where does the dance begin, where does it end?

.

.

Don't call the world adorable, or useful, that's not it.

It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.

The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.

The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white feet of the trees

whose mouths open.

Doesn't the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?

Haven't the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe, until at last, now, the shine

in your own yard?

Don't call this world an explanation, or even an education.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking

outward, to the mountains so solidly there

in a white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea

that was also there,

beautiful as a thumb

curved and touching the finger, tenderly,

little love-ring,

as he whirled,

oh jug of breath,

in the garden of dust?

.

~ Mary Oliver

from Why I wake Early

each separate fragment

.

Love all that has been created by God,

 both the whole and every grain of sand. 

Love every leaf and every ray of light. 

Love the beasts and the birds, love the plants, 

love every separate fragment. 

If you love each separate fragment, 

you will understand the mystery of the whole resting in God. 

~ Dostoyevsky

dog and bear

The air this morning,

blowing between fog and drizzle,

is like a white dog in the snow

who scents a white bear in the snow

who is not there.

Deeper than seeing,

deeper than hearing,

they stand and glare, one at the other.

So many listen lost, in every weather.

The mind has mountains,

Hopkins wrote, against his sadness.

The dog held the bear at bay, that day.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from After

photo by  Kathleen Connally

to be admired

.

They are to be admired those survivors

of solitude who have gone with no maps

into the room without feature,

where no wilderness awaits a footstep trace,

no path of dance to a cold summit

to look back on and feel exuberant,

no clarity of territories yet untouched

that tremble near the human breath,

no thickets of undergrowth with deep pores

to nest the litanies of wind addicted birds,

no friendship of other explorers

drawn into the dawn of the unknown.

No. They do not belong to the outside worship

of the earth, but risk themselves in the interior

space where the senses have nothing to celebrate,

where the air intensifies the intrusion of the human

and a poultice of silence pulls every sound

out of a circulation down into the ground,

where in the panic of being each breath unravels

an ever deeper strand in the web of weaving mind,

shawls of though fall off, empty and lost,

where the only red scream of blood continues unheard

within anonymous skin, and the end of all exploring

is the relentless arrival at an ever novel nowhere. 

~ John O'Donohue

from Echoes of Memory

clam

.

Each one is a small life, but sometimes long, if its

place in the universe is not found out. Like us, they

have a heart and a stomach; they know hunger, and

probably a little satisfaction too. Do not mock them

for their gentleness, they have a muscle that loves

being alive. They pull away from the light. They pull

down. They hold themselves together. They refuse to

open.

But sometimes they lose their place and are tumbled

shoreward in a storm. Then they pant, they fill

with sand, they have no choice but must open the

smallest crack. Then the fire of the world touches

them. Perhaps, on such days, they too begin the

terrible effort of thinking, of wondering who, and 

what, and why. If they can bury themselves again in 

the sand they will. If not, they are sure to perish,

though not quickly. They also have resources beyond 

the flesh; they also try very hard not to die.

~ Mary Oliver

from What Do We Know

with thanks to whiskeyriver

happy 70th bob, and thanks

.

born: May 24 1941

Duluth, Minnesota 

named Robert Allen Zimmerman

(Hebrew name Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham)

The truth was obscure, 

Too profound and too pure, 

To live it you had to explode

~ Bob Dylan

only one search

.

Lovers think they are looking for each other,

but there is only one search.

Wandering this world is wandering that,

both inside one transparent sky.

In here there is no dogma and no heresy.

The miracle of Jesus is himself,

not what he said or did about the future.

Forget the future. I would worship someone

who could do that.

On the way you may want to look back, or not,

but if you can say, "There is nothing ahead,"

there will be nothing there.

Stretch your arms and take hold

the cloth of your clothes with both hands.

The cure for pain is in the pain.

Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,

you do not belong with us.

When someone gets lost, is not here,

he must be inside us. There is no place like that

anywhere in the world.

.

~ Rumi

 translated by Coleman Barks

art: self portrait by picasso

floor

.

The nails, once inset, rise to the surface—

or, more truly perhaps, over years

the boards sink down to meet what holds them.

Worn, yes, but not worn through:

the visible work reveals itself in iron,

to be pounded down again, for what we've declared

the beautiful to be.

.

~ Jane Hirshfield

what waits within me

.

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear

without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,

but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,

these deepening tides moving out, returning,

I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels

into the open sea.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Monastic Life

I'm here

.

I'm here. I'm always here. Even when I'm 'there', I'm here. 

I can't get away from here. Even when I try to escape here, I find 

myself here. Once I even managed to arrive 'there', but then I took a 

fresh look, and I was still here. Here follows me wherever I go. It's just 

always here, wherever I am. Hmm. Perhaps I am here. I mean, perhaps I 

*am* here! Perhaps here is what I actually am. That's why I'm always 

here...

~ Jeff Foster

.

ultimate word of truth

.

A monk asked Joshu, "What is the one ultimate word of truth?"

"Yes," was Joshu's reply.

The monk failed to see any sense in the master's reply, and so he asked the question again.

This time, Joshu roared in response, "I am not deaf!"

~  D. T. Suzuki

thanks to whiskey river

.

.

Gustav Mahler 

Born: 7 July 1860 in Kalischt, Bohemia,

Died: 18 May 1911 in Vienna,

was an Austrian composer and conductor of the late Romanticism to Modernism. 

He was not only one of the most important composers of the late Romantic period, 

but also one of the most famous conductors of his time as an opera director 

an important reformer of musical theater.

.

1892

with thanks to semsakrebsler

the dove in the belly - stop and listen

.

.

The whole of appearance is a toy. For this,

The dove in the belly builds his nest and coos,

Selah, tempestuous bird. How is it that

The rivers shine and hold their mirrors up,

Like excellence collecting excellence?

How is it that the wooden trees stand up

And live and heap their panniers of green

And hold them round the sultry day? Why should

These mountains being high be, also, bright,

Fetched up with snow that never falls to earth?

And this great esplanade of corn, miles wide,

Is something wished for made effectual

And something more. And the people in costumes,

Though poor, though raggeder than ruin, have that

Within them right for terraces—oh, brave salut!

Deep dove, placate you in your hiddenness.

~ Wallace Stevens

art by matisse, 1949

day and night

The sun rises and sets,

 it is day and night,

 it will go on thus for a long time.  

You get to think you are part of it and 

your circumstances are related to the cosmos, 

but one day your little system will break down 

and the day and night will rotate indifferently.  

Can this be?  

It seems more like the sunrise and sunset, 

the moon and stars, 

this new season, 

they are part of me. 

 I am sure they will never be the same without me,

for no one could see them just as I do.

.

~ Harlan Hubbard

journal entry March 9, 1963

woodcut by the author

your beautiful parched, holy mouth

A poet is someone

Who can pour Light into a spoon,

Then raise it

To nourish

Your beautiful parched, holy mouth.

~ Hafiz

from I Heard God Laughing, Renderings of Hafiz

translation by Daniel Ladinsky

I knew we would be Friends

.

As soon as you opened your mouth

And I heard your soft

Sounds,

I knew we would be 

Friends.

The first time, dear pilgrim, I heard 

You laugh,

I knew it would not take me long

To turn you back into 

God.

.

~ Hafiz

from The Subject Tonight is Love

translation by Daniel Ladinsky

listen

.

Siddhartha listened.  He was now listening intently, completely absorbed,
 quite empty, taking in everything. He felt that he had now completely
 learned the art of listening.  He had often heard all this before,
 all these numerous voices in the river, but today they  sounded different.

  He could no longer distinguish the different voices - the merry voice
 from the weeping voice, the childish voice from the manly voice.  
They all belonged to each other: the lament of those who yearn, the laughter
 of the wise, the cry of indignation and the groan of the dying. 

