beginning

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.

The dark wheat listens.

Be still.

Now.

There they are, the moon’s young, trying

Their wings.

Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow

Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone

Wholly, into the air.

I stand alone by the elder tree, I do not dare breathe

Or move.

I listen.

The wheat leans back toward is own darkness,

And I lean toward mine.

~ James Wright

 from Collected Poems

photo by Gerhard Richter

must you fear what others fear?

Renounce knowledge and your problems will end.

What is the difference between yes and no?

What is the difference between good and evil?

Must you fear what others fear?

Nonsense, look how far you have missed the mark!

Other people are joyous,

as though they were at a spring festival.

I alone am unconcerned and expressionless,

like an infant before it has learned to smile.

Other people have more than they need;

I alone seem to possess nothing.

I am lost and drift about with no place to go.

I am like a fool, my mind is in chaos.

Ordinary people are bright;

I alone am dark.

Ordinary people are clever;

I alone am dull.

Ordinary people seem discriminating;

I alone am muddled and confused.

I drift on the waves on the ocean,

blown at the mercy of the wind.

Other people have their goals,

I alone am dull and uncouth.

I am different from ordinary people.

I nurse from the Great Mother's breasts.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

photo: Harlan and Anna Hubbard

there is

There is a beginning. 

There is no beginning of that beginning. 

There is no beginning of that no beginning of beginning. 

There is something. 

There is nothing. 

There is something before the beginning of something and nothing, 

and something before that. 

Suddenly there is something and nothing. 

But between something and nothing, 

I still don't really know which is something and which is nothing. 

Now, I've just said something, 

but I don't really know whether I've said anything or not.

~ Chuang Tzu

with thanks to whiskey river

arabic coffee

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

after drinking all night with a friend

~ Robert Bly

garden song

~ David Mallett

performed by Pete Seeger

the walls of Layla

I pass by these walls, the walls of Layla

And I kiss this wall and that wall

It’s not Love of the houses that has taken my heart

But of the One who dwells in those houses

~ Nizami Ganjavi

from The Legend of

Layli and Madjnun

sculpture by Michael Alfano

leaders?

The best leaders are those the people hardly know exist.

The next best is a leader who is loved and praised.

Next comes the one who is feared.

The worst one is the leader that is despised.

If you don't trust the people,

they will become untrustworthy.

The best leaders value their words, and use them sparingly.

When she has accomplished her task,

the people say, "Amazing:

we did it, all by ourselves!"

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

translation by j.h.mcdonald

runner

It is hard to unlatch a day

from noun and story.

Breath pours

like water

out of a small bowl into a large.

One says,

Quicker.

Another says,

Listen, runner—

underwater things are fragrant to fish.

~ Jane Hirshfield

with thanks to harvard divinity bulletin

in the heart

In the heart of the night, 

The moonlight framing

A small boat drifting,

Tossed not by the waves

Nor swayed by the breeze.

~ Dogen

from The Zen Poetry of Dogen

moonlight sonata

Wilhelm Kempff plays Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata mvt. 1

published on this date in 1802

within this tree

Within this tree
another tree
inhabits the same body;
within this stone
another stone rests,
its many shades of grey
the same,
its identical
surface and weight.
And within my body,
another body,
whose history, waiting,
sings: there is no other body,
it sings,
there is no other world.










~ Jane Hirshfield
from The October Palace
art by tara turner

death could come!

The musician's finger do not hurry at all as they climb up the Jacob's Ladder of her bass.   They are not accomplishing tasks laid down by others, but have agreed to luminous labors suggested - by whom?  The fingers go higher. The Cantata says: "Death is not far off... Death could come!"  Men's and women's voices all around cry out:  "It is the ancient law!"

Now we sense the odor of roots, of partridge berries, masses of leaves that give up their lives without complaining.

The musician's fingers appear from the house of the hand-back, as if the hand were a being in itself, with its own slow joys, and its own cottage where it lives, sleeping long on winter nights.

Now the beings run up the mountain path; they are goats that do a firm dance, one foot down, then the other, many fields and mountain paths with goats on them leaping...And we who listen, are crossing a mountain at dusk. We walk a long time through the moor in the dark, at last we see a hut with one lamp lit...

~ Robert Bly

from Reaching Out to the World

(For Susan Mathews Allard and Her Double Bass)

art by picasso

complete unknowing

Happy Birthday, Jane

Awareness and self-consciousness are delicate matters. Trying to examine more deeply what poems are and how they work has informed my life and brought me great joy. I don't think that attentiveness ever diminishes experience. There are times, however, when you don't want to be self-conscious. One is while writing the first draft of a new poem. At that stage too much consciousness is limiting and therefore damaging. It can wall off the permeable, the mysterious, everything you don't already know. When I write, I don't know what is going to emerge. I begin in a condition of complete unknowing, an utter nakedness of concept or goal. A word appears, another word appears, an image. It is a moving into mystery. Everything I am and know and have lived goes into a poem. I hope I'll never be governed by theoretical knowledge when I set out to write. Poems are born in part from the history and culture of other poems, but in writing I hope to learn a new thing, something fresh about what's going on in that moment, in my own life and in the world. Craft consciousness is essential to the finished poem, but comes later.

~ Jane Hirshfield

 from a 1997 Atlantic Monthly interview

straw dogs

Heaven and Earth are impartial;

they treat all of creation as straw dogs.

The Master doesn't take sides;

she treats everyone like a straw dog.

The space between Heaven and Earth is like a bellows;

it is empty, yet has not lost its power.

The more it is used, the more it produces;

the more you talk of it, the less you comprehend.

It is better not to speak of things you do not understand.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

translation by j.h.mcdonald

art by van gogh