Mark J. Mitchell: "Samsara Sestina"

Is the ordinary still there?
The ordinary is still there too.
                    –Treatise on Sudden Enlightenment


The common, easiest mistake
Is to think all of this is real—
Of course it’s solid. Rocks are hard,
Rain will soak you, the dance
Of stars can wear you out
With beauty. But that’s not the same thing.

Look: Say something
Catches your eye—a drop a rock—you take
It within, learn it and let it out.
So then, which is real—
The bright light that dances
In your eyes, or the stone, hard,

Round, washed by time? It’s hard
To sort the seer from the seen. A thing
Is a collection of energies, a dance
Of molecules that form, reform, take
Shape in space or time, in the real
Field of action. But can time come out

To play? Is there space without
Something closing in, some hard
Boundary? How does it become real?
Where is the rock when it’s no thing?
Is your tripping on it a mistake
Or another step in the dance?

Because it’s still a dance
You know. Time and matter weave in and out
Of each other. They leave, they take
Whatever they want. Their music is hard
To learn, to hear, like something
You sang before you could talk—a nursery reel

Or rhyme that’s no less real
Because it manages to dance
Away from your mind. It’s something
That can’t stay within, but isn’t without
Essence just because it’s not hard
To your touch. Still, it’s a simple enough mistake

To try and step outside this wild, unreal
Game of gods, the hard and terrible dance
Of shiny sad things that you may touch but never take.

"Samsara Sestina" by Mark J. Mitchell. Text as published in Numinous: Spiritual Poetry (January, 2012).

Art credit: "Cosmic Dance," digital art by mysteria-dl.

Thomas Berry: "An Appalachian Wedding"

Look up at the sky
the heavens so blue
the sun so radiant
the clouds so playful
the soaring raptors
woodland creatures
meadows in bloom
rivers singing their 
way to the sea
wolfsong on the land
whalesong in the sea
celebration everywhere
wild, riotous
immense as a monsoon
lifting an ocean of joy
then spilling it down over
the Appalachian landscape
drenching us all 
in a deluge of delight
as we open our arms and 
rush toward each other
all of us moved by that vast 
compassionate curve
that brings all things together
in intimate celebration
celebration that is
the universe itself.

"An Appalachian Wedding" by Thomas Berry. Text as posted on the poet's website. 

Art credit: "Spring in the Mountains—Blue Ridge Parkway [Appalachia] Spring Landscape Photography,'' photograph by Dave Allen Photography.

Curator's note: As this poem was written for the wedding of musician-composer Paul Winter, I thought you might enjoy Winter's "Mountain Wedding" (click arrow below). I don't know if Winter wrote this piece of music for his own wedding or not, but it's fun to imagine so. Enjoy.

Czeslaw Milosz: "On Pilgrimage"

May the smell of thyme and lavender accompany us on our journey
To a province that does not know how lucky it is
For it was, among all the hidden corners of the earth,
The only one chosen and visited.

We tended toward the Place but no signs led there.
Till it revealed itself in a pastoral valley
Between mountains that look older than memory,
By a narrow river humming at the grotto.

May the taste of wine and roast meat stay with us
As it did when we used to feast in the clearings,
Searching, not finding, gathering rumors,
Always comforted by the brightness of the day.

May the gentle mountains and the bells of the flocks
Remind us of everything we have lost,
For we have seen on our way and fallen in love
With the world that will pass in a twinkling.

 
"On Pilgrimage" by Czeslaw Milosz, from New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001 (Ecco, 2003). Translated from the original Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass. Text as posted on Mindfulness Hub (04/12/15).

Art credit: "Pleated Plains," Polish landscape photograph by Krzysztof Browko.

Chelsea Rathburn: "A Raft of Grief"

The raft that means 'a great number' is not related
at all to the raft that carries people or their possessions
in the water. The two words are homonyms. 
—Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins

If only there were a boat,
low and long and loaded
with all we'd brought or built:
the fatal inattentions,
anxieties and tics
that time had sanctified,
our good and bad intentions,
rages, lapses, and aches.
If only it were that easy,
to stand only ankle-
deep in the sullied water
hoisting our shared cargo,
sinking no further beneath
its weight. If only the boat
did not need a rower;
we'd push it off together
then wade to opposite banks
absolved at last, forever,
buoyant, watching it go.

 

"A Raft of Grief" by Chelsea Rathburn. Text as published in A Raft of Grief: Poems (Autumn House Press, 2013). Reprinted by poet permission.

Art credit: "Bamboo Raft on Li River," photograph by Didier Marti. From the caption: "Located in Yangshuo countryside near City of Guilin, China."

David Wagoner: "The Silence of the Stars"

When Laurens van der Post one night
      In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen
              He couldn't hear the stars
Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him,
      Half-smiling. They examined his face
              To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men
      Who plant nothing, who have almost
              Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
      But themselves, led him away
              From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
      And listened. One of them whispered,
              Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
      To disbelieve, but had to answer,
              No. They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
      Circle of firelight and told him
              They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
      For himself and blamed his ancestors
              For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now. On some clear nights
      When nearby houses have turned off their televisions,
              When the traffic dwindles, when through streets
Are between sirens and the jets overhead
      Are between crossings, when the wind
              Is hanging fire in the fir trees,
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove
      Between calls is regarding his own darkness,
              I look at the stars again as I first did
To school myself in the names of constellations
      And remember my first sense of their terrible distance,
              I can still hear what I thought
At the edge of silence were the inside jokes
      Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic,
              The C above high C of my inner ear, myself
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are:
      My fair share of the music of the spheres
              And clusters of ripening stars,
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods
      Still tending even tone-deaf creatures
              Through their exiles in the desert.

"The Silence of the Stars" by David Wagoner, from Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems (University of Illinois Press, 1999). Text as published in Poetry (December, 1997).

Art credit: "Music of the Spheres 2," fractal print by Scott Bricker.

William Stafford: "Adrift"

Let my dreams while I’m wide-awake
loose. Let me be drowned, baptized,
in the light given me. Day comes around,
night, fall, winter, spring,
summer. Leaves overhead, underfoot.
Waves arrive, buffets from friends
offended, enemies. Let it all come:
this is my way, this is the canoe I’m in.

"Adrift" by William Stafford, from The Answers Are Inside the Mountain: Meditations on the Writing Life, edited by Paul Merchant and Vincent Wixon (University of Michigan Press, 2003).

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.

Dianna Henning: "When the hummingbird's beak caught in the window screen,"

the tiny thing tried to back up,
if one can call reversing gears release,

its beak so finely wedded to the screen,
although threaded might be a more appropriate usage;

nonetheless, its nervous hovering
remained until the nail of its beak came loose

and off the bird took, flash of wings a blur,
the teeny god headed towards its own mystery,

and not once did it explain its fear
or utter anything about a harrowing escape.




"When the hummingbird's beak caught in the window screen," by Dianna Henning. Text presented here by poet submission. 

Art credit: "Hummingbird crop," photograph taken on February 22, 2007, by Jon Fife.

 

Tada Chimako: "Shade"

A dark elephant
living in a dark forest
came to sip from a pond
as the Buddha watched

A dark elephant
from a dark forest
has come to the pond
and sipped
the trembling vision
of the Moon.

A dark deer
from a dark forest
also came to sip from the pond.

The deer has also sipped
the vision of the moon.

The Buddha leaned over
and scooped up the moon in his palm.

I too will sip
if it will illuminate my heart
just a little.

More than two thousand years
after the Buddha's death
His remains have been divided endlessly
only imaginary numbers can count
the tiles atop the reliquary pagodas
that stretch into the sky
three stories, five stories, seven stories...

As a person of brightness
living now in a town of light,
to which pond will you go
to sip when overcome by night?
When you scoop up the water
what vision of the moon
will you find in your palm?

I too will sip
if it will shade my heart
just a little.

"Shade" by Tada Chimako. Text as posted on Dragonfly's Poetry & Prolixity (07/10/2010). Translated from the original Japanese by Jeffrey Angles. 

Art credit: Untitled photograph by Bob King. Caption: "The full moon reflects in a pond near my home earlier this week. As waves spread and flatten (left to right), the moon's disk reforms on the water."

Tom Hennen: "Spring Follows Winter Once More"

Lying here in the tall grass
Where it’s so soft
Is this what it is to go home?
Into the earth
Of worms and black smells
With a larch tree gathering sunlight
In the spring afternoon

And the gates of Paradise open just enough
To let out
A flock of geese.



"Spring Follows Winter Once More" by Tom Hennen. Text as published in Darkness Sticks to Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2013).

Art credit: "Crowd," photograph by Mike Hollingshead. Caption: "1.3 million geese came to Squaw Creek [National Wildlife Refuge, Canada] this spring—more than the population of any British city except for London." The birds were returning to their summer breeding ground in Central Canada.

Robert Bly: "Climbing into Bed"

There's no end to the joy of climbing into bed,
And hearing your wife rustling about nearby;
There's no end to the delight of the huge covers.

There's no end to the delight of hearing your body
Rumbling and the night waiting to capture you,
And take you off to your childhood bed.

There is no end to the joy of sensing your toes
Feel around at the bottom of the bed,
For the invisible dog that is sleeping there.

There is no end to thanking your parents;
There is no end to rubbing your feet after a run,
No end to the delight when the door closes.

There's no end to the joy of snuggling down
And pulling up the covers after you,
And saying goodbye to the world once more.

Isn't it enough—this being done for now,
And sensing the sea closing over you,
Free at last from intelligence with its huge hands.

There is no end to enjoying it again
And again, this dawdling at the end of day
And so slipping backward toward childhood again.
 



"Climbing into Bed" by Robert Bly. Text as published in The Cortland Review (Winter, 2011). Hear Bly read his poem on the publisher's page.

 Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.


 

Barbara Crooker: "Rufous-Sided Towhee"

The teaching of Zen is: drink your tea. —Jane Hirshfield, Agni Online




Which is what the towhee says as he

scratches in the underbrush, searching for food.
Black and white with rusty sides, he loves
the understory, the margins, the hedgerows.

He sinks into the afternoon like brown leaves
steeping in hot water. He knows no ambition

or envy, wants nothing beyond this spring day,

sunlight spreading like honey on toast. Up pops
my list, the items to check off, the errands to run,

the weeds to pull. The towhee sings again:
Drink your tea.





"Rufous-Sided Towhee" by Barbara Crooker. Text as published in Little Patuxent Review: A Journal of Literature and the Arts (Winter, 2014). Reprinted by permission of the poet.

Listen to the "drink your tea" song of this bird (scroll down page to the audio bar).

Art credit: Untitled photograph of Rufous-Sided Towhee by Pat Gaines.

 

Yehuda Amichai: "I, May I Rest in Peace"

I, may I rest in peace—I, who am still living, say,
May I have peace in the rest of my life.
I want peace right now while I'm still alive.
I don't want to wait like that pious man who wished for one leg
of the golden chair of Paradise, I want a four-legged chair
right here, a plain wooden chair. I want the rest of my peace now.
I have lived out my life in wars of every kind: battles without
and within, close combat, face-to-face, the faces always
my own, my lover-face, my enemy-face.
Wars with the old weapons—sticks and stones, blunt axe, words,
dull ripping knife, love and hate,
and wars with newfangled weapons—machine gun, missile,
words, land mines exploding, love and hate,
I don't want to fulfill my parents' prophecy that life is war.
I want peace with all my body and all my soul.
Rest me in peace.



"I, May I Rest in Peace" by Yehuda Amichai. Text as published in Open Closed Open: Poems (Mariner Books, 2006 edition). Translated from the original Hebrew by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld. Reprinted here by permission of Chana Bloch.

Curator's note: Vivian Eden, a blogger for Haaretz, observes, "The `pious man' in the first stanza is from a Jewish folktale. He believed that in the world to come, he would sit on a golden chair. A prayer for just one leg of it to make ends meet in this world was granted, but then his wife worried that he would wobble uncomfortably on a three-legged chair for all eternity."

Thank you to subscriber Anita Gold for submitting this poem, with permission of Chana Bloch.

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.

Jane Hirshfield: "Da Capo"

Take the used-up heart like a pebble
and throw it far out.

Soon there is nothing left.
Soon the last ripple exhausts itself
in the weeds.

Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery.
Glaze them in oil before adding
the lentils, water, and herbs.

Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt.
Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat.
You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted.
Begin again the story of your life.



"Da Capo" by Jane Hirshfield, from Each Happiness Ringed by Lions: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2005). Text as posted on Eat This Poem (02/22/12).

Art credit: Photograph of "lentil stew with chestnuts," perhaps by Nicole Gulotta. This image, poem and a corresponding recipe are found on Gulotta's delightful blog, Eat This Poem.

Donna Hilbert: "Credo"

I believe in the Tuesdays
and Wednesdays of life,
the tuna sandwich lunches
and TV after dinner.
I believe in coffee with hot milk
and peanut butter toast,
Rosé wine in summer
and Burgundy in winter.

I am not in love with holidays,
birthdays—nothing special—
and weekends are just days
numbered six and seven,
though my love
dozing over TV golf
while I work the Sunday puzzle
might be all I need of life
and all I ask of heaven.

 
"Credo" by Donna Hilbert, from The Green Season (World Parade Books, 2011). © Donna Hilbert. Text presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.

Arra Lynn Ross: "Mother Ann Tells Lucy What Gave Her Joy"

A moment of understanding
     when the face lights up
          and even the trees seem to kneel.
The mossy ground
     below a huge willow
          by the side of the marsh.
Children who come
     with white faces
          and turn pink
               in the sun.

The sound of sawing in the woods
          and the long lone hum
               of a boat bearing lumber
                    down the Hudson.
The sudden deer in the trees,
          a streak of white tail
               and the hoof prints
                    filling with water.

The sound of voices
          rounding out with grace,
               with trust.
                    And rosehip tea steaming in the sun.
How many times we threw off our shoes
          and danced together,
               the cool ground under our soles.
                    And the mud! churned by feet, and horses,
                       ox-carts and cows.
          The open throats
               and closed eyes,
                    that red ringing
                         inside my heart.

And mornings that Lucy sang
     making breakfast,
          snatches of hymns
               stuck together.

The long, quiet time of waiting.

"Mother Ann Tells Lucy What Gave Her Joy" by Arra Lynn Ross, from Seedlip and Sweet Apple (Milkweed Editions, 2010). Text as posted on Poets.org.

Art credit: Untitled photograph by Zurijeta/Shutterstock.

Susan Terris: "Matin and Vesper"

At the beginning of day,
rubythroat and trill of a tree frog.
Cicadas blade songs of immortality
as on an ancient Chinese scroll,
and sun through fog
burns a promise of warmth.
Steps on a path are straight
as we angle into light, hearing
leaf-whisper of
verses to be hymned.

When darkness swallows light,
a bat rises lofting
his delicate, webbed prison.
Waterstriders skim,
and a rising bass fins circles 

on the surface of a lake.
Wrapped in the blanket of evening,
we watch the circles, listen
as they lap to infinity.
Stay. Keep watch with us.

"Matin and Vesper" by Susan Terris. Text as published in Schuylkill Valley Journal and The Talking Stick. © Susan Terris. Reprinted by permission of the poet.

Art credit: "Ripples created by an insect known as the water strider," photograph by Mike Laptew.

Billy Collins: "Directions"

You know the brick path in back of the house,
the one you see from the kitchen window,
the one that bends around the far end of the garden
where all the yellow primroses are?
And you know how if you leave the path
and walk up into the woods you come
to a heap of rocks, probably pushed
down during the horrors of the Ice Age,
and a grove of tall hemlocks, dark green now
against the light-brown fallen leaves?
And farther on, you know
the small footbridge with the broken railing
and if you go beyond that you arrive
at the bottom of that sheep’s head hill?
Well, if you start climbing, and you
might have to grab hold of a sapling
when the going gets steep,
you will eventually come to a long stone
ridge with a border of pine trees
which is as high as you can go
and a good enough place to stop.

The best time is late afternoon
when the sun strobes through
the columns of trees as you are hiking up,
and when you find an agreeable rock
to sit on, you will be able to see
the light pouring down into the woods
and breaking into the shapes and tones
of things and you will hear nothing
but a sprig of birdsong or the leafy
falling of a cone or nut through the trees,
and if this is your day you might even
spot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geese
driving overhead toward some destination.

But it is hard to speak of these things
how the voices of light enter the body
and begin to recite their stories
how the earth holds us painfully against
its breast made of humus and brambles
how we who will soon be gone regard
the entities that continue to return
greener than ever, spring water flowing
through a meadow and the shadows of clouds
passing over the hills and the ground
where we stand in the tremble of thought
taking the vast outside into ourselves.

Still, let me know before you set out.
Come knock on my door
and I will walk with you as far as the garden
with one hand on your shoulder.
I will even watch after you and not turn back
to the house until you disappear
into the crowd of maple and ash,
heading up toward the hill,
piercing the ground with your stick.


 
"Directions" by Billy Collins. Text as published in Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995).   

Art credit: "Brick Path," photograph by Tessa Shoup (digitally enhanced by curator).

Kerry Hardie: "May"

(for Marian)
 
The blessèd stretch and ease of it—

heart’s ease. The hills blue. All the flowering weeds
bursting open. Balm in the air. The birdsong
bouncing back out of the sky. The cattle
lain down in the meadow, forgetting to feed.
The horses swishing their tails.
The yellow flare of furze on the near hill.
And the first cream splatters of blossom
high on the thorns where the day rests longest.

All hardship, hunger, treachery of winter forgotten.
This unfounded conviction: forgiveness, hope.

"May" by Kerry Hardie, from A Furious Place (Gallery Books, 1997). Text as posted on Jelisava.

Art credit: "Cow in Flowers," photograph taken on July 24, 2009, by Bob.

 

Alison Luterman: "Invisible Work"

Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world's heart.
There is no other art.

"Invisible Work" by Alison Luterman. Reprinted by permission of the poet. This poem originally appeared in The Sun magazine and in Alison's first book of poetry, The Largest Possible Life (Cleveland State University Press, 2001). For more information about Alison and her other books of poetry, essays and plays, visit her website.

Art credit: Detail of mother and child, charcoal drawing by Egon Schiele.

Holly Hughes: "Mind Wanting More"

Only a beige slat of sun

above the horizon, like a shade pulled

not quite down. Otherwise,

clouds. Sea rippled here and

there. Birds reluctant to fly.

The mind wants a shaft of sun to

stir the grey porridge of clouds,

an osprey to stitch sea to sky

with its barred wings, some dramatic

music: a symphony, perhaps

a Chinese gong.

But the mind always

wants more than it has—

one more bright day of sun,

one more clear night in bed

with the moon; one more hour

to get the words right; one

more chance for the heart in hiding

to emerge from its thicket

in dried grasses—as if this quiet day

with its tentative light weren't enough,

as if joy weren't strewn all around.

"Mind Wanting More" by Holly Hughes. Text as published in American Zen: A Gathering of Poets, edited by Larry Smith and Ray McNiece (Bottom Dog Press, 2004).

Art credit: "Dried grass with green fringe," photograph by Jonathan Martin-DeMoor. Caption: "Dried grass seed heads glow in the warming evening light of early spring."