Poems...

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Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

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I am

only one

but still

I am one.

I cannot do

everything

but still I can

do something.

I will not

refuse to do the

something

I can do.

-- Helen Keller

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It is for the union of you and me

that there is light in the sky.

It is for the union of you and me

that the earth is decked in dusky green.

It is for the union of you and me

that the night sits motionless with the world in her arms;

dawn appears opening the eastern door

with sweet murmurs in her voice.

The boat of hope sails along the currents of eternity toward that union,

flowers of the ages are being gathered together for its welcoming ritual.

It is for the union of you and me

that this heart of mine, in the garb of a bride,

has proceeded from birth to birth

upon the surface of this ever-turning world

to choose the beloved.

-- Rabindranath Tagore 

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Why ponder thus the future to forsee,

and jade thy brain to vain perplexity?

Cast off thy care, leave Allah's plans to him --

He formed them all without consulting thee.

--Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat

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Peace is Every Step

by Thich Nhat Hahn

Peace is every step.

The shining red sun is my heart.

Each flower smiles with me.

How green, how fresh all that grows.

How cool the wind blows.

Peace is every step.

It turns the endless path to joy.

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If ten candles are present in one place,
Each differs from another,
Yet you cannot distinguish whose radiance is who
When you focus on the light.

-- Rumi

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Let the beauty we love
Be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways
To kneel and kiss the ground.

-- Rumi

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A Meeting in a Part

by Wendell Berry

In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: "How you been?"
He grins and looks at me.
"I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees."

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I've read all the books,

but one only remains sacred:

this volume of wanders,

open always before my eyes.

-- Kathleen Raine, Collected Poems

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 Here's What to do During War

by Maxine Hong Kingston 

Children, everybody, here's what to do during war:

In a time of destruction, create something.
A poem.
A parade.
A community.
A school.
A vow.
A moral principle.
One peaceful moment.

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The Hidden Singer

by Wendell Berry

The gods are less for their love of praise.
Above and below them all is a spirit that needs nothing
but its own wholeness, its health and ours.
It has made all things by dividing itself.
It will be whole again.
To its joy we come together --
the seer and the seen, the eater and the eaten,
the lover and the loved.
In our joining it knows itself. It is with us then,
not as the gods whose names crest in unearthly fire,
but as a little bird hidden in the leaves
who sings quietly and waits, and sings. 
 

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Express yourself completely,

then become quiet.

Open yourself to heaven and earth,

and be like the forces of nature:

When the wind blows,

there is only wind;

When it rains,

there is only rain;

When the clouds pass,

the sun promises to shine.

-- Lao Tzu

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There is a brook in the mountains,

nobody I ask knows its name.

It shines on the earth like a piece of sky.

It falls away in waterfalls,

with a sound like rain.

It twists between rocks and makes deep pools.

It divides into islands.

It flows through calm reaches.

The years go by,

its clear depths never change. 

-- Ch'u Ch'uang I

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Lost

 by David Wagoner

Stand still.

The trees and bushes beside you are not lost.

Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen.

It answers, I have made this place around you,

If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to the Raven.

No two branches are the same to the Wren.

If what a tree or bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost. Stand still.

The forest knows where you are.

You must let it find you.

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The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world,

and am free.

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So Much Happiness

 by Naomi Shihab Nye

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.

With sadness there is something to rub against,

a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.

When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,

something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.

It doesn't need you to hold it down.

It doesn't need anything.

Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,

and disappears when it wants to.

You are happy either way.

Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house

and now live over a quarry of noise and dust

cannot make you unhappy.

Everything has a life of its own,

it too could wake up filled with possibilities

of coffee cake and ripe peaches,

and love even the floor which needs to be swept,

the soiled linens and scratched records...

Since there is no place large enough to contain such happiness,

you shrug, you raise your hands,

and it flows out of you into everything you touch.

You are not responsible.

You take no credit, as you night sky takes no credit for the moon,

but continues to hold it, and share it,

and in that way, be known.

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The Moon is the Same Moon

by Rumi, from Mathnawi  

Know that the world of created things

Is like pure and limpid water

In which shine the attributes

Of the Omnipotent One.

Consciousness, justice, mercy

Are like stars of heaven

Reflected in the running water.

Kings are the theater

Of the royalty of God;

Sages are the mirrors

Of God's Eternal Wisdom.

Generations have passed away,

A new generation has come;

The moon is the same moon

But the water's not the same.

Justice is the same justice,

Knowledge the same knowledge,

But generation has replaced generation

In a long and endless chain.

Generation after generation

Have gone into the dark

But the Divine Attributes

Are changelss and eternal.

The water in this river

Has changed innumerable times;

The reflection of the moon and stars

Has remained unaltered.

Its origin is not the water

But the Light-Kingdoms of Heaven.

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 Beannacht

for Josie

by John O'Donahue, Anam Cara, v.

On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble,

may the clay dance to balance you.

And when your eyes freeze behind the gray window

and the ghost of loss gets in to you,

may a flock of colors, indigo, red, green and azure blue

come to awaken in you a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays in the curach of thought

and a stain of ocean blackens beneath you,

may there come across the waters a path of yellow moonlight

to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

may the clarity of light be yours,

may the fluency of the ocean be yours,

may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow wind work these words of love around you,

an invisible cloak to mind your life.

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Interbeing

 by Thich Nhat Hahn

The sun has entered me.

The sun has entered me

together with the cloud and the river.

I myself have entered the river,

and I have entered the sun

with the cloud and the river.

There has not been a moment

when we do not interpenetrate.

But before the sun entered me,

the sun was in me--

also the cloud and the river.

Before I entered the river,

I was already in it.

There has not been a moment

When we have not inter-been.

Therefore you know

that as long as you continue to breathe,

I continue to be in you.

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I should be content

to look at a mountain

for what it is

and not as a comment on my life.

-- David Ignatow

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Then Almitra spoke again and said,

"And what of Marriage, master?"

And he answered saying:

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together even in the slient memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of the lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

-- Kahlil Gibran

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A Timbered Choir

by Wendell Berry

Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.

I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever forward
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.
I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered
footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.

Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments
of those who had died in pursuit of the objective
and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according
to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget
that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objective
as if nobody ever had pursued it before.

The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.
the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free
to sell themselves to the highest bidder
and to enter the best paying prisons
in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,
which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,
to the completed sale, to the signature
on the contract, which was to clear the way
to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home
would ever get there now, for every remembered place
had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.

Every place had been displaced, every love
unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant
to make way for the passage of the crowd
of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless
with their many eyes opened toward the objective
which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,
having never known where they were going,
having never known where they came from.

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Please Call Me by My True Names

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow

because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second

to be a bud in a spring branch,

to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,

learning to sing in my new nest,

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,

to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,

in order to fear and to hope,

the rhythm of my heart is the birth and

death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing in the surface of the river,

and I am the bird which, when spring comes,

arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond,

and I am also the grass-snake who,

approaching in silence,

feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,

and I am the arms merchant,

selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the 12-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,

who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,

and I am the pirate,

my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,

with plenty of power in my hands,

and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people,

dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring,

so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.

My pain is like a river of tears,

so full it fills up the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once,

so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can wake up,

and so the door of my heart can be left open,

 the door of compassion.

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I am that supreme and fiery force that sends forth all living sparks.

Death has no part in me, yet I bestow death,

wherefore I am girt about with wisdom as with wings.

I am that living and fiery essence of the divine substance

that glows in the beauty of the fields, and in the shining water,

and in the burning sun and the moon and the stars,

and in the force of the invisible wind,

the breath of all living things,

I breathe in the green grass and in the flowers,

and in the living waters...

All these live and do not die because I am in them...

I am the source of the thundered word by which all creatures were made,

I permeate all things that they may not die.

I am life.

-- Hildegarde von Bingen

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