poetry of gratefulness

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.

the book of Camp Branch

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Camp Branch, my native stream,

forever unreturning flows

from the town down to Cane Run

which flows to the river.  It is 

my native descent, my native

walk, my native thought

that stays and goes, passing

ever downward toward the sea.

Its sound is a song that flings up

the light to the undersides of leaves.

Its song and light are a way

of walking, a way of thought

moved by sound and sight.

It flows as deep in its hollow

as it can go, far down as it has

worn its way. Passing down

over its plunder of rocks, it makes

an irregular music.  Here 

is what I want to know.  Here

is what I am trying to say.

O brave Ross Feld, here is

no "fortification against time."

Here the fort has fallen 

and the water passes its benediction

over the shards, singing!

How much delight I've known

in navigating down the flow

by stepping stones, by sounding

stones, by words too that are

stepping and sounding stones.

Going down stone by stone,

the song of the water changes,

changing the way I walk

which changes my thought

as I go.  Stone to stone

the stream flows.  Stone to stone

the walker goes.  The words

stand stone still until

the flow moves them, changing

the sound - a new word -

a new place to step or stand.

In the notch of Camp Branch

the footing changes, year

to year, sometimes

day to day, as the surges

of the stream move the rocks.

Every walk, as Archie Ammons

said, "is a new walk." And so

go slow.  Let the mind

step with the feet

as the stream steps

downward over the rocks,

nowhere anywhere

but where it is.

In the crease of its making

the steep stream gathers

the seeps that come silently

down from the wooded slants.

Only there at the rockbed

of the branch do the waters break

into light, into singing

of water flowing over rocks

which, in its motion, the water

moves.  And so, singing, the song

changes, moved by music

harsh and crude: splashes,

slubbers, chuckles, and warbles,

the hollow tones of a bell,

a sustained pour, the small

fall steady as a column.

Sometimes, gentled, if you

stand while it flows, it seems

to meditate upon itself

and the hill's long changing

under the sun and rain.

A changing song,

a changing walk,

a changing thought.

A sounding stone,

a stepping stone,

a word

that is a sounding and a stepping

stone.

A language that is a stream flowing

and is a man's thought as he 

walks and thinks beside the stream.

His thoughts will hold

if the words will hold, if each

is a stone that will bear weight,

placed by the flow

in the flow.  The language too

descends through time, subserving

false economy, heedless power,

blown with the gas of salesmanship,

rattled with the sale of needless war,

worn by the mere unhearing

babble of thoughtlessness,

and must return to its own 

downward flow by the flowing

water, the muttered syllables,

the measureless music, the stream

flowing and singing, the man

walking and thinking, balanced

on unsure footholds

in the flowing stream.

"Make sense," I told myself,

the song of the tumbling waters

in my ears.  The sense you make

may make its way along the stream,

but it will not be the stream's sense

you make, nor yet your own

quite, for the flux of language

will make its claim too

upon your walk, upon the stream.

The words fall at last

onto the page, the turning leaf

in the Book of Camp Branch

in time's stream.  As the eye,

as the mind, moves from

moving water to turning page,

what is lost?  What, worse,

is lost if the words falsify

the stream in your walk beside it?

To be carried or to resist

you must be a stone

in the way.  You must be

a stone rolled away.

The song changes by singing

into a different song.

It sings by falling.  The water

descending in its old groove

wears it new.  The words descending

to the page render the possible

into the actual, by wear,

for better or worse, renew

the wearied mind.  This is only

the lowly stream of Camp Branch,

but every stream is lowly.

Only low in the land does 

the water flow.  It goes

to seek the level that is lowest,

the silence that gathers

many songs, the darkness

made of many lights,

and then by the sun is raised

again into the air.

~ Wendell Berry

from Leavings

art by Norma Herring

to see, to hear, to hold, more carefully

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O saints, if I am even eligible  for this prayer,

though less than worthy of this dear desire,

and if your prayers have influence in Heaven,

let my place there be lower than your own.

I know how you longed, here where you lived 

as exiles, for the presence of the essential

Being and Maker and Knower of all things.

But because of my unruliness, or some erring

virtue in me never rightly schooled,

some error clear and dear, my life

has not taught me your desire for flight:

dismattered, pure, and free.  I long

instead for the Heaven of creatures, of seasons,

of day and night.  Heaven enough for me 

would be this world as I know it, but redeemed 

of our abuse of it and one another.  It would be

the Heaven of knowing again.   There is no marrying

 in Heaven, and I submit; even so, I would like

 to know my wife again, both of us young again,

and I remembering always how I loved her

when she was old.  I would like to know

my children again, all my family, all my dear ones,

to see, to hear, to hold, more carefully

than before, to study them lingeringly as one

studies old verses, committing them to heart

forever.  I would like again to know my friends,

my old companions, men and women, horses

and dogs, in all the ages of our lives, here

in this place that I have watched over all my life

in all its moods and seasons, never enough.

I will be leaving how many beauties overlooked?

A painful Heaven this would be, for I would know

by it how far I have fallen short.  I have not

paid enough attention, I have not been grateful

enough.  And yet this pain would be the measure

of my love.  In eternity's once and now, pain would

place me surely in the Heaven of my earthly love.

~ Wendell Berry

from Leavings

your very flesh shall be a great poem

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This is what you shall do; 
Love the earth and sun and the animals, 
despise riches, 
give alms to every one that asks, 
stand up for the stupid and crazy, 
devote your income and labor to others, 
hate tyrants, 
argue not concerning God, 
have patience and indulgence toward the people, 
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown

 or to any man or number of men, 
go freely with powerful uneducated persons 

and with the young and with the mothers of families, 
read these leaves in the open air every season

 of every year of your life, 
re-examine all you have been told at school

 or church or in any book, 
dismiss whatever insults your own soul, 
and your very flesh shall be a great poem 

and have the richest fluency not only in its words 
but in the silent lines of its lips and face

 and between the lashes of your eyes 
and in every motion and joint of your body.

~ Walt Whitman
 from the preface of Leaves of Grass

surrendering, lose myself in your loosened hair

 

 

Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight,

let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.

Let not even one of the clearly-struck hammers of my heart

fail to sound because of a slack, a doubtful,

or a broken string.  Let my joyfully streaming face

make me more radiant; let my hidden weeping arise

and blossom.  How dear you will be to me then, you nights 

of anguish.  Why didn't I kneel more deeply to accept you,

inconsolable sisters, and, surrendering, lose myself

in your loosened hair.  How we squander our hours of pain.

How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration

to see if they have an end.  Though they are really

our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen,

one season in our inner year -, not only a season

in time -, but are place and settlement, 

foundation and soil and home.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Duino Elegies, The Tenth Elegy

translation by stephen mitchell

art by van gogh

my soul heard something

.

What was in that candle's light

that opened and consumed me so quickly?

Come back, my friend! The form of our love

is not a created form.

Nothing can help me but that beauty.

There was a dawn I remember

when my soul heard something

from your soul. I drank water

from your spring and felt

the current take me.

~ Rumi

from The Essential Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

the vast man

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But sweeter still than laughter and greater than longing came to me.

It was the boundless in you;

The vast man in whom you are all but cells and sinews;

He in whose chant all your singing is but a soundless throbbing.

It is in the vast man that you are vast,

And in beholding him that I beheld you and loved you.

For what distances can love reach that are not in that vast sphere?

What visions, what expectations and what presumptions can outsoar that flight?

Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms is the vast man in you.

His might binds you to the earth, his fragrance lifts you into space, and in his durability you are deathless.

~ Kahlil Gibran

from The Prophet

photo by Jack Spenser

the beginning of terror

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For beauty is nothing

but the beginning of terror, which we still are able to endure,

and we are so awed because it serenely disdains

to annihilate us.

~  Rainer Maria Rilke

from Duino Elegies, The First Elegy

puppet play

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My body lives in the city,

But my essence dwells in the mountains.

The affairs of a puppet play

Are not to be taken too seriously.

When the polar mountain fits into a mustard seed,

All the words in the universe may as well be erased.

My mind is like a jade jar of ice,

Never invaded by even half a mote of dust.

Though the jade jar be obscured without,

I pay no mind at all -

On the terrace of Immortals,

I climb straight to the highest level.

~ Wu Cailuan (9th century)

from Immortal Sisters: Secret Teachings of Taoist Women

photo by Ansel Adams

quenched and still

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I gave up my house

and set out into homelessness.

I gave up my child, my cattle,

and all that I loved.

I gave up desire and hate.

My ignorance was thrown out.

I pulled out craving

along with its root.

Now I am quenched and still.

~ Sangha (6th-5th centuries BCE)

translated by Susan Murcott

Her work is recorded in Pali in the Therigatha,

 the book of enlightenment poetry of Buddhist nuns.

the reed flute's song

.

Listen to the story told by the reed,

of being separated.

"Since I was cut from the reedbed,

I have made this crying sound.

Anyone apart from someone he loves

understands what I say.

Anyone pulled from the source

longs to go back.

At any gathering I am there,

mingling in the laughing and grieving,

a friend to each, but few

will hear the secrets hidden

within the notes.  No ears for that.

Body flowing out of spirit,

spirit up from body: no concealing

that mixing.  But it's not given us

to see the soul.  The reed flute

is fire, not wind.  Be that empty."

Hear the love fire tangled

in the reed notes, as bewilderment

melts into wine.  The reed is a friend

to all who want the fabric torn

and drawn away.  The reed is hurt

and salve combining.  Intimacy

and longing for intimacy, one

song.  A disastrous surrender

and a fine love, together.  The one

who secretly hears this is senseless.

A tongue has one customer, the ear.

A sugarcane flute has such effect

because it was able to make sugar

in the reedbed.  The sound it makes

is for everyone.  Days full of wanting,

let them go by without worrying

that they do.  Stay where you are

inside such a pure, hollow note.

Every thirst gets satisfied except

that of these fish, the mystics,

who swim a vast ocean of grace

still somehow longing for it!

No one lives in that without

being nourished every day.

But if someone doesn't want to hear

the song of the reed flute,

it's best to cut conversation

short, say good-bye, and leave.

~ Rumi

version by Coleman Barks

from The Essential Rumi

the remains

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I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets.

I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road.

At night I turn back the clocks;

I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.

What good does it do? The hours have done their job.

I say my own name. I say goodbye.

The words follow each other downwind.

I love my wife but send her away.

My parents rise out of their thrones

into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?

Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.

I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

~ Mark Strand

photo by Nancy Crampton

something that is neither yours nor from yourself

.

To belong to Allah

Is to see in your own existence

And in all that pertains to it

Something that is neither yours

Nor from yourself,

Something you have on loan;

To see your being in His Being,

Your subsistence in His Subsistence,

Your strength in His Strength:

Thus you will recognize in yourself

His title to possession of you

As Lord,

And your own title as servant:

Which is Nothingness. 

~ Thomas Merton

in response to writings of  Ibn Abbad

by technique?

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All truly contemplatives souls have this in common: 

not that they gather exclusively in the desert, 

or that they shut themselves up in reclusion, 

but that where He is, there they are. 

And how do they find Him? By technique? 

There is no technique for finding Him. 

They find Him by His will. And His will, 

bringing them grace within and arranging their lives exteriorly, 

carries them infallibly to the precise place in which they can find Him. 

Even there they do not know how they have got there, 

or what they are really doing.

Thomas Merton

from  Thoughts in Solitude

sketch by the author

 

entrance

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Whoever you are: step out of doors tonight,

Out of the room that lets you feel secure.

Infinity is open to your sight.

Whoever you are.

With eyes that have forgotten how to see

From viewing things already too well-known,

Lift up into the dark a huge, black tree

And put it in the heavens: tall, alone.

And you have made the world and all you see.

It ripens like the words still in your mouth.

And when at last you comprehend its truth,

Then close your eyes and gently set it free.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke