a note

Life is the only way 

to get covered in leaves,

catch your breath on the sand,

rise on wings;

to be a dog,

or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain

from everything it's not;

to squeeze inside events,

dawdle in views,

to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chance

to remember for a moment

a conversation held

with the lamp switched off;

and if only once

to stumble on a stone,

end up drenched in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;

and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;

and to keep on not knowing

something important.

~Wislawa Szymborska

from Monologue of a Dog

the road in the clouds

When people look for the road in the clouds 

The cloud road disappears 

The mountains are tall and steep 

The streams are wide and still 

Green mountains ahead and behind 

White clouds to east and west 

If you want to find the cloud road 

Seek it within

***

The higher the trail the steeper it grows 

Ten thousand tiers of dangerous cliffs 

The stone bridge is slippery with green moss 

Cloud after cloud keeps flying by 

Waterfalls hang like ribbons of silk 

The moon shines down on a bright pool 

I climb the highest peak once more 

To wait where the lone crane flies

***

Old and sick, more than one hundred years 

Face haggard, hair white, I’m happy to still live in the mountains 

A cloth covered phantom watching the years flow by 

Why envy people with clever ways of living?

~ Han Shan

the everyday enchantment of music

A rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound, which was polished until it became music. Then the music was polished until it became the memory of a night in Venice when tears of the sea fell from the Bridge of Sighs, which in turn was polished until it ceased to be and in its place stood the empty home of a heart in trouble. Then suddenly there was sun and the music came back and traffic was moving and off in the distance, at the edge of the city, a long line of clouds appeared, and there was thunder, which, however menacing, would become music, and the memory of what happened after Venice would begin, and what happened after the home of the troubled heart broke in two would also begin.

~ Mark Strand

from Almost Invisible

with thanks to poets.org

It is a lie

It is a lie - any talk of God

that does not

comfort

you.

~ Meister Eckhart

affection for the I-creature

There's a moon in my body, but I can't see it! 

A moon and a sun. 

A drum never touched by hands, beating, 

and I can't hear it.

As long as a human being worries about when he will die, 

and what he has that is his, 

all of his works are zero. 

When affection for the I-creature and what it owns is dead, 

then the work of the Teacher is over. 

The purpose of labor is to learn; 

when you know it, the labor is over. 

The apple blossom exists to create fruit; 

when that comes, the petal falls. 

The musk is inside the deer, 

but the deer does not look for it: 

It wanders around looking for grass. 

~ Kabir

photo by kathleen connally

the decision

There is a moment before a shape
hardens, a color sets.
Before the fixative or heat of kiln.
The letter might still be taken
from the mailbox.
The hand held back by the elbow,
the word kept between the larynx pulse
and the amplifying drum-skin of the room's air.
The thorax of an ant is not as narrow.
The green coat on old copper weighs more.
Yet something slips through it -
looks around,
sets out in the new direction, for other lands.
Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed.
As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road:
it cannot be after turned back from.






~ Jane Hirshfield
from Come, Thief
photo: US landing craft closes on Omaha Beach, 6 June 1944

the unknowable reality of things

~ Rupert Spira

water

The water which sees the air through 

broken veins of the high mountain summits is suddenly 

abandoned by the power which brought it there, 

and escaping from these forces 

resumes its natural course in liberty. 

Likewise the water that rises 

from the low roots of the vine to its lofty head 

falls through the cut branches upon the roots and 

mounts anew to the place whence it fell. 

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

.

acting

Being unwise enough to have married her

I never knew when she was not acting.

‘I love you’ she would say; I heard the audiences

Sigh. ‘I hate you’; I could never be sure

They were still there. She was lovely. I

Was only the looking-glass she made up in.

I husbanded the rippling meadow

Of her body. Their eyes grazed nightly upon it.

Alone now on the brittle platform

Of herself she is playing her last role.

It is perfect. Never in all her career

Was she so good. And yet the curtain

Has fallen. My charmer, come out from behind

It to take the applause. Look, I am clapping too.

~ R. S. Thomas 

from The Poems of R. S. Thomas

Born Ronald Stuart Thomas in Cardiff, Wales, 1913. He was a Luddite, viewing modern conveniences as distractions that cause us to neglect our spiritual health. He and his wife Elsi lived in a small and almost primitive stone cottage for much of their marriage, and their son, Gwydion, remembered his father preaching against the evils of the refrigerator and the washing machine from his pulpit. His poems were as austere as his lifestyle, and he once wrote: "A recurring ideal, I find, is that of simplicity. At times there comes the desire to write with great precision and clarity, words so simple and moving that they bring tears to the eyes."  Mr. Thomas died in 2000.

~ comments from  writers almanac

allow yourself to become it

The highest good is not to seek to do good,

but to allow yourself to become it.

The ordinary person seeks to do good things,

and finds that they can not do them continually.

The Master does not force virtue on others,

thus she is able to accomplish her task.

The ordinary person who uses force,

will find that they accomplish nothing.

The kind person acts from the heart,

and accomplishes a multitude of things.

The righteous person acts out of pity,

yet leaves many things undone.

The moral person will act out of duty,

and when no one will respond

will roll up his sleeves and use force.

When the Tao is forgotten, there is righteousness.

When righteousness is forgotten, there is morality.

When morality is forgotten, there is the law.

The law is the husk of faith,

and trust is the beginning of chaos.

Our basic understandings are not from the Tao

because they come from the depths of our misunderstanding.

The master abides in the fruit and not in the husk.

She dwells in the Tao,

and not with the things that hide it.

This is how she increases in wisdom.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

translation by j.h.mcdonald

live from your own center

The divine manifestation is ubiquitous, 

Only our eyes are not open to it. . . . 

Awe is what moves us forward. . . .

Live from your own center. . . . 

The divine lives within you. 

The separateness apparent in the world is secondary. 

Beyond the world of opposites is an unseen, 

but experienced, unity and identity in us all.

Today the planet is the only proper “in group.” 

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. 

We cannot cure the world of sorrows, 

but we can choose to live in joy.

You must return with the bliss and integrate it. 

The return is seeing the radiance is everywhere. 

The world is a match for us. 

We are a match for the world. 

The spirit is the bouquet of nature. . . . 

Sanctify the place you are in. Follow your bliss. . . .

~ Joseph Campbell

sower of science, center of religion

The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience

is the sensation of the mystical.

It is the sower of all true science.

He to whom this emotion is a stranger,

who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe,

is as good as dead.

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists,

manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty,

which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - 

this knowledge, this feeling,

is at the center of true religion.

~ Albert Einstein

each curve

There are so many positions of love:

each curve on a

branch,

the thousand ways your eyes can hold us,

the infinite shapes each mind

can draw,

the spring orchestra of scents and sounds wafting through the air,

the currents of light combusting like

passionate

lips,

the revolution of the universe’s skirt, whose folds

contain other worlds,

our every sigh that falls against

His inconceivably close,

omnipresent,

divine

body

~Hafiz

from Love Poems From God: 

Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West 
by Daniel Ladinsky

.

only in the double kingdom

Only the man who has raised his strings

among the dark ghosts also

can sense it and give 

the everlasting praise.

Only he who has eaten poppy

with the dead, from their poppy,

will never lose even

his most delicate sound.

Even though images in the pool

seem so blurry:

grasp the main thing.

Only in the double kingdom, there

alone, do voices become

undying and tender.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Robert Bly

from Sonnets to Orpheus

art by alex orlov

near field

This is not something new or kept secret

the tilled ground unsown in late spring

the dead are not separate from the living

each has one foot in the unknown

and cannot speak for the other

the field tells none of its turned story

it lies under its low cloud like a waiting river

the dead make this out of their hunger

out of what they had been told

out of the pains and shadows

and bowels of animals

out of turning and 

coming back singing

about another time

~ W. S. Merwin

from The Shadow of Sirius

photo by Kathleen Connally