Monday, January 2, 2023

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


Tuesday, December 27, 2022

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 
 
 

Monday, December 26, 2022

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
 
 




Saturday, December 24, 2022

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
 
 
 

Friday, December 23, 2022

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
 
 
 

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

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
 
 

Friday, December 16, 2022

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