a morning offering

I bless the night that nourished my heart

To set the ghosts of longing free

Into the flow and figure of dream

That went to harvest from the dark

Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me

Welcome the wonder of this day,

The field of brightness it creates

Offering time for each thing

To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:

The quiet loyalty of breath,

The tent of thought where I shelter,

Wave of desire I am shore to

And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today

To the invisible geography

That invites me to new frontiers,

To break the dead shell of yesterdays,

To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love,

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at last what I came here for

And waste my heart on fear no more.

~ John O'Donohue

notice to quit

John had a disreputable old uncle who was the tenant of a poor little farm beside his father's.  One day when John came in from the garden, he found a great hubbub in the house.  His uncle was sitting there with his cheeks the colour of ashes.  His mother was crying.  His father was sitting very still with a solemn face.  And there, in the midst of them, was the Steward with his mask on,  John crept round to his mother and asked her what the matter was.

'Poor Uncle George has had notice to quit,' she said.

'Why?' said John.

'His lease is up.  The Landlord has sent him notice to quit.'

'But didn't you know how long the lease was for?'

'Oh, no, indeed we did not.  We thought it was for years and years more.  I am sure the Landlord never gave us any idea he was going to turn him out at a moment's notice like this.'
'Ah, but it doesn't need any notice,' broke in the Steward. 'You know he always retains the right to turn anyone out whenever he chooses.  It is very good of him to let any of us stay here at all.'

'To be sure, to be sure,' said the mother.
'That goes without saying,' said the father.
'I'm not complaining,' said Uncle George.  'But it seems cruelly hard.'
'Not at all, ' said the Steward.  'You've only got to go to the Castle and knock at the gate and see the Landlord himself.  You know that he's only turning you out of here to make you much more comfortable somewhere else.  Don't you?'
Uncle George nodded. He did not seem able to get his voice.


...


'Mother.'
'Well, dear?'
'Could any of us be turned out without notice like that any day?'
'Well, yes.  But it is very unlikely.'
But we might be?'
'You oughtn't to be thinking of that sort of thing at your age.'
'Why oughtn't I?'
'It's not healthy.  A boy like you.'
'Mother.'
'Yes?'
'Can we break off the lease without notice too?'
'How do you mean?'
Well, the Landlord can turn us out of the farm whenever he likes.  Can we leave the farm whenever we like?'
'No, certainly not.'
Why not?'
'That's in the lease.  We must go when he likes, and stay as long as he likes.'
'Why?'
'I suppose because he makes the leases.'
'What would happen if we did leave?'
'He would be very angry.'
'Would he put us in the black hole?'
'Perhaps.'
'Mother.'
'Well, dear?'
'Will the Landlord put Uncle George in the black hole?'
'How dare you say such a thing about your poor uncle? Of course he won't.'
'But hasn't Uncle George broken all the rules?'
'Broken all the rules? Your Uncle George was a very good man.'
'You never told me that before,' said John.




~ C. S. Lewis
from The Pilgrim's Regress

legs and super powers

~ Aimee Mullins

with thanks to Chemin faisant

the voices

.

It's OK for the rich and the lucky to keep still,

no one wants to know about them anyway,

But those in need have to step forward,

have to say: I am blind,

or: I'm about to go blind,

or: nothing is going well with me,

or: I have a child who is sick,

or: right there I'm sort of glued together...

And probably that doesn't do anything either.

They have to sing; if they didn't sing, everyone

would walk past, as if they were fences or trees.

That's where you can hear good singing.

People really are strange: they prefer

to hear castratos in boychoirs.

But God himself comes and stays a long time

when the world of half-people start to bore him.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Robert Bly

art by van gogh

for the senses

May the touch of your skin 

Register the beauty

Of the otherness

That surrounds you.

May your listening be attuned

To the deeper silence

Where sound is honed

To bring distance home.

May the fragrance

Of a breathing meadow

Refresh your heart

And remind you you are

A child of the earth.

And when you partake

Of food and drink,

May your taste quicken 

To the gift and sweetness

That flows from the earth.

May your inner eye

See through the surfaces

And glean the real presence

Of everything that meets you.

May your soul beautify

The desire of your eyes 

That you might glimpse

The infinity that hides

In the simple sights 

That seem worn

To your usual eyes.

~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

the fleeting quality of the light

I would like to paint the way a bird sings

~ Claude Monet

 born in Paris in 1840

He met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille; the four young artists became disillusioned with the meticulous detail that was fashionable in academic circles, and they began experimenting with a new style of landscape painting, producing rapid "sketches" using short, broken brushstrokes and trying to capture, above all, the fleeting quality of the light.

a quiet light

There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no

attention to itself, though it is always secretly there.

It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire 

to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life. Without this

subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and

no horizon would ever awaken our longing. Our passion for life

is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is welded to

the energy and excitement of life. This shy inner light is what

enables us to recognize and receive our very presence here 

as blessing. We enter the world as strangers who all at once 

become heirs to a harvest of memory, spirit, and dream that has 

long preceded us and will now enfold, nourish, and sustain us.

The gift of the world is our first blessing.

~ John O'Donohue

from the introduction to To Bless the Space Between Us

art by Leonardo Da Vinci

starting a poem

You are alone. Then there's a knock 

On the door. It's a word. You

Bring it in. Things go

OK for a while. But this word 

Has relatives. Soon

They turn up. None of them work.

They sleep on the floor, and they steal

Your tennis shoes. 

You started it; you weren't

Content to leave things alone.

Now the den is a mess, and the

Remote is gone. 

That's what being married 

Is like. You never receive your

Wife only, but the

Madness of her family. 

Now see what's happened?

Where is your car? You won't 

Be able to find 

The keys for a week.

~ Robert Bly

art by Janet Sobel

on the death of the beloved

Though we need to weep your loss,

You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,

Where no storm or might or pain can reach you.

Your love was like the dawn

Brightening over our lives

Awakening beneath the dark

A further adventure of colour.

The sound of your voice

Found for us

A new music

That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze

Quickened in the joy of its being;

You placed smiles like flowers

On the altar of the heart.

Your mind always sparkled

With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief,

Your spirit was live, awake, complete.

We look towards each other no longer

From the old distance of our names;

Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,

As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,

We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,

Smiling back at us from within everything

To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory,

Where we would grow lonely without you.

You would want us to find you in presence,

Beside us when beauty brightens,

When kindness glows

And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth,

Darkest winter has turned to spring;

May this dark grief flower with hope

In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart.

To serve the call of courage and love

Until we see your beautiful face again

In that land where there is no more separation,

Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,

And where we will never lose you again.

~ John O'Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us

art by Camille Pissarro

Pissarro

happy birthday Kurt

The Work of Karlfried Graf Dürckheim

with thanks to intense city

too simple for words

truth is too simple for words

before thought gets tangled up in nouns and 

verbs

there is a wordless sound

a deep breathless sigh

of overwhelming relief

to find the end of fiction

in this ordinary

yet extraordinary moment

when words are recognized

as words

and truth is recognized

as everything else

~ Nirmala

with thanks to poetry chaikhana

Nirmala is a contemporary spiritual teacher in the nondualist Advaita tradition. 

He traces his spiritual lineage through Neelam and H.W.L. Poonja to Ramana Maharshi.

love of the wind

.

We've spent a lot of time keeping some old men alive. 

I don’t’ think you should criticize us for that. 

Even old sailors keep their love of the wind. 

We know so little of our neighbor’s sorrow. 

He never told us what happened to his son. 

What can it mean that Jesus had no sister? 

We’ll never know anything better than a dog. 

It doesn't matter how deeply he sleeps. 

The sleeping dog leaves all the world for the floor. 

It’s all right if the family gathers together at night 

And sings like sailors when the wind rises. 

The roof of the house will last the night. 

I've never been an old friend to the wind. 

Don’t expect me to be happy about haystacks 

Scattered in a storm or blown-down barns. 

Don’t expect me to talk about the Spanish armada 

Getting into trouble off the Galway coast. 

Even old sailors keep their love of the wind.

~ Robert Bly

art by van gogh

carmel point

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses -
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads -
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly, It has all time, It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve.  Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff. - As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident 
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.






