among trees

.

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.





~ Wendell Berry

 photo by Kathleen Connally

 

 

 

.

Interior Portrait

You don't survive in me

because of memories;

nor are you mine because

of a lovely longing's strength.

What does make you present

is the ardent detour

that a slow tenderness

traces in my blood.

I do not need

to see you appear;

being born sufficed for me

to lose you a little less.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

 

I will not leave you.

You worry that I will leave you.

I will not leave you.

Only strangers travel.

Owning everything,

I have no where to go.

~Leonard Cohen

from The Wind among the Reeds

.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

. 

~ WB Yeats

inspired by Maud Gonne 

.

"oh please, oh please come out and play."

We have not come here to take prisoners

But to surrender ever more deeply
to freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world
to hold ourselves hostage from love. Run, my dear,
from anything that may not strengthen
your precious budding wings,

Run like hell, my dear,
from anyone likely to put a sharp knife
into the sacred, tender vision
of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend
those aspects of obedience
that stand outside of our house
and shout to our reason
"oh please, oh please
come out and play."

For we have not come here to take prisoners,
or to confine our wondrous spirits,
But to experience ever and ever more deeply
our divine courage, freedom,
and Light!

~ Hafiz

The Gardener

...
No, my friends, I shall never be an
ascetic, whatever you may say.
I shall never be an ascetic if she
does not take the vow with me.
It is my firm resolve that if I
cannot find a shady shelter and a
companion for my penance, I shall
never become an ascetic.
...
No, my friends, I shall never leave
my hearth and home, and retire into
the forest's solitude, if rings no merry
laughter in its echoing shade and if
the end of no saffron mantle flutters
in the wind; if its silence is not
deepened by soft whispers.
I shall never be an ascetic.
...
~ Rabindranath Tagore


.

The body

...

The body

is a single creature, whole,

its life is one, never less than one, or more,

so is its world, and so 

are two bodies in their love for one another

one. In ignorance of this

we talk ourselves to death.

...

~ Wendell Berry

.