elegy for a walnut tree

Old friend now there is no one alive

who remembers when you were young

it was high summer when I first saw you

in the blaze of day most of my life ago

with the dry grass whispering in your shade

and already you had lived through wars

and echoes of wars around your silence

through days of parting and seasons of absence

with the house emptying as the years went their way

until it was home to bats and swallows

and still when spring climbed toward summer

you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers

of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened

you and the seasons spoke the same language

and all these years I have looked through your limbs

to the river below and the roofs and the night

and you were the way I saw the world

~ W. S. Merwin

a struggle with water and wind

All my life’s a struggle with water and wind. 

two against one must be my story— 

as I make my way into the earth

 under the waves. There’s no country

 I can call my own. But I’ve learned

 to grow strong by being still. I know

 if I fail I’ll be broken, and all

 that’s part of me will be torn from me. 

Let me find my place 

 among the stones, and be held.

~ Lawrence Raab

from The Word Exchange

Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation

who am i being?

~ Benjamin Zander

the great way is not difficult

The Great Way is not difficult 

for those who have no preferences. 

When love and hate are both absent 

everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Make the smallest distinction, however 

and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth 

then hold no opinions for or against anything. 

To set up what you like against what you dislike 

is the disease of the mind. 

When the deep meaning of things is not understood 

the minds essential peace is disturbed to no avail. 

The Way is perfect like vast space 

where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. 

Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject 

that we do not see the true nature of things. 

Live neither in the entanglements of outer things, 

nor in inner feelings of emptiness.

Be serene in the oneness of things 

and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity 

your very effort fills you with activity. 

As long as you remain in one extreme or the other 

you will never know Oneness.

~ Seng-T’san

a friend's umbrella

Ralph Waldo Emerson, toward the end

of his life, found the names

of familiar objects escaping him.

He wanted to say something about a window,

or a table, or a book on a table.

But the word wasn't there,

although other words could still suggest

the shape of what he meant.

Then someone, his wife perhaps,

would understand: "Yes, window! I'm sorry,

is there a draft?" He'd nod.

She'd rise. Once a friend dropped by

to visit, shook out his umbrella

in the hall, remarked upon the rain.

Later the word umbrella

vanished and became

the thing that strangers take away.

Paper, pen, table, book:

was it possible for a man to think

without them? To know

that he was thinking? We remember

that we forget, he'd written once,

before he started to forget.

Three times he was told

that Longfellow had died.

Without the past, the present

lay around him like the sea.

Or like a ship, becalmed,

upon the sea. He smiled

to think he was the captain then,

gazing off into whiteness,

waiting for the wind to rise. 

~ Lawrence Raab

from The History of Forgetting

found here: http://deathdeconstructed.blogspot.com/