 They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways.  
And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearning, all the sorrows all the pleasures,
all the good and evil, all of them together was the world.  All of them together
 was the stream of events, the music of life.  When Siddhartha listened attentively
 to this river, to this song of a thousand voices; when he did not listen 
to the sorrow or laughter, when he did not bind his soul to any one
 particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole,
 the unity; then the great song of a thousand voices consisted 
of one word: Om - perfection.

"Do you hear?" asked Vasudeva's glance once again.
 Vasudeva's smile was radiant; it hovered brightly in all the wrinkles
 of his old face, as the Om hovered over all the voices of the river. 
 His smile was radiant as he looked at his friend, and now the same smile 
appeared on Siddhartha's face.  His wound was healing, his pain was dispersing; 
his Self had merged into unity.

From that hour Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny. 
There shone in his face the serenity of knowledge, of one who is no longer
 confronted with conflict of desires, who has found salvation, 
who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life,
 full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering himself to the stream,
 belonging to the unity of all things.

.

~ Hermann Hesse

from Siddhartha

translated by Hilda Rosner

the substance of silence

...there is a greater comfort in the substance of silence
 than in the answer to a question.   

Eternity is in the present.  

Eternity is in the palm of the hand.  

Eternity is a seed of fire whose sudden roots break barriers 

that keep my heart from being an abyss.

~ Thomas Merton

from Dialogues with Silence

the time of business

.

The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, 

and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, 

while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, 

I possess God in as great tranquility 

as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament. 

~  Brother Lawrence

.

the silence

.

One might say

I had decided to marry

the silence of the forest.

The sweet dark warmth of

the whole world

will have to be my wife.

Out of the heart of

that dark warmth

comes the secret that is heard

only in silence,

but is the root of all the secrets

that are whispered

by all the lovers in their beds

all over the world.

So perhaps I have an obligation to

preserve the stillness,

the silence, the poverty,

the original virginal point of

pure nothingness

which is at the center

of all other loves.

~  Thomas Merton

photo by eliot porter

they dropped it

.

A gardener appeared, waving his toothy rake.

Children with yellow bells in their hands

jumped the fence, snagging uniforms.

One boy trailed a purple vine.

They wouldn't be sorry,

pockets reeking jasmine,

mud staining shoes...

Who deserved flowers more?

Rich people who never came outside

or children stuck all day in school?

The sweaty gardener cursed them,

straightening branches.

Someone else lifted one large pink blossom

from the pavement beyond the fence,

found a scrap of tissue to wrap it in,

carried it home across the sea.

The dried petals lay on a table for months

whispering, Where are we?

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

from 19 Varieties of Gazelle

intrepid

.

Not dawdling

not doubting

intrepid all the way

walk toward clarity

with sharp eye

With sharpened sword

clearcut the path

to the lucent surprise

of enlightenment

At every crossroad

be prepared to bump into wonder

~  James Broughton 

(1913-1999)

with thanks to moment by moment and Poetry Chaikhana

an apple

.

An apple on the table

hides its seeds

so neatly

under seamless skin.

But we talk and talk and talk

to let somebody

in.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

from 19 Varieties of Gazelle

photo by kathleen connally

alone

.

O my Lord, 

the stars glitter 

and the eyes of men are closed. 

Kings have locked their doors 

and each lover is alone with his love. 

Here, I am alone with you.

.

~  Rabi’a 

(Basra, 717-801) 

translated by Jane Hirshfield

from Women in Praise of the Sacred

a subtle magnetism

.

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, 

which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.

  It is not indifferent to us and which way we walk.  

 

There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness 

and stupidity to take the wrong one.  We would fain take that walk,

 never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly

 symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior

 and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult 

to choose our direction, because it does not yet

 exist distinctly in our ideas.

.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walking, 1863