ann Schaefer, from In Search of Lode. © 918studio, 2014.

Art credit: "Ahimsa," desktop wallpaper by unknown artist, available for download from lululemon (originally black and white).

 

Mary Gray: "When I Am Wise"

                                    When I am wise in the speech of grass,
                                    I forget the sound of words
                                    and walk into the bottomland
                                    and lie with my head on the ground
                                    and listen to what grass tells me
                                    about small places for wind to sing,
                                    about the labor of insects,
                                    about shadows dank with spice,
                                    and the friendliness of weeds.

                                    When I am wise in the dance of grass,
                                    I forget the name and run
                                    into the rippling bottomland
                                    and lean against the silence which flows
                                    out of the crumpled mountains
                                    and rises through slick blades, pods,
                                    wheat stems, and curly shoots,
                                    and is carried by wind for miles
                                    from my outstretched hands.

"When I Am Wise" by Mary Gray, from Wild Song: Poems of the Natural World, edited by John Daniel. © University of Georgia Press, 1998.

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

 

Mary O'Connor: "Good Days"

each glorious third week after Adriamycin


Low light before sunrise, distant birdsong, smell of damp earth.
Under the quilt in the laze of limbs morning-slack,
a long slow waking, and comfort in the bed.

                                      •

The head in order observes thoughts budding, branching,
lights flares, solves puzzles, constructs a theme. Happiness
just to have the words coming, the words in order.

                                      •

Color grows with light: sky, moving clouds, tulips, new leaves,
and this blackberry, its perfect globules closefitting spheres
of dark juicy purples.

                                      •

On my walk a stand of reeds caught by the slanting light,
back home tears let down simply as rain on the coarse yellow cloth
where my bread and apples wait.

                                      •

Neighbors, mail, and visitors, the heft of a squirmy baby
healthy as a trout. His organized joynts, his azure veins.
Later, sweet light shrieks of kids on a trampoline.

                                      •

Inner movements: to be stirred, to know a capacity for ecstasy, to harbor
an obsession that lights me up like a lamp, or a passion for a cause,
a book, music, the life of the spirit.

                                      •

What I don’t know not besting me
what I don’t know for sure not worrying me
what I’ll never know in the hands of God.

                                      •

That something lost with cancer treatment?
It was really something. Here. It’s back.
Thanks.

 
"Good Days" by Mary O'Connor, RSM. Published here by poet submission. © Mary O'Connor.

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer (originally color). Caption: "Karen slowly injects the Adriamycin into the IV. It takes several minutes to inject."

Curator's note: In her submission the poet wrote, "On the good days during the chemo cycle, life wasn’t just good, it shone! Everything stood out in [high definition]. I remember the first time I got glasses when I was 13 and had been short-sighted for years, the way things just came into focus. Amazing. It was like that."

Rolf Jacobsen: "The Fireflies"

                         
                                    It was the evening with fireflies
                                    while we were waiting for the bus to Velletri
                                    that we saw two old people kissing
                                    under the plane tree. It was then
                                    you said, half to the air
                                    half to me:
                                    Whoever loves for years
                                    hasn't lived in vain.
                                    And it was then I caught sight of the first
                                    fireflies in the darkness, sparkling
                                    with flashes of light around your head.
                                    It was then.

"The Fireflies" by Rolf Jacobsen, from North in the World: Selected Poems of Rolf Jacobsen. Translated from the original Norwegian and edited by Roger Greenwald. © University of Chicago Press, 2002.

The Norwegian text can be found on page 298 of the digital text.

Art credit: "Fireflies by the Ropeswing, Lake of the Ozarks, MO," time-lapse photograph by Vincent Brady (originally color).

 

Joyce Sutphen: "The Last Things I'll Remember"

The partly open hay barn door, white frame around the darkness,
the broken board, small enough for a child
to slip through.

Walking in the cornfields in late July, green tassels overhead,
the slap of flat leaves as we pass, silent
and invisible from any road.

Hollyhocks leaning against the stucco house, peonies heavy
as fruit, drooping their deep heads
on the dog house roof.

Lilac bushes between the lawn and the woods,
a tractor shifting from one gear into
the next, the throttle opened,

the smell of cut hay, rain coming across the river,
the drone of the hammer mill,
milk machines at dawn.



"The Last Things I'll Remember" by Joyce Sutphen, from First Words. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2010.

Art credit: Untitled image by Greg Hill carrying the caption "A road leads deep into a Kansas cornfield in late July" (originally color).

Carol Coffee Reposa: "Vegetable Love in Texas"

Farmers say
There are two things
Money can't buy:
Love and homegrown tomatoes.

I pick them carefully.
They glow in my hands, shimmer
Beneath their patina of warm dust
Like talismen.

Perhaps they are.
Summer here is a crucible
That melts us down
Each day,

The sky a sheet of metal
Baking cars, houses, streets.

Out in the country
Water-starved maize

Shrivels into artifacts.
A desiccated cache
Of shredded life.
Farmers study archeology

In limp straw hats.
But still I have
This feeble harvest,
Serendipity in red:

Red like a favorite dress,
Warm like a dance,
Lush like a kiss long desired,
Firm like a vow, the hope of rain.

"Vegetable Love in Texas" by Carol Coffee Reposa, from Texas Poetry Calendar: 2008. © Dos Gatos Press, 2008.

Art credit: "Tomatoes in Basket," photograph by Diane Pratt (originally color).

 

Curator's Note: I'm Off

Happy Monday, all!

Today I'm off for Glacier National Park to see what's left of the glaciers before they're all gone. I'll be happily unplugged in the wild until August. But don't worry. Your daily poems are ready to go, and my trusty friend RW is back to manage all the YOBH platforms until my return. I know you'll be gentle with her.

Thanks, RW! And thanks to all you readers who make this project such a pleasure.

Deep peace,
PCD

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 Baker: "Heaven"

                                 All afternoon the sprinkler ticks and sprays,
                                 ticks and sprays in lazy rounds, trailing
                                 a feather of mist. When I turn it off,
                                 the cicadas keep up their own dry rain,
                                 passing on high from limb to limb.
                                 I don’t know what has shocked me more,
                                 that you are gone, that I am still here,
                                 that there is music after the end.

"Heaven" by David Baker. Published online by The Atlantic, June 19, 2013. © David Baker.

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