Wednesday, April 15, 2020

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




Monday, April 13, 2020

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



Friday, April 10, 2020

heart mind








~ Ram Dass



joy









~ Ram Dass



Thursday, April 9, 2020

the madman

.






You ask me how I became a madman.  It happened thus:  
One day, long before many gods were born,  I woke from a deep sleep
 and found all my masks were stolen, - the seven masks I have fashioned
 and worn in seven lives, - I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting,
 "Thieves, thieves, and cursed thieves."

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried,
 "He is a madman."  I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time.  For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more.  And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness;  
the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood,
 for those who understand us enslave something in us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety. 
 Even a Thief in jail is safe from another thief.




~ Kahlil Gibran
from The Madman his Parables and Poems
art Ludwig Kirchner







Wednesday, April 8, 2020

who am I










~ Jack Kornfield



 

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

still



.



I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:
.
at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!




~ A. R. Ammons

.

Monday, April 6, 2020

emptiness










~ Jack Kornfield


 

Sunday, April 5, 2020

a hundred roots silently drinking






I have many brothers in the South
who move, handsome in their vestments,
through cloister gardens.
The Madonnas they make are so human,
and I dream often of their Titians,
where God becomes an ardent flame.

But when I lean over the chasm of myself -
it seems
my God is dark
and like a web: a hundred roots
silently drinking.

This is the ferment I grow out of.

More I don't know, because my branches
rest in deep silence, stirred only by the wind.



~ Rainer Maria Rilke
from The Book of Monastic Life, I,3

.

Thursday, April 2, 2020

patience










~ Jack Kornfield


 

song in the year of catastrophe







I began to be followed by a voice saying:
"It can't last.  It can't last.
Harden yourself.  Harden yourself.
Be ready.  Be ready."

"Go look under the leaves,"
it said, "for what is living there
is dead in your tongue."
And it said, "Put your hands
into the earth.  Live close
to the ground. Learn the darkness.
Gather round you all
the things that you love, name
their names, prepare
to lose them,  It will be
as if all you know were turned
around within your body."

And I went and put my hands 
into the ground, and they took root
and grew into a season's harvest.
I looked behind the veil
of the leaves, and heard voices
that I knew had been dead
in my tongue years before my birth.
I learned the dark.

And still the voice stayed with me. 
Waking in the early mornings,
I could hear it, like a bird
bemused among the leaves,
a mockingbird idly singing
in the autumn of catastrophe:
"Be ready.   Be ready.
Harden yourself.  Harden yourself."

And I heard the sound 
of a great engine pounding
in the air, and a voice asking:
"Change or slavery?
Hardship or slavery?"
and the voices answering:
"Slavery!  Slavery!"
And I was afraid, loving 
what I know would be lost.

Then the voice following me said:
"you have not yet come close enough.
Come nearer the ground.  Learn
from the woodcock in the woods
whose feathering is a ritual
of the fallen leaves,
and from the nesting quail
whose speckling makes her hard to see
in the long grass.
Study the coat of the mole.
For the farmer shall wear
the greenery and the furrows
of his fields, and bear
the long standing of the woods."

And I asked: "you mean a death, then?"
"yes," the voice said.  "Die
into what the earth requires of you."
Then let go all holds, and sank
like a hopeless swimmer into the earth,
and at last came fully into the ease
and the joy of that place,
all my lost ones returning.





~ Wendell Berry
from Farming Poems
art by Roderick Maclver



Wednesday, April 1, 2020

still a mystery




How something is made flesh
no one can say. The buffalo soup
becomes a woman
who sings every day to her horses
or summons another to her private body
saying, come, touch, this is how
it begins, the path of a newly born
who, salvaged from other lives and worlds,
will grow to become a woman, a man,
with a heart that never rests,
and the gathered berries,
the wild grapes
enter the body,
human wine
which can love,
where nothing created is wasted;
the swallowed grain takes you through the dreams
of another night,
the deer meat becomes hands
strong enough to work.

But I love most
the white-haired creature
eating green leaves;
the sun shines there
swallowed, showing in her face
taking in all the light,

and in the end
when the shadow from the ground
enters the body and remains,
in the end, you might say,
This is myself,
still unknown, still a mystery.




–Linda Hogan
from Rounding the Human Corners




as we think, so we become






.
The thought manifests as the word,
The word manifests as the deed,
The deed develops into a habit,
And habit hardens in character,
.
So watch the thought and it's ways with care,
And let it spring from love,
Born out of concern for all beings...
.
As the shadow follows the body,
As we think so we become. 



~ Buddha, from the Dhammapada