Saturday, October 17, 2015

what difference







Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.




~ William Stafford
from Ask Me


Sunday, October 11, 2015

what is happening







Instant to instant
we ask, what is happening?

The sound of shattering everywhere,
is it the world, fragmenting at last,
or our own hearts cracking,
the final break-up of ice?



~ Dorothy Walters
from Marrow of Flame


how much









~  Beth Cioffoletti
 louie louie blog


this moment this love





This moment this love comes to rest in me,
many beings in one being.
In one wheat grain a thousand sheaf stacks.
Inside the needle's eye, a turning night of stars.



Listen, if you can stand to.
Union with the friend
means not being who you have been,
being instead silence, a place,
a view where language is inside seeing.



From the wet source
someone cuts a reed to make a flute
The reed sips breath like wine,
sips more, practicing. Now drunk,
it starts the high clear notes.



There is a path from me to you
that I am constantly looking for,
so I try to keep clear and still
as water does with the moon.



We do not have to follow the pressure-flow of wanting.
We can be led by the guide.
Wishes may or may not come true
in this house of disappointment.
Let's push the door open together and leave.



My essence is like the essence of a red wine.
My body is a cup that grieves because it is inside time.
Glass after glass of wine go into my head.
Finally, my head goes into the wine.




~ Rumi
translation by Coleman Barks
from The Big Red Book



A clear midnight




This is thy hour O soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.





~ Walt Whitman





Friday, October 9, 2015

the wild earth







Even through these trivial crowded days,
I never lose sight of the wild earth on which I live,
of the ravishing perfection of its beauty.
I stand before infinity and look out over a virgin wilderness.

The potential for reproducing fragments
of this in a form worthy of it are endless.



~ Harlan Hubbard
from his journal, January 15, 1987




Wednesday, October 7, 2015

silent journal







Inaudible consonant inaudible vowel 
The word continues to fall 
in splendor around us 
Window half shadow window half moon 
back yard like a book of snow 
That holds nothing and that nothing holds 
Immaculate text 
not too prescient not too true



~ Charles Wright
from Xionia

forgetting words







A water egret planes down like a page of blank paper
Toward the edge of the noon sky.
Let me, like him, find an island of white reeds
To settle down on, under the wind, forgetting words.



~ Charles Wright
 from T’ang Notebook,
 The Other Side of the River: Poems


Tuesday, October 6, 2015

it is










Almost noon, the meadow 
Waiting for someone to change it into an other. Not me. 
The horses, Monte and Littlefoot, 
Like it the way it is. 
And this morning, so do I.




~ Charles Wright
from Lightfoot


Sunday, October 4, 2015

the night watch







Outdoors, like a false morning,
 Fog washes the pine trees. It 
 Shoulders against the windows,
 Spreading across their surface
 On its way upward. In this 
 Moment between sleep and thought 

 This holding back, I can hear 
 The fog start to rise, the slow 
 Memory of an ocean, 

 And I, like a ship, begin 
 To stir, to lurch in its swell, 
 And to move outward, beyond 

 The steel jetty, the lighthouse, 
 The red-flagged channel buoys,
 --Beyond, at last, sleep even--

 Into a deeper water,
 Pale, oracular, its waves
 Motionless, seagulls absent. 




~ Charles Wright
art by andrew wyeth




wind










There is an otherness inside us 
We never touch, 
no matter how far down our hands reach. 
It is the past, 
with its good looks and Anytime, Anywhere ... 
Our prayers go out to it, our arms go out to it 
Year after year, 
But who can ever remember enough?

...

The life of this world is wind 
Windblown we come, and windblown we go away. 
All that we look on is windfall. 
All we remember is wind.




~ Charles Wright
from The Southern Cross


Saturday, October 3, 2015

open







What I want is to open up. I want to know what's inside me. I want everybody to open up. I'm like an imbecile with a can-opener in his hand, wondering where to begin - to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I'm sure of it.

I know it because I feel so marvelous myself most of the time. And when I feel that way everybody seems marvelous … everybody and everything … even pebbles and pieces of cardboard … a match stick lying in the gutter . . . anything . . . a goat's beard, if you like. That's what I want to write about … and then we're all going to see clearly, see what a staggering, wonderful, beautiful world it is.




~ Henry Miller
from Sexus