Perfection

PERFECTION

by Killian McDonnell, O.S.B. from Swift Lord, You Are Not (St. John's University Press)                   

I have had it with perfection.
I have packed my bags,
I am out of here.
Gone.

As certain as rain
will make you wet,
perfection will do you
in.

It droppeth not as dew
upon the summer grass
to give liberty and green
joy.

Perfection straineth out
the quality of mercy,
withers rapture at its
birth.

Before the battle is half begun,
cold probity thinks
it can't be won, concedes the
war.

I've handed in my notice,
give back my keys,
signed my severance check, I
quit.

Hints I could have taken:
Even the perfect chiseled form of
Michelangelo's radiant David
squints,

the Venus de Milo
has no arms,
the Liberty Bell is
cracked.

"Practice makes perfect" is perhaps the most detrimental aphorism in the English language.  No matter how hard we practice at something . . . our chosen professions, hobbies, or even spiritual "practices," we're never going to be perfect.  But perfection doesn't equate to goodness or beauty or worth, as Merriam Webster's tells us and today's poem illustrates. 

Singer-songwriter-poet Leonard Cohen puts it this way in his song, Anthem:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Our cracks let the light in, but they also let it out . . .


What are the cracks that let the light shine in and through you?

Sometimes

SOMETIMES

by Sheenagh Pugh from Selected Poems (Seren)

Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,

elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go

amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.


This poem by Sheenagh Pugh has always seemed to me a good pairing with yesterday's poem by Jane Kenyon.  I envision the two poems as sitting on either side of a teeter-totter.  Kenyon reminds us that the good things in our lives we take for granted could be otherwise, while Sheenagh Pugh reminds us that things can go better than expected . . . sometimes.  Otherwise, sometimes, otherwise, sometimes.  Up and down, just like life.

So what is the lesson that speaks to you today? The otherwise or the sometimes?

Otherwise

OTHERWISE
by Jane Kenyon from Otherwise (Gray Wolf Press)

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

No commentary today, just a reminder to be grateful for the ordinary things in life, for as Jane Kenyon writes, it might be otherwise . . .

David Whyte Wednesday - Loaves and Fishes

LOAVES AND FISHES
by David Whyte from  House of Belonging (Many Rivers Press)

This is not
the age of information.

This is not
the age of information.

Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.

This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry,
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

As I may have said before, I love listening to David Whyte read poetry, his own and that of others.  And yes, a large part is the dulcet voice and delicious accent, but it's also because of the way he re-reads a line to highlight its importance.  In today's poem, he doesn't leave the question of what needs to be emphatically stated up to chance.  "This is not the age of information.  This is not the age of information."

I haven't heard him read this particular poem aloud, but when he does, I wonder if he reads that line four times.  It couldn't hurt.  In many ways this does seem like the age of information.  I realized just the other day that I'm addicted to my Android tablet and all the information it contains. 

I was reading a book with my Kindle application and came across a word I didn't recognize so I used the dictionary function to look it up.  That led me to a dictionary on the internet to look at the word origin.  The word origin led me to a Wikipedia article, that led me to another article, and yet another until an hour later I was reading about Nellie Bly and going back to the Kindle app to purchase books by and about her.  I completely forgot about the book I was originally reading.

One good word didn't so much feed the multitudes in this case, but it did provide a multitude of food for thought.  The thing is though, my brain already gets plenty of food.  Information is all around me, but I what I crave is a good word. 

I am fortunate in that I am surrounded by countless encouraging souls who, on their own journey, shower good words on the parched paths they encounter (my own included).  It makes me think about the question for today . . .

What good word do you have to share?

Famous

FAMOUS
by Naomi Shihab Nye from Under the Words:  Collected Poems (Far Corner Books)

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,

which knew it would inherit the earth

before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds

watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom

is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,

more famous than the dress shoe,

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men

who smile while crossing streets,

sticky children in grocery lines,

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,

but because it never forgot what it could do.

   
    Andy Warhol once remarked that, "In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes."  With the advent of the reality TV, You Tube, Twitter, and yes, even blogs, what once was hyperbole is becoming reality; although one could argue that the digital age has brought more people notoriety than fame.

    According to Merriam-Webster, famous can be defined as "widely known," or "honored for achievement."  The way the word famous is used in Naomi Shihab Nye's poem hovers between the two.  The objects are famous because they are well known but there is also a type of famous that she desires-- the famous that comes from always remembering our potential. 

    And that is an achievement that should be honored.  

   
   What have you forgotten that you can do?

Mary Oliver Monday - The Turtle

THE TURTLE

by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems:  Volume One (Beacon Press)

breaks from the blue-black
skin of the water, dragging her shell
with its mossy scutes
across the shallows and through the rushes
and over the mudflats, to the uprise,
to the yellow sand,
to dig with her ungainly feet
a nest, and hunker there spewing
her white eggs down
into the darkness, and you think

of her patience, her fortitude,
her determination to complete
what she was born to do----
and then you realize a greater thing----
she doesn’t consider
what she was born to do.
She’s only filled
with an old blind wish.
It isn’t even hers but came to her
in the rain or the soft wind
which is a gate through which her life keeps walking.

She can’t see
herself apart from the rest of the world
or the world from what she must do
every spring.
Crawling up the high hill,
luminous under the sand that has packed against her skin,
she doesn’t dream
she knows
she is a part of the pond she lives in,
the tall trees are her children,
the birds that swim above her
are tied to her by an unbreakable string.

There are many good lessons I could learn from turtles-- their slow, deliberate movements, their perseverance in taking small steps to get where they want to go, their ability to stay still and silent when basking in the warmth of the sun.

The turtle "doesn't dream/she knows."  I dream, I don't know, at least not most of the time. 

But every once in a while, I do feel the trug of the unbreakable string.

What were you born to do?

How do you see yourself as a part, rather than apart, from the world?

The Chairs That No One Sits In

THE CHAIRS THAT NO ONE SITS IN
by Billy Collins from Horoscopes for the Dead (Random House)

You see them on porches and on lawns

down by the lakeside,

usually arranged in pairs implying a couple

 

who might sit there and look out

at the water or the big shade trees.

The trouble is you never see anyone

 

sitting in these forlorn chairs

though at one time it must have seemed

a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.

 

Sometimes there is a little table

between the chairs where no one

is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.

 

It might be none of my business,

but it might be a good idea one day

for everyone who placed those vacant chairs

 

on a veranda or a dock to sit down in them

for the sake of remembering

whatever it was they thought deserved

 

to be viewed from two chairs

side by side with a table in between.

The clouds are high and massive that day. 

 

The woman looks up from her book.

The man takes a sip of his drink.

Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking,

 

the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird

then another, cries of joy or warning—

it passes the time to wonder which.

 

 

    Chairs that I don't sit in are leaning against the dogwood tree in the back yard, books I don't read are stacked two deep on shelves, recipes I haven't tried are spilling out of an accordian folder, poems I haven't written are tucked in the corners of my mind.

 

    But today, today is an opportunity to do something that has been left undone . . .

 

What will you do with the opportunity you have today?

I Am Going to Start Living Like a Mystic

I AM GOING TO START LIVING LIKE A MYSTIC
by Edward Hirsch from Lay Back the Darkness (Knopf)

Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater 
and walking across the park in a dusky snowfall. 

The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field, 
each a station in a pilgrimage—silent, pondering. 

Blue flakes of light falling across their bodies 
are the ciphers of a secret, an occultation. 

I will examine their leaves as pages in a text 
and consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter. 

I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel 
and stare into a blank pond for the figure of Sophia. 

I shall begin scouring the sky for signs 
as if my whole future were constellated upon it. 

I will walk home alone with the deep alone, 
a disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries. 

I've been saving this poem for a wintry feeling day in Lent but it doesn't look like that's going to happen, so instead I'm offering it on this foggy Saturday morning.

Living like a mystic may seem daunting to many.  Mystics are seen as a rarefied breed, often portrayed as living apart from the world.  But as Hirsch's poem points out, mysticism is simply a way of being in the world that looks beyond the surface of thing.  Mystics read from the book of Creation and understand it is a tale of mystery not history, poetry rather than prose. 

What mysteries do you praise?

Hoeing

HOEING
by John Updike from Telephone Poles and Other Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)

I sometimes fear the younger generation will be deprived
   of the pleasures of hoeing;
   there is no knowing
how many souls have been formed by this simple exercise.

The dry earth like a great scab breaks, revealing
   moist-dark loam—
   the pea-root's home,
a fertile wound perpetually healing.

How neatly the green weeds go under!
   The blade chops the earth new.
   Ignorant the wise boy who
has never rendered thus the world fecunder.


