for grief

When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you gets fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence.
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.

Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And, when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time. 

~ John O’Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings 

 

 

 

 

what you cannot hold

You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing
that is more than your own.
Let it brush your cheeks
as it divides and rejoins beside you.

Blessed ones, whole ones,
you where the heart begins:
You are the bow that shoots the arrows
and you are the target.

Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, IV

  translation by Macy and Barrows

 

 

 

 

bird song opera

not difficult

The Great Way is not difficult 

for those who have no preferences. 
*

When love and hate are both absent 

everything becomes clear and undisguised. 
*

Make the smallest distinction, however 

and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. 
*

If you wish to see the truth 

then hold no opinions for or against anything. 
*

To set up what you like against what you dislike 

is the disease of the mind. 
*

When the deep meaning of things is not understood 

the minds essential peace is disturbed to no avail. 

The Way is perfect like vast space 

where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. 
*

Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject 

that we do not see the true nature of things. 
*

Live neither in the entanglements of outer things, 

nor in inner feelings of emptiness. 
*

Be serene in the oneness of things 

and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves. 
*

When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity 

your very effort fills you with activity. 

As long as you remain in one extreme or the other 

you will never know Oneness. 

~ Seng-T’san 

who goes there

midstream halt --

the horseman looks up

at the falling stars

~ H. F. Noyes

 from Haiku Enlightenment: New Expanded Edition 

  by Gabriel Rosenstock

vanishing

Birds vanishing in the sky, the last cloud fades,

sitting together, the mountain and I....

now, only the mountain remains

~~ Li Bai 

 from Haiku Enlightenment: New Expanded Edition 

  by Gabriel Rosenstock 

in the mirror

‘O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart.’

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on. 




~ W.H. Auden 

gentleness and great pain

Terri Roberts - Charlie's mother

a gunman barricaded himself inside a one-room Amish schoolhouse 

near Lancaster, Pa. Then he opened fire.

Charles "Charlie" Roberts killed five children and 

injured five others before killing himself.

The Amish community responded in a way that many found surprising:

 They forgave the shooter. And, in the years since, they have grown close to his family.

That week, the Robertses had a private funeral for their son, 

but as they went to the gravesite, they saw as many as 40 Amish start coming 

out from around the side of the graveyard, surrounding them like a crescent.

"Love just emanated from them," Terri says.

Terri finds it especially hard to accept that forgiveness 

when she thinks of one of the survivors, Rosanna.

"Rosanna's the most injured of the survivors," she explains.

 "Her injuries were to her head. She is now 15, still tube-fed and in a wheelchair. 

And she does have seizures, and when it gets to be this time of year,

 as we get closer to the anniversary date, she seizes more. 

And it's certainly not the life that this little girl should have lived."

Terri asked if it would be possible for her to help with Rosanna once a week.
"I read to her, I bathe her, dry her hair," says Terri, who herself is battling cancer.

"I will never forget the devastation caused by my son," says the 65-year-old Terri.

 "But one of the fathers the other night, he said, 'None of us would have ever chosen this.

 But the relationships that we have built through it, you can't put a price on that.' "

 from StoryCorps.org.

it was like this

It was like this:

you were happy, then you were sad,

then happy again, then not.

It went on.

You were innocent or you were guilty.

Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.

Mostly, it seems you were silent - what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness -

between you, there is nothing to forgive -

but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment

he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn't matter what they will make of you

or your days: they will be wrong,

they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,

all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,

you slept, you awakened.

Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

~ Jane Hirshfield

it takes so long

My hand remembers stroking a sleek bird years ago, 

one which was crouching under my fingers, 

longing for the sky roof on top of the cabin roof, 

the forgiveness high in the air.  

As for me, I have given so many hours to the ecstasy of detail, 

the shadow of the closing door, 

the final syllable of that poem which is already gone, 

looking back over its shoulder.  

Well, well... sometimes in our slow hours a child climbs down into this world.

~ Robert Bly

from Reaching Out to the World -
 New & Selected Prose Poems

the one who knows

~ Jack Kornfield

on the death of his child

Dew Evaporates
And all our world

 is dew...so dear,
So fresh....so fleeting



~  Issa

  from Japanese Haiku
 translation by Peter Beilenson

 

 

 

 

back into the reedbed

Time to ignore sensible advice,

to untie the knots our culture ties us with.

Cut to the quick.

Put cotton in both sentimental ears.

Go back into the reedbed.

Let cane sugar rise again in you.

No rules or daily duties.

Those do not bring the peace of silence.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

from Rumi - The Big Red Book

heart mind

~ Ram Dass

joy

~ Ram Dass