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/

the power of introverts

~ Susan Cain

all kinds of minds

~ Temple Grandin

happiness and bare consciousness

~ Matthieu Ricard

a hide

There's a skin or hide between ourselves and our inner being.  And in the West that skin is very thick.  Inside us there's a sea and that sea is your inner life, your spiritual life, and your sexual impulses - everything you've gotten from the memory stores of evolution.  Then there's the outside world made of buildings and automobiles.  And these two worlds can't rub against each other.  It's too painful.  Therefore you develop a hide exactly like a cow develops a hide.  You don't want her guts to rub against the barn.

~  Robert Bly

spoken to Lewis Hyde in an interview

taken here from Robert Bly - In This World

that lonesome valley

~ Pete Seeger and Joan Baez

the return of the rivers

All the rivers run into the sea;

yet the sea is not full;

unto the place from whence the rivers come,

thither they return again. 

It is raining today

in the mountains. 

It is a warm green rain

with love

in its pockets

for spring is here,

and does not dream

of death.

Birds happen music

like clocks ticking heaves

in a land

where children love spiders,

and let them sleep

in their hair. 

A slow rain sizzles

on the river

like a pan

full of frying flowers,

and with each drop

of rain

the ocean

begins again.

~ Richard Brautigan

moonlight sonata

Ludwig Van Beethoven actually intended for his pieces to be played a lot faster but no orchestra could manage it so they had to slow it down. Here is moonlight sonata 3rd movement played in the original intended tempo. Simply amazing.

~ Valentina Lisitsa

stanzas of the soul / the living flame of love

~ St. John of the Cross

sunflower

What sower walked over earth,

which hands sowed

our inward seeds of fire?

They went out from his fists like rainbow curves

to frozen earth, young loam, hot sand,

they will sleep there

greedily, and drink up our lives

and explode it into pieces

for the sake of a sunflower that you haven't seen

or a thistle head or a chrysanthemum.

Let the young rain of tears come.

Let the calm hands of grief come.

It's not all as evil as you think.

~ Rolf Jacobsen

translated by Robert Bly

from 'Flatirons'

V

It’s when we’re most engaged with other things

that the angel enters, a twist in temperature,

a lightness in the chest that we call wings.

Giddy with sacrament and the impure

gluttony of blood and air and skin,

we look with panoramic eyes to where

the earth curls under and the sky begins,

though we ourselves are of this light-shot air,

senses extending without obstacle,

reaching past by rooting down through rock—

obdurate kindness, heaven’s windowsill.

We are as useless as an open lock,

more insubstantial than a drinking song,

and marked by sandstone long after we’re gone. 

~ David Yezzi

from Flatirons

with thanks to http://fivebranchtree.blogspot.com//