Interesting.  As I was posting I noticed that this poem which I came across in my copy of Garrison Keillor's collection, Good Poems, has a different last line than the version on the Writer's Almanac website.  The last line in the book reads, "Ignorant the wise boy who/has never performed this simple, stupid, and useful wonder." 

I'm not sure which version Updike preferred, but I like the "simple, stupid, and useful wonder."  Not only does it capture the rhythm and simplicity of hoeing, it seems to focus the poem more on the action than the outcome.

 It reminds me of meditation, which is in its own way a simple, stupid, useful wonder.  There are those who focus on the desire outcome, the fecundity of the practice be it inner peace, stress reduction, divine union, bliss, or what have you.  Then there are those who simply show up and perform the simple exercise, over and over again, letting go of any expectations. 

Most of us, like myself, are probably fall somewhere in between.  I want to just keep hoeing but I find myself pausing to imagine what the garden will look like once the work is done.  And there's the rub, because as any good gardener will tell you, the work is never done.


What simple wonder has helped form your soul?

Cliffs

CLIFFS

by Ruth Bidgood from Time Being (Seren)

Suddenly far over the fields

appeared a whole sculpted hill,

white in winter sun.

                        The camera looked.

It did not see the quarry’s ambivalence—its threat

to nourishing fields, to a valley’s witchery;

or its promise of work, of thudding dusty life.

                        The camera looked.

Mindlessly its little screen revealed

a different reality, stranger beauty—

a vision of shining cliffs, allowed

by a kingdom in the lens,

a blessing in the light.


I took this photo of the countryside in mid-Wales from the window of a chugging train a few years ago, and a few days after I'd spent an hour on the phone with today's poet of choice. 

By all accounts, Ruth is a gifted amateur photographer and eventually the conversation came around to the connection between taking photos and making poems.  She remarked that sometimes she's in a place and she senses the landscape has a message for her, but at the time she doesn't comprehend what it is.  She takes pictures of places that speak to her, in hopes of capturing what she felt in a particular setting, even if she hasn't fully understood it.  If she is having difficulty with a poem, she then pulls out the photo and goes back to that place in her memory. 

She likened the process to making a quilt.  The photos and memories are the  scraps of fabric fashioned into a poem that are used to re-create a story that is part of a larger story. 

I like this poem because it not only illustrates this process of Ruth's, but it speaks to me about the tension inherent in photography.  I once led a retreat where I asked people to pick an image from a selection of pictures torn from magazines.  They were supposed to find one that the felt best represented their spiritual journey at that point in time.  One woman selected a picture of railroad tracks leading off into a grassy field.  A lit candle illuminated the beginning of the tracks.  She talked about the hope and excitement the image represented for her.  I knew, from having been to the place the photograph was taken, that it was an image of the railroad tracks leading into the concentration camp at Birkenau. 

There are things unsaid in photos, stories that only people who have an attachment to a place can see. There are also possibilities that are visible to those who don't necessarily have strong associations with a place. And then there's simply the reality of the place itself.  

There's a message I'm sensing in this, but can't quite fully comprehend at this point in time.  Maybe I need to capture a screen shot of this post and save it for a future date when I am writing a poem about this moment . . .

 What reality is being revealed to you today?

God Says Yes To Me

GOD SAYS YES TO ME
by Kaylin Haught from The Palm of Your Hand (Tilbury House Publishers)

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

I've been wanting to post this poem for a while. Yesterday it kept running through my mind and this morning as I was reading my e-mail, I discovered it is today's poem from the Poetry 180 project from the Library of Congress

We'll return to David Whyte Wednesday next week but this morning I needed something a little more straightforward.  Sometimes I'm in the mood for poems I need to really chew on like a piece of sugar cane to get to their sweetness.  At other times I just want to hold a poem in my mouth like a piece of chocolate and let it melt.  And then there are the days when I just need a quick shot of poetry-- a Pixie stick poem.  And as today is one of those days, I give you the poem above. 

So break open the striped paper tube, dump it's sugary goodness into your mouth, and consider all the ways in which God is saying yes to you today . . .

[Public Service Announcement:  I learned the other day that not everyone who reads blogs knows about in text links.  When I mention something, such as the Poetry 180 project or a poem or book that appears in green, you can click on that word and it will take you to another website for that project, book, poem, etc.]

Dawn Revisited

DAWN REVISITED
by Rita Dove from On the Bus with Rosa Parks (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.)

Imagine you wake up
with a second chance:  The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade.  If you don't look back,

the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits--
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open
to a blank page.  Come on,
shake a leg!  You'll never know
who's down there, frying those eggs,
if you don't get up and see.

I like the idea of waking up with a second chance: being present to the sights and sounds of the day at hand, rather than dwelling on what did or didn't happen the day before, or fretting about what may or may not happen a day or two from now. 

And while there are no smells of biscuits or breakfast coming from the kitchen this morning but  there is a blank page waiting for me.

What will you do with your second chance today? 

Mary Oliver Monday - Mysteries, Yes

MYSTERIES, YES
by Mary Oliver from Evidence (Beacon Press)

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
  to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
  mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
  in allegiance with gravity
    while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
  never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
  scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
  who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
  "Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
  and bow their heads.


Yesterday when I confessed my recent addiction to the British show, Midsomer Murders, I neglected to mention that Chief Inspector Barnaby is just one in a long series of British detectives, on the television and in print, with whom I'm enthralled.  Miss Marple, Thomas Lynley, Sebastian St. Cyr, Simon Serailler, Brother Cadfael, Duncan Kinkaid and Gemma James, Jimmy Perez. . . I could go on but I won't. 

The point is, I love a good mystery.  I love learning about the characters (AKA suspects) and what makes them tick.  I love unraveling the back stories and following the threads of intrigue and motive.  I love trying to get one step ahead of the detective, even if my reasoning is based on intuition and conjecture rather than facts and evidence.  The only thing I don't love is when I know the answer early on in the story. Nothing ruins a good mystery like an easy answer. 

And that goes for life as well as fiction. 

Look for something today that causes you to laugh or bow your head in astonishment. 

Billy Collins Sunday - Nostalgia

NOSTALGIA
by Billy Collins from Sailing Alone Around the Room (Random House)

Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent a badly broken code.

The 1790's will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.

I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.

Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.

Nostalgia seems to be a trending theme in popular culture lately.  Mad Men and Great Gatsby inspired dresses strolled down the runways in New York and Paris at last month's Fashion Weeks.  Little House on the Prairie era skills such as canning, carpentry, and spinning are all the rage among hipsters.  And the film the"The Artist" and and the transatlantic Downton Abbey craze, had viewers riveted to big and small screens alike. 

One of my friends wrote about her yearning for "drawing room evenings" on her lovely blog.   The idea of retiring to the drawing room after dinner for cards and conversation seems so much more edifying than my routine of late-- an episode of Midsomer Murders via Netflix on demand and a game of Monopoly on my Android tablet.

But even without the distractions of television and the internet, I wonder if I'd be any more present to the present?  Would a Gaskell novel and a game of Whist in the evenings somehow make me more mindful?  Is nostalgia truly a yearning for a simpler, more attentive life?  Or would I just carry the same habit of inattention into the drawing room?  Although I must say, I do think dressing for dinner would make all the difference in the world. . .

When/how do you feel nostalgic?

Happy St. Patrick's Day

THE SCRIBE IN THE WOODS
(Old Irish Poem - anonymous)

A hedge of trees surrounds me, a blackbird's lay sings to me, praise I shall not conceal.
Above my lined book the trilling of birds sings to me.
A clear-voiced cuckoo sings to me in a gray cloak from the tops of bushes,
May the Lord save me from Judgment; well do I write under the greenwood.


I'm sure countless others in the blogosphere will be posting the Breastplate of St. Patrick today so I thought I'd offer another Irish poem instead.  The ancient Celtic traditions in Ireland, and even moreso in Wales, are rich with these types of praise poems that reflect the authors' intentions to simply pause and give thanks for the wonders of the world. 

I'm off this morning to lead a writing retreat where I hope to encourage participants (myself included) to write well among the trees and birds.

What are you singing praises for this St. Patrick's Day?

Someone I Cared For

SOMEONE I CARED FOR
by Cid Corman from And the Word (Coffee House Press)

Someone I cared for
put it to me: Who
do you think you are?

I went down the list
of all the many
possibilities

carefully — did it
twice — but couldn't find
a plausible one.

That was when I knew
for the first time who
in fact I wasn't.


I think the power of negatives is often overlooked in our culture.  We are so keen to know what is that we often overlook the power that comes from knowing and accepting what is not. 

The path of the via negativa is the road I've been traveling lately.  I'm more inclined to take small, solid steps grounded in what is not, than the daring, chasm clearing leaps that require figuring out what is.  

Michelangelo said that when he approached a block of stone, he sensed the figure trapped inside.  His task as an artist was simply to remove anything that wasn't the man, the woman, the angel. 

Each time I accept what isn't and let it go, move me one step closer to freeing what is inside me.

What are the negatives . . . the nots, aren'ts, isn'ts that you know and accept?

OPTIMISM
by Jane Hirshfield from Given Sugar, Given Salt (Harper Collins)

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and
over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the
light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another.
A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs—
all this resinous, unretractable earth.

Today is the Ides of March . . . and the forecasted temperature for DC is in the mid 80's.  The spring equinox for the northern hemisphere is still a week away, yet it feels more like the belly of mid-summer than the tip of winter's tail. 

Late last week I did what I always do when the first few warm days arrive in a bouquet predicting spring:  I packed up (most of) my winter clothes.  Woolens are awaiting a trip to the dry cleaners before going into storage.  Turtlenecks and some heavier sweaters are packed away in airtight containers.  There's a lightness to my closet now, both in fabric and hue. 

I realize this is optimistic.  The strongest nor'easterner of the 20th century occurred in March, 1962 bringing heavy snow in the mountains and major flooding on the eastern shores of Maryland and Virginia.   Although I wasn't born when that storm struck, I do remember a few instances of snow in March and in recent years, accessorizing my Easter dress with tights and a winter coat. 

Around this time last year, I packed away my warm wardrobe and then shivered through the end of the month.  Swathed in layers of cotton t-shirts and sweaters, I told myself that next year I would wait until April to change out my clothes.  But I didn't.

 

I blame the magnolia and cherry trees.  If they are adorned in their spring attire so early in the season, surely I can follow suit.  The optimism of nature is contagious.

 

Where do you see signs of optimism or resilience in the world around you?

 

 

David Whyte Wednesday - The Poet

THE POET
by David Whyte from Fire in the Earth (Many Rivers Press)

moves forward
to that edge
but lives sensibly,

through the senses
not because of them.

Above all he watches
where he steps.
As if it matters
where he leaves his prints.

The senses overwhelm him
at his peril.

Though he must be taken
by something greater.
That is what he uses
senses to perceive

The poet's

task is simple.
He looks for quiet,
and speaks to what
he finds there.

But like Blake
in his engraving shop, works
with the fierceness
of acid on metal.

Melting away apparent
surfaces and displaying
the infinite
which was hid.

In the early morning
he listens by the window,
makes
the first utterance
and tries to overhear
himself say something
from which
in that silence
it is impossible to retreat.


Spring is a raucous season.  Although it isn't exactly early morning, I am listening by my window and there is anything but silence.  The twirls, whirls, chirps, caws, and rat-a-tats of a cacophony of birdsong almost completely drown out the noise from the cars whooshing down Connecticut Avenue during the morning rush hour.  Last night I heard the blossoming magnolia trees described as "riotous" and I dare say the daffodils could be considered rambunctious. 

At the start of each season, I am made aware of how the changes in the landscape and weather lead me to live "sensibly" according to the definition of the word in David Whyte's poem.  For the first few days I notice my senses shifting.  I am awake to the new sights, sounds, smells, sensations and I simply revel in this awareness.   Then, after a few days, I begin to look for what lies beneath-- for what I overhear being whispered to my soul in its silence. 

Unfortunately, this awareness is all too fleeting. If this spring is like others I've lived through, by the end of March I'll barely notice the birds as I get up and begin my day.  But for this morning, I think I'll make a cup of tea and sit and listen by the window for just a while longer.

How are you living sensibly this season?

What

Two Mountain Poems

WITNESS

by Denise Levertov from Selected Poems (New Directions)

Sometimes the mountain

is hidden from me in veils

of cloud, sometimes

I am hidden from the mountain

in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,

when I forget or refuse to go

down to the shore or a few yards

up the road, on a clear day,

to reconfirm

that witnessing presence.


THE BIRDS HAVE VANISHED by Li Po from Endless Rivers trans. by Sam Hamill

The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.


I like these two poems together.  They're like salt and pepper shakers-- each containing their own flavor of what it means to be present. 


How may you be present this day?

 

Mary Oliver Monday - When I Am Among the Trees

WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES
by Mary Oliver from Thirst (Beacon Press)

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

I've been re-reading Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook:  A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry.  It's an invaluable resource for those who want to write poetry, as well as anyone who wants to read poetry better.  In discussing the hardware and tools of the craft (sounds, imagery, tone, rhythm), she invites readers to consider what makes a poem "work."  In this way, we can say more than simply, "I like this poem."

I can say, "I like this poem because of the rhythm of the first stanza carries me like footsteps into a forest."  Or, " I can clearly discern the voice of the poet in the second stanza."  Even, "The sound of the third stanza-- the repetition of the sibilant S-- is inviting."  All these go into making me like this poem just as much as the message in the final stanza.

And I do like this poem.  A lot.  For all the reasons given above and more.  For me, every word, line, image, sound in this poem speaks volumes.  I can just sit and read it over and over, like a mantra or a prayer, which it very much is. 

In the final line of her poetry handbook, Mary Oliver writes, "For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.  Yes, indeed."  Yes indeed, Mary Oliver, yes indeed.


Is there a particular poem that is bread for your soul?

How will you go easy in the world today? 

Today - Billy Collins Sunday

TODAY
by Billy Collins from Nine Horses (Random House)

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

 

    I realize it isn't officially spring yet, but the landscape in the mid-Atlantic doesn't seem to realize that.  Although it's still too early for peonies, the garden is bursting with flashes of yellow-- forsythia, daffodils, crocuses, jonquils.  The cherry blossoms up the street are just starting to open, magnolias are in full bloom, and red buds paint purple splashes among the dark bare oak trees in the woods.  Today is a day for releasing myself to revel in its splendor.  Maybe I'll walk the labyrinth at Brookside Gardens.  Or convince a friend whom I'm meeting for coffee this afternoon that we should get it to go,and take a stroll through my favorite tiny park in Kensington.  Perhaps I'll just have my morning tea on the front porch and sit and watch the traffic and people pass by while pretending to be engrossed in a book.  Today is full of so many possibilities . . .

 

How are you going to release yourself to make the most of it?

 

A Quiet Life

A Quiet Life                                                                                                                                            by Baron Wormser from Scattered Chapters (Sarabande Books)

What a person desires in life
   is a properly boiled egg.
This isn't as easy as it seems.
There must be gas and a stove,
   the gas requires pipelines, mastodon drills,
   banks that dispense the lozenge of capital.
There must be a pot, the product of mines
   and furnaces and factories,
   of dim early mornings and night-owl shifts,
   of women in kerchiefs and men with
   sweat-soaked hair.
Then water, the stuff of clouds and skies
   and God knows what causes it to happen.
There seems always too much or too little
   of it and more pipelines, meters, pumping
   stations, towers, tanks.
And salt-a miracle of the first order,
   the ace in any argument for God.
    Only God could have imagined from
   nothingness the pang of salt.
Political peace too. It should be quiet
   when one eats an egg. No political hoodlums
   knocking down doors, no lieutenants who are
   ticked off at their scheming girlfriends and
   take it out on you, no dictators
   posing as tribunes.
It should be quiet, so quiet you can hear
   the chicken, a creature usually mocked as a type
   of fool, a cluck chained to the chore of her body.
Listen, she is there, pecking at a bit of grain
   that came from nowhere.


A few weeks ago I began a practice that just happened to coincide with the beginning of Lent, but is a habit I hope to continue.  Each night before I go to bed, I take the small flowered notebook that rests on my night stand and write the headings, "The Small Step" and "The Small Gratitude."  Under each heading, I then record a few words:  worked on website, sorted out story idea, snow flurries on a Monday afternoon, a conversation with a kindred spirit.

The Small Step is to remind me that no matter how unproductive I may feel as a day comes to its close, chances are there was something I managed to do that inched me closer towards my goals. 

The Small Gratitude is also a prompt for keeping things in perspective, but it also makes me more mindful of these moments of gratitude as they occur.  When I initially started the practice, I had to review my entire day to try to recall one small think for which I was thankful.  Now, it seems as if there are several clamoring to be written down each evening. 

One of the things I love about Baron Wormser's poem is that it reminds me that even a small gratitude isn't necessarily as small as it appears at first glance.  Behind something as simple as a boiled egg, there is a story waiting to be told.  Gratitude for a simple snowflake can turn into an