Saturday, May 30, 2020

be helpless







Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
to gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.
If we say we can, we're lying.
If we say No, we don't see it,
That No will behead us
And shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather not be sure of anything,
Beside ourselves, and only that, so
Miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.





~ Rumi
translation by Coleman Barks




haunted





We are looking for your laugh.
Trying to find the path back to it
between drooping trees.
Listening for your rustle
under bamboo,
brush of fig leaves,
feeling your step
on the porch,
natty lantana blossom
poked into your buttonhole.
We see your raised face
at both sides of a day.
How was it, you lived around
the edge of everything we did,
seasons of ailing; growing,
mountains of laundry; mail?
I am looking for you first; last
in the dark places,
when I turn my face away
from headlines at dawn,
dropping the rolled news to the floor.
Your rumble of calm
poured into me.
There was the saving grace
of care, from day one, the watching
and being watched
from every corner of the yard.





~ Naomi Shihab Nye
from Transfer





Friday, May 29, 2020

the movement of love






Meditation is the movement of love. It isn't the love of the one
or of the many.  It is like water that anyone can drink out of any jar...
it is inexhaustible. 

The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life,
 the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order,
 and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order,
 then that very order will bring about its own limitation, 
and the mind will be its prisoner.
 
 In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, 
from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore
 or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water,
 not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation
 is that you never know where you are, 
where you are going, what the end is.




~  J. Krishnamurti
from The Meditative Mind
with thanks to Love is a Place




 

stories of the Buddha's last days










~ Jack Kornfield



Thursday, May 28, 2020

I cobbled their boots






How could I love my fellow men who tortured me?

One night I was dragged into a room 
and beaten near death with
their shoes

striking me hundreds of times
in the face, scarring me 
forever.

I cried out for God to help, until I fainted.

That night in a dream, in a dream more real than this world.
a strap from the Christ's sandal
fell from my bleeding
mouth,

and I looked at Him and He 
was weeping, and
spoke,

"I cobbled their boots;
how sorry 
I am.

What moves all things
is God."




~ St John of the Cross
from Love poems of God,
Twelve sacred voices from the East and West





in my wallet I carry a card






In my wallet I carry a card
which declares I have the power to marry.

In my wallet I carry a card
which declares I may drive.

 
In my wallet I carry a card
that says to a merchant I may be trusted to pay her.

 
In my wallet I carry a card
that states I can borrow a book in the town where I live.

 
In my hand I carry a card
Its lines declare I am cardless, carless,
stateless, and have no money.

It is buoyant and edgeless.
It names me one of the Order of All Who Will Die.




~ Jane Hirshfield
from The Beauty



  

forgiveness










~ Jack Kornfield



 

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

mosquito







I say I
and
a small mosquito drinks from my tongue

but many say we and hear I
say you or he and 
hear I

what can we do with this problem

a bowl held in both hands
cannot be filled by the holder

x, says the blue whale
x, say the krill
solve for y, says the ocean, then multiply by existence

the feet of an ant make their own sound on the earth

ice is astonished by water

a person misreads

delirium as delphinium
and falls into
a blueness sleepy as beauty when sneezing

the pronoun dozes




~ Jane Hirshfield
from The Beauty



my species








even
a small purple artichoke
boiled
in its own bittered
and darkening
waters
grows tender,
grows tender and sweet

patience, I think,
my species

keep testing the spiny leaves

the spiny heart




~ Jane Hirshfield
from The Beauty




anxiety starts to disintegrate







Being conscious is cutting through your own melodrama
 and being right here. Exist in no mind, be empty, here now, 
and trust that as a situation arises, out of you will come 
what is necessary to deal with that situation 
including the use of your intellect when appropriate. 
 
Your intellect need not be constantly held on to keep reassuring
 you that you know where you’re at, out of fear of loss of control.

Ultimately,  that anxiety starts to disintegrate.
 And you start to define yourself as in flow with the universe; 
and whatever comes along—death, life joy, sadness
—is grist for the mill of awakening.
 
 
 
 
Ram Dass 



rain light







All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the after life
that lived there long before you were born 
see how they wake without a question
even through the whole world is burning




~ W. S. Merwin
from The Shadow of Sirius
iris by van gogh





grow accustomed








We grow accustomed to the Dark -
When light is put away -
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye -

A Moment - We uncertain step
For newness of the night -
Then - fit our Vision to the Dark -
And meet the Road - erect -

And so of larger - Darkness -
Those Evenings of the Brain -
When no a Moon disclose a sign -
Or Star - come out - within -

The Bravest - grope a little -
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead -
 But as they learn to see -

Either the Darkness alters -
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight -
And Life steps almost straight.




~ Emily Dickenson 




the last day







This may be the last day of my life.
I lifted my right hand to wave at the sun,
but I did not wave at it in farewell.
I was glad I could still see it - that's all.



~ Fernando Pessoa
translation by Richard Zenith



 

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

love





Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn't always understand.




~ Czeslaw Milosz
translation by Robert Hass
from The Collected Poems
art by Picasso


so little





I said so little.
Days were short.

Short days.
Short nights.
Short years.

I said so little.
I couldn't keep up.

My heart grew weary
From joy,
Despair,
Ardor,
Hope.

The jaws of Leviathan
Were closing upon me.

Naked, I lay on the shores
Of desert islands.

The white whale of the world
Hauled me down to its pit.

And now I don’t know
What in all that was real.




~ Czeslaw Milosz
translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee