a friend’s umbrella

.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, toward the end
of his life, found the names
of familiar objects escaping him.
He wanted to say something about a window, 
or a table, or a book on a table.
.
But the word wasn't there,
although other words could still suggest
the shape of what he meant.
Then someone, his wife perhaps,
.
would understand: "Yes, window! I'm sorry,
is there a draft?" He'd nod.
She'd rise. Once a friend dropped by 
to visit, shook out his umbrella
in the hall, remarked upon the rain.
.
Later the word umbrella
vanished and became
the thing that strangers take away.
.
Paper, pen, table, book:
was it possible for a man to think
without them? To know 
that he was thinking? We remember
that we forget, he'd written once, 
before he started to forget.
.
Three times he was told
that Longfellow had died
.
Without the past, the present
lay around him like the sea.
Or like a ship, becalmed,
upon the sea. He smiled
.
to think he was the captain then,
gazing off into whiteness,
waiting for the wind to rise. 




~ Lawrence Raab

the intimate space

.

 

 

 

What birds plunge through is not the intimate space

in which you see all forms intensified.

(Out in the Open, you would be denied

your self, would disappear into that vastness.)

 

Space reaches from us and construes the world:

to know a tree, in its true element,

throw inner space around it, from that pure

abundance in you.  Surround it with restraint.

It has no limits.  Not till it is held

in your renouncing is it truly there.

 

 

 

 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Uncollected Poems

.

 

 

 

next time

 

 

 

 

 

 Next time what I'd do is look at
the earth before saying anything. I'd stop
just before going into a house
and be an emperor for a minute
and listen better to the wind
or to the air being still.


When anyone talked to me, whether
blame or praise or just passing time,
I'd watch the face, how the mouth
had to work, and see any strain, any
sign of what lifted the voice.


And for all, I'd know more - the earth
bracing itself and soaring, the air
finding every leaf and feather over
forest and water, and for every person
the body glowing inside the clothes
like a light.






~ William Stafford

with thanks to being silently drawn

 

walking in the rain

When my master and I
were walking in the rain,
he would say,
"Do not walk so fast,
the rain is everywhere."

~  Shunryu Suzuki

silent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A person made dazed

by the cup of love

forgets all other joys.

 

He speaks with remembrance

in his innermost soul-

and then falls silent

to outer disputes.

 

 

 

 

 

~ 'Ala'  al-Dawala Simnani 

 

 

epitaph

Having lived long in time,
he lives now in timelessness
without sorrow, made perfect
by our never finished love,
by our compassion and forgiveness,
and by his happiness in receiving
these gifts we give. Here in time
we are added to one another forever.




~ Wendell Berry
from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

 

 

this morning

 

 

 

 

 

 

. . . This morning, when I looked
at a lily, just beginning to open,
its long, slender pouch tipped
with soft, curling-back lips, and I could peek just
slightly in, and see the clasping
interior, the cache of pollen,
and smell the extreme sweetness, I thought they were
shyly saying Mary's body,
he came from the blossom of a woman, he was born
in the beauty of her lily.

 

 

 

~ Sharon Olds 

for a moment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Across the highway a heron stands
in the flooded field. It stands
as if lost in thought, on one leg, careless,
as if the field belongs to herons.
The air is clear and quiet.
Snow melts on this second fair day.
Mother and daughter,
we sit in the parking lot
with doughnuts and coffee.
We are silent.
For a moment the wall between us
opens to the universe;
then closes.
And you go on saying
you do not want to repeat my life.

 

 

 

 

~ Ruth Stone

 

 

 

the envoy

One day in that room, a small rat.

Two days later, a snake.

.

Who, seeing me enter,

whipped the long stripe of his

body under the bed,

then curled like a docile house-pet.

I don't know how either came or left.

Later, the flashlight found nothing.

For a year I watched

as something -- terror? happiness? grief? --

entered and then left my body.

Not knowing how it came in.

Not knowing how it went out.

It hung where words could not reach it.

It slept where light could not go.

Its scent was neither snake nor rat,

neither sensualist nor ascetic.

There are openings in our lives

of which we know nothing.

Through them

the belled herds travel at will,

long-legged and thirsty, covered with foreign dust.

~  Jane Hirshfield

from Given Sugar, Given Salt

calm, ease

 

 

 

 

 

~  Thich Nhat Hanh

 

 

 

 

faint traces

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reflecting over seventy years,

I am tired of judging right from wrong.

Faint traces of a path trodden in deep night snow.

A stick of incense under the rickety window.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Ryokan

from Sky Above, Great Wind

The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan

by Kazuaki Tanahashi

 

 

 

every step

 

 

 

 

 

 

Treading along in this dreamlike, illusory realm,

Without looking for the traces I may have left;

A cuckoo's song beckons me to return home,

Hearing this, I tilt my head to see

Who has told me to turn back:

But do not as me where I am going,

As I travel in this limitless world,

Where every step I take is my home.

 

 

 

 

~ Dogen

 from The Zen Poetry of Dogen

 

 

 

a small boat drifting

 

 

 

 

 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

 

 

acceptance and expansion

 

 

 Suzuki Roshi said that renunciation is not giving up the things of the world,

 but accepting that they go away.

 

 An acceptance of impermanence helps us learn how to die. 

It also reveals the flip side of loss, which is that letting go is an act of generosity.

 We let go of old grudges, and give ourselves peace. We let go of fixed views,

 and give ourselves to not knowing. 

 

We let go of self-sufficiency and give ourselves to the care of others.

 We let go of clinging and give ourselves to gratitude.

 We let go of control and give ourselves to surrender.

"Surrender is not the same thing as letting go. 

Normally, we think of letting go as a release often accompanied by a sense of freedom

 from previous restraints.

 

 Surrender is more about expansion. There is a freedom in surrender,

 but it is not really about setting something down or distancing ourselves from an object,

 person, or experience, as it is with letting go. 

 

With surrender, we are free because we have expanded into a spaciousness,

 a boundless quality of being that can include but not be constrained by

 the previously limiting beliefs that once defined us, keeping us separate and apart.

 

 We release the fruitless habit of clinging to changing objects as a source of happiness.

 

 In surrender, we are reconstituted. We are no longer enslaved by our pasts.

 No longer imprisoned by our former identities. We become intimate 

with the inner truth of our essential nature.

 

 In surrender, 

we feel ourselves not gaining distance, but rather coming closer.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Frank Ostaseski

from The Five Invitations

art by by Antony Gormley

 

the man who didn't know

.

There was a man who didn't know what was his.

He thought as a boy that some demon forced him

To wear "his" clothes and live in "his" room

And sit on "his" chair and be the child of "his" parents.

Each time he sat down to dinner, it happened again.

His own birthday party belonged to someone else.

And - was it sweet potatoes that he liked? -

He should resist them.  Whose plate is this?

This man will be like a lean-to attached

To a house.  It doesn't have a foundation.

This man is helpful and hostile in each moment.

This man leans toward you and leans away.

He's charming, this man who doesn't know what is his.

.

~ Robert Bly

from Morning Poems

photo by Lisa Kristine