Sally Bliumis-Dunn: "Mianus River Gorge"

                                           Not just for the fresh air
                                           or to walk together on
                                           this November morning,
                                           our white breath pulsing
                                           in the air. And not just to be
                                           distracted, from ordinary
                                           thoughts of work and worry:
                                           that moss, for instance on
                                           the huge granite rock, which
                                           from up close looks like
                                           a filigreed forest of ferns—
                                           being so tiny we could walk
                                           right through it: soft press of
                                           bare feet, it would have to be
                                           summer, moist green grazing
                                           our calves; or that hawk dipping
                                           from one branch to another;
                                           or simply by the old maples
                                           and oaks, the long gray
                                           irregular bars of their reaching.

                                           For all of these we went
                                           walking, but even more, I think,
                                           for that deer you spotted,
                                           standing in the stream,
                                           its fur coat blending in with
                                           the slow brown water.
                                           We could barely make it out.
                                           Otherworldly, the way
                                           it disappeared from time to time,
                                           and then reappeared, when
                                           it tilted its head, and we could
                                           see the arc of white on its nose,
                                           and for a moment, the glistening
                                           circles of its eyes. And how
                                           still it stood in the water.

"Mianus River Gorge" by Sally Bliumis-Dunn, from Talking Underwater. © Wind Publications, 2007.

Art credit: "A deer standing in the water," photograph taken July 7, 2012, by Bruce Atwell.

Mark Nepo: "Behind the Thunder"

I keep looking for one more teacher,
only to find that fish learn from water
and birds learn from sky.

If you want to learn about the sea,
it helps to be at sea.
If you want to learn about compassion,
it helps to be in love.
If you want to learn about healing,
it helps to know of suffering.

The strong live in the storm
without worshipping the storm.



"Behind the Thunder" by Mark Nepo, from Reduced to Joy. © Viva Editions, 2013.

Art credit: "Man Vs. Storm," photograph taken August 28, 2011, by Temo Nakashidze.

Curator's Note: Join Us on Tumblr!

Hooray! A Year of Being Here is now on Tumblr. Check us out!

Please excuse any "growing pains" as I try to learn the subtleties of yet another social media platform. The effort seems worth it to expand our ever-growing audience. I hope you enjoy the results.

Thank you for being part of our reading community.

Richard Brady: "This Freedom"

This freedom—not freedom from,
from childhood habits,
from childhood fears;
not freedom to,
to open to the love enfolding me,
to know and live my truth.

This freedom—freedom with,
with habits, with fears,
with heart protected,
truth hidden deep inside.

This freedom—freedom with this moment,
just as it is.

"This Freedom" by Richard Brady. Presented here by poet submission. © Richard Brady.

Note from the poet: "I am a Dharma teacher who writes an occasional poem. I offered the following poem on receiving lamp transmission [a beautiful ceremony investing a Buddhist student with teaching authority] from Thich Nhat Hanh in 2001."

Art credit: Detail from an untitled image by an unknown photographer of Thich Nhat Hanh, great teacher of mindfulness and a mindfulness poet, during a lamp transmission ceremony.

 

Bruce Weigl: "Home"

I didn't know I was grateful
           for such late-autumn
                      bent-up cornfields

yellow in the after-harvest
           sun before the
                      cold plow turns it all over

into never.
           I didn't know
                      I would enter this music

that translates the world
           back into dirt fields
                      that have always called to me

as if I were a thing
           come from the dirt,
                      like a tuber,

or like a needful boy. End
           lonely days, I believe. End the exiled
                      and unraveling strangeness.


 

"Home" by Bruce Weigl, from The Unraveling Strangeness: Poems. © Grove Press, 2002.  

Art credit: "A corn field after combining [October, central Illinois]," photograph likely by Paula.

Galway Kinnell: "Wait"

in tribute
Galway Kinnell
1927-2014

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

 

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

 
"Wait" by Galway Kinnell, from Mortal Acts, Mortal Words. © Houghton Mifflin, 1980.   

Curator's note: Galway Kinnell, one of our mindfulness poets, died this week from leukemia at the age of 87. Kinnell wrote this poem for one of his students who was contemplating suicide after a failed relationship. After describing the circumstances of its creation during an interview, he said, "I rarely write poems for a specific person. I don’t write them to unload my emotions. I write them because they come to me and they seem to embody something that I didn’t quite know before and I try to perfect them and if somebody asks me why are you doing all that work? I say, for beings." Click here to watch Kinnell read "Wait" for The New Television Workshop.

Art credit: Photograph by Richard Brown.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: "Recipe for Happiness in Khabarovsk or Anyplace"

                                 One grand boulevard with trees
                                 with one grand café in sun
                                 with strong black coffee in very small cups

                                 One not necessarily very beautiful
                                 man or woman who loves you

                                 One fine day



"Recipe for Happiness in Khabarovsk or Anyplace" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from Endless Life: The Selected Poems. © New Directions, 1981.

Thanks to Mark Palinski for suggesting this poem for our collection.

Art credit: "Joe the Art of Coffee—Two Macchiatos," photograph by Adam Goldberg.

Barbara Crooker: "Plentitude"

Late fall, but the sun's still warm, streams
in from the west like honey. My hands curl
around a mug of tea, and it feels like a benediction,
a reprieve from my crazy life: bringing my mother
from one doctor to the other, as systems shut down,
doors start to close; going to interviews
with my disabled son to find, in the end,
that promised programs aren't funded,
and when school ends in June, that's it, so long.
But today, there's this—the happiness that comes
from working again, even though rejections
fill my mailbox, thicker than snowflakes.
I know winter's waiting; I've felt its breath
on the back of the wind. This is a bit of respite
before the storms roll in. I lean against this willow,
let the sun soak all the way to the bones. These blue
mountains cup me in their hands. This lucent afternoon
and a spigot of birdsong fill my bowl to the brim.

 
"Plentitude" by Barbara Crooker. Published in Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature (March 2014). © Barbara Crooker.

Art credit: "Morning Tea," photograph taken on July 16, 2007 by laura alice watt.

Denise Levertov: "A Gift"

Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.

 
"A Gift" by Denise Levertov, from Sands of the Well. © New Directions, 1998.

Art credit: Untitled photograph, likely by monikagal, taken on March 7, 2012.
 
 

Rainer Maria Rilke: "II, 29" ["Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower"]

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.



"II, 29" ["Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower"] by Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnets to Orpheus, anthologized in In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Edited and translated from the original German by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows. © Riverhead, 2005.

Read the German text online on p. 134 of this source.

Listen to translator Joanna Macy recite this poem and offer brief commentary, clipped from an interview with Krista Tippet, OnBeing.org, July 13, 2010.

Art credit: "Church Bell Cortona," watercolor painting (8 of 40) by Cameron Lee Roberts (originally color).

 

Rashani Réa: "The Unbroken"

There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.
There is a hollow space too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness we are sanctioned into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open
to the place inside which is unbreakable
and whole
while learning to sing.

"The Unbroken" by Rashani Réa. © Rashani Réa. Presented here by poet submission. As described by the poet: "A poem i wrote in 1991, after the 5th death in my family."

Art credit: Untitled mosaic by Gordon Mandich.

 

Hermann Hesse: "Sometimes"

Sometimes, when a bird calls,
Or a wind moves through the brush,
Or a dog barks in a distant farmyard,
I must listen a long time, and hush.

My soul flies back to where,
Before a thousand forgotten years begin,
The bird and the waving wind
Were like me, and were my kin.

My soul becomes a tree, an animal,
A cloud woven across the sky.
Changed and unfamiliar it turns back
And questions me. How shall I reply?



The original German:
 

Manchmal

Manchmal, wenn ein Vogel ruft
oder ein Wind geht in den Zweigen
oder ein Hund bellt im fernsten Gehöft,
dann muß ich lange lauschen und schweigen.

Meine Seele flieht zurück,
bis wo vor tausend vergessenen Jahren
der Vogel und der wehende Wind
mir ähnlich und meine Brüder waren.

Meine Seele wird Baum
und ein Tier und ein Wolkenweben.
Verwandelt und fremd kehrt sie zurück
und fragt mich. Wie soll ich Antwort geben?

"Sometimes" by Hermann Hesse, as translated online from the original German by Anne E.G. Nydam (April 8, 2014). Note from the translator: "The original rhymes, but the standard English translation I found does not, so I thought I’d try my hand at a rhyming version.  I admit I'm not happy with the middle verse, but you can see ... the translation by Robert Bly here."
 
Art credit: "Howling Away at the Gray," photograph by Shreve Stockton.

Curator's Note of Thanks

I just have to say a hearty thank you:

For reading along. For sharing links via Facebook and forwarding poems via email. For suggesting or submitting poems. For bearing with technical problems and "growing pains." For sending your messages of appreciation and telling me stories. For making me smile, even laugh. Sometimes, for bringing tears. For inspiring me. Every day, I meet a steady trickle of you, electronically and via snail mail, from around the world.

When I began this project, I never realized I'd feel so connected to the readers of these poems. You are a blessing.

So, with a deep bow of gratitude:

Thank you

Dankie

Toda Rabah

תודה

Ke a leboga

Danke

감사드립니다

謝謝各位

Ngyabonga

Merci

Muchas Gracias

Moving my flat hand forward from my chin

Obrigado

Shi Shi

Grazi

Spasibo

Salamat o

Tak

msuri-sana

Dankeschön

ευχαριστία

благодарственное письмо

感謝の

(الاسم) شكرا لك

Deep peace,

PCD 

P.S. No, I'm not saying "thanks" because I'm calling it quits.
I just like to say it now and then.
I don't do it enough.

Hannah Stephenson: "I Could Care Less"

I could care less,
I could,
but instead, I care
so much,
so phenomenally.
It happens
when we look, this
mountain
range-sized adoration
welling up
inside us in response
to all that
is present alongside
us, and all
that existed before
the human
thumb squeezed
the top of
the common era’s
stopwatch.
The seven holes in our
heads help
us to take in what we
can of the
ever-altering wilderness
here for us,
with us. How is this not
collaboration.

"I Could Care Less" by Hannah Stephenson, from In the Kettle, the Shriek. © Gold Wake Press, 2013.

Art credit: I have thus far been unable to locate the title of this bronze sculpture by Richard MacDonald, who seems to title all his works. The photograph, dated August 18, 2011, is by Marta. A quote of MacDonald on the wall above the sculpture in this installation at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas reads, "Art transcends all human boundaries. It is a gift of almost inexplicable, magical energy. When our hearts, through our senses, are touched by art, our lives are enhanced."

Thomas R. Smith: "Trust"

It's like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.

The theft that could have happened doesn't.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address.



"Trust" by Thomas R. Smith, from Waking Before Dawn. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2007.  

Art credit: "Greasy Dirty Mechanic Man Hands and Fingers," photograph by D. Sharon Pruitt Pink Sherbet Photography.

Author photo credit: Jens Gunelson (originally black and white). 

 

William Ayot: "Anyone Can Sing"

Anyone can sing. You just open your mouth,
and give shape to a sound. Anyone can sing.
What is harder, is to proclaim the soul,
to initiate a wild and necessary deepening:
to give the voice broad, sonorous wings
of solitude, grief, and celebration,
to fill the body with the echoes of voices
lost long ago to bravery, and silence,
to prise the reluctant heart wide open,
to witness defeat, to suffer contempt,
to shrink, lose face, go down in ignominy,
to retreat to the last dark hiding-place
where the tattered remnants of your pride
still gather themselves around your nakedness,
to know these rags as your only protection
and yet still open—to face the possibility
that your innermost core may hold nothing at all,
and to sing from that—to fill the void
with every hurt, every harm, every hard-won joy
that staves off death yet honours its coming,
to sing both full and utterly empty,
alone and conjoined, exiled and at home,
to sing what people feel most keenly
yet never acknowledge until you sing it.
Anyone can sing. Yes. Anyone can sing.

"Anyone Can Sing" by William Ayot, from Small Things That Matter. © Well at Olivier Mythodrama Publishing, 2003. Presented here as posted on the poet's website.

Art credit: "Young survivor sings at Ulm DP [Displaced Person] camp," photograph courtesy of Lillian Gewirtzman (nee Rajs), Holocaust survivor and schoolmate of the girl in the photo, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives.

Federico García Lorca: "The Silence"

Listen, my child, to the silence.
An undulating silence,
a silence
that turns valleys and echoes slippery,
that bends foreheads
toward the ground.



El silencio

Oye, hijo mío, el silencio.
Es un silencio ondulado,
un silencio,
donde resbalan valles y ecos
y que inclina las frentes
hacia el suelo.



"The Silence" by Federico García Lorca, translated from the original Spanish by Cola Franzen. From Selected Verses, edited by Christopher Maurer. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.  

Art credit: "Solitude," photograph by Jan Vojtek.

Howard Nemerov: "Trees"

To be a giant and keep quiet about it,
To stay in one's own place;
To stand for the constant presence of process
And always to seem the same;
To be steady as a rock and always trembling,
Having the hard appearance of death
With the soft, fluent nature of growth,
One's Being deceptively armored,
One's Becoming deceptively vulnerable;
To be so tough, and take the light so well,
Freely providing forbidden knowledge
Of so many things about heaven and earth
For which we should otherwise have no word—
Poems or people are rarely so lovely,
And even when they have great qualities
They tend to tell you rather than exemplify
What they believe themselves to be about,
While from the moving silence of trees,
Whether in storm or calm, in leaf and naked,
Night and day, we draw conclusions of our own,
Sustaining and unnoticed as our breath
And perilous also—though there has never been
A critical tree—about the nature of things.

"Trees" by Howard Nemerov, from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov. © University of Chicago Press, 1981.

My thanks to an anonymous visitor to our website for suggesting this poem.

Art credit: "Wind Tree," photograph by Richard Alois. Caption: "A tree torn and formed by the ever blowing at Seven Sisters in UK."

Bruce Dethlefsen: "1950"

at night
my mother bathed me in a white tub
scrubbed me with white soap
rubbed me in a white towel
hugged and plugged me
into pajamas and the white sheets

an act so kind
so common
it barely even happened

"1950" by Bruce Dethlefsen. © Bruce Dethlefsen. Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: Detail from untitled photograph of Oliver, her third son, by Lana (originally color).

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "Eyes-Shut Facing Eyes-Rolling-Around" [excerpt]

Pay close attention to your mean thoughts.

That sourness may be a blessing,
as an overcast day brings rain for the roses
and relief to dry soil.

Don't look so sourly on your sourness!
It may be it's carrying what you most deeply need
and want. What seems to be keeping you from joy
may be what leads you to joy.

Don't call it a dead branch.
Call it the live, moist root.

Don't always be waiting to see
what's behind it. That wait and see
poisons your Spirit.

Reach for it.
Hold your meanness to your chest
as a healing root,
and be through with waiting.

"Eyes-Shut Facing Eyes-Rolling-Around" [excerpt] by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from Delicious Laughter: Rambunctious Teaching Stories from the Mathnawi of Jelaluddin Rumi, edited and translated from the original Persian by Coleman Barks. © Maypop, 1990.

Curator's note: I hesitate to use excerpts. In this case it feels reasonable, and not only because the final two stanzas of the original text, not included here, are distinctly different in both content and tone. Coleman Barks himself admits that the poems in this rowdy collection are "not discrete (or discreet) poems in any sense" but rather "buckets lifted from a whole." Even the titles are his own "whims." Rumi used none. So, in deleting the final stanzas for our purposes, I've basically just slopped a few lines from the bucket. I encourage you to read the full original text sometime. I'd happily point you to it online, but tellingly, I can't find it anywhere.

Art credit: "Dead Branch," drawing by Eisen Feuer (originally black and white).