~ Robinson Jeffers
art by Gordon Mortensen

790

Nature — the Gentlest Mother is,

Impatient of no Child —

The feeblest — or the waywardest —

Her Admonition mild —

In Forest — and the Hill —

By Traveller — be heard —

Restraining Rampant Squirrel —

Or too impetuous Bird —

How fair Her Conversation —

A Summer Afternoon —

Her Household — Her Assembly —

And when the Sun go down —

Her Voice among the Aisles

Incite the timid prayer

Of the minutest Cricket —

The most unworthy Flower —

When all the Children sleep —

She turns as long away

As will suffice to light Her lamps —

Then bending from the Sky —

With infinite Affection —

And infiniter Care —

Her Golden finger on Her lip —

Wills Silence — Everywhere —

~ Emily Dickinson

with thanks to writers almanac

lost in the forest

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig

and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:

myabe it was the voice of the rain crying, 

a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off it seemed

deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,

a shout muffled by huge autumns,

by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig

sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance

climbed up though my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind

cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood -

and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

~ Pablo Neruda

.

a thought

Some thoughts

throw off 

a backward heat

as walls might,

at night, in summer.

It could happen 

this moment -

Some movement.

One word's almost

imperceptible shiver.

And what was

long cold

in your left palm,

long cold in your right palm,

might find itself

malleable, warmer.

An apricot

could be planted

in such a corner.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

not mine

All my life to pretend this world of theirs is mine

And to know such pretending is disgraceful.

But what can I do? Suppose I suddenly screamed

And started to prophesy. No one would hear me. 

Their screens and microphones are not for that. 

Others like me wander the streets

And talk to themselves. Sleep on benches in parks,

Or on pavements in alleys. For there aren't enough prisons

To lock up all the poor. I smile and keep quiet. 

They won't get me now. 

To feast with the chosen—that I do well.

~ Czeslaw Milosz 

translated by Robert Hass 

photo by Christine de Grancy

meaning

.

When I die, I will see the lining of the world. 

The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset. 

The true meaning, ready to be decoded. 

What never added up will add Up, 

What was incomprehensible will be comprehended. 

- And if there is no lining to the world? 

If a thrush on a branch is not a sign, 

But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day 

Make no sense following each other? 

And on this earth there is nothing except this earth? 

- Even if that is so, there will remain 

A word wakened by lips that perish, 

A tireless messenger who runs and runs 

Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, 

And calls out, protests, screams.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

snow-mountain

.

All my life perplexed by truth and falsity, right and wrong;

Now amusing myself in the moonlight,

Laughing at the wind,

Listening to the songs of birds --

So many years spent idly contemplating

The immense white layer on the mountains;

This winter, all of a sudden,

I see it for the first time as a snow-mountain.

~ Dogen

english version by Steven Heine

from The Zen Poetry of Dogen

with thanks to poetry chaikhana

art by Chen Jun

ladder

A man tips back his chair, all evening.

Years later, the ladder of small indentations

still marks the floor. Walking across it, then stopping.

Rarely are what is spoken and what is meant the same.

Mostly the mouth says one thing, the thighs and knees

say another, the floor hears a third.

Yet within us,

objects and longings are not different.

They twist on the stem of the heart, like ripening grapes.

~ Jane Hirshfield 
from Given Sugar, Given Salt

with thanks to nexus

children of a full life

.

with special thanks to it's all dhamma

why do I write

I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being. Any new metaphor is a telescope, a canoe in rapids, an MRI machine. And like that MRI machine, sometimes its looking is accompanied by an awful banging. To write can be frightening as well as magnetic. You don't know what will happen when you throw open your windows and doors.

Why write? You might as well ask a fish, why swim, ask an apple tree, why make apples? The eye wants to look, the ear wants to hear, the heart wants to feel more than it thought it could bear...

The writer, when she or he cannot write, is a person outside the gates of her own being. Not long ago, I stood like that for months, disbarred from myself. Then, one sentence arrived; another. And I? I was a woman in love. For that also is what writing is. Every sentence that comes for a writer when actually writing—however imperfect, however inadequate—every sentence is a love poem to this world and to our good luck at being here, alive, in it.

~ Jane Hirshfield

Che Fece... Il Gran Refiuto

.

For some people the day comes

when they have to declare the great Yes

or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes

ready within him; and saying it,

he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.

He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,

he’d still say no. Yet that no—the right no—

drags him down all his life.

~ Constantine P. Cavafy

from C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems

translated by Edmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard