the thing with feathers

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.


~ Emily Dickinson

from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by R. W. Franklin

 with thanks to Love is a Place

the bridge

Between now and now,
between I am and you are,
the word bridge.

Entering it
you enter yourself:
the world connects
and closes like a ring.

From one bank to another,
there is always
a body stretched:
a rainbow.
I’ll sleep beneath its arches.

~ Octavio Paz

from The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz 1957-1987

in the heart of the night

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 Zen poetry of Dogen

 

true person

The true person is

Not anyone in particular,

But, like the deep blue color

Of the limitless sky,

It is everyone, everywhere in the world.

 

 

 

~ Dogen

from Zen poetry of Dogen

 

lessons

~ Elizabeth Lesser

still life

The rose that no longer blooms in the garden,

blooms inside her whole body, among the veins

and organs and the skeleton.

Linda Gregg 

A hidden blossoming.

Petals flaming beneath the skin.

And a softness pressing,

as delicate as the mouth

of a blind lover.

Each movement,

each quiet gesture

awakens

a rosary in the blood.

Was it desire

which brought her to this moment,

this arrival at source,

or was it merely a need 

to be still, to be richly fed

from this fountain

of dark silence?

~ Dorothy Walters

from Marrow of Flame

 

the difficulty of return

When I first got back,

I thought people would

wish to listen,

moved by my unlikely tale.

Soon I saw that to them I was

mere pariah, outcast,

traveler from a far country

no one had ever heard of,

or believed in.

These goods I brought home

were invisible to all

but the most discerning eye.

My recitals, my celebrations

and laments for what had transpired,

a dumb-show

to all but the most

finely tuned ear.

Now I am ringed by a halo of silence,

and move cautiously,

mouth closed

over this stone

I carry on my tongue.

~ Dorothy Walters

from Marrow of Flame

 

observe

Surely any form of accumulation, either of knowledge or experience, any form of ideal, any projection of the mind, any determined practice to shape the mind - what it should be and should not be - all this is obviously crippling the process of investigation and discovery.

So I think our inquiry must be not for the solution of our immediate problems but rather to find out whether the mind, the conscious as well as the deep unconscious mind in which is stored all the tradition, the memories, the inheritance of racial knowledge,whether all of it can be put aside. I think it can be done only if the mind is capable of being aware without any sense of demand, without any pressure, just to be aware.

 I think it is one of the most difficult things to be so aware because we are caught in the immediate problem and in its immediate solution, and so our lives are very superficial. Though one may go to all the analysts, read all the books, acquire much knowledge, attend churches, pray, mediate, practice various disciplines; nevertheless, our lives are obviously very superficial because we do not know how to penetrate deeply. 

I think the understanding, the way of penetration, how to go very, very deeply, lies through awareness, just to be aware of our thoughts and feelings, without condemnation, without comparison, just to observe. You will see, if you will experiment, how extraordinarily difficult it is, because our whole training is to condemn, to approve, to compare.  

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

the unstructured sources of our beings

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization.

~ A. R. Ammons

a stream I go a-fishing in

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. 
 I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.
 Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky,
 whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter
 of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not
 as wise as the day I was born.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden: Where I lived and What I lived for

 

 

 

 

the path

The path to heaven lies through heaven,
and all the way to heaven is heaven.

 

~ Catherine of Siena

with thanks to Love is a Place

hoeing

As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my how, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day.  They lay mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore the marks of having been burned by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and also bits of pottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators of the soil.  When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop.  It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans...

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden, The Bean-Field

art by Clotilde Espinosa

wind on water

A field of water betrays a spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving

new life and motion from above.  It is intermediate in its nature between land

and sky.  On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled

by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of

light.  It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface.  We shall, perhaps, 

look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler

spirit sweeps over it.

 ~ Henry David Thoreau

excerpt from Walden, the ponds

no such thing

There is no such thing as a person.
There are only restrictions and limitations.
The sum total of these defines the person.

You think you know yourself when you know what you are.
But you never know who you are. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot.

See that you are not what you believe yourself to be.
Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable.

You are not.

Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that.
There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation.

Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation.
Don’t be too lazy to think.





~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

with thanks to Love is a Place

 

no man's land

But oh!
How far I have to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!
For now, oh my God, it is to You alone that I can talk,
because nobody else will understand.
I cannot bring any other on this earth
into the cloud where I dwell in Your light,
that is,
Your Darkness,
where I am lost and abashed.

I cannot explain to any other
the anguish which is Your joy
nor the loss which is the possession of You,
nor the distance from all things
which is the arrival in You.
nor the death which is the birth in You
because I do not know anything about it myself
and all I know
is that I wish it were over
-- I wish it were begun.

You have contradicted everything.
You have left me in no man's land.

~ Thomas Merton
from Dancing in the Water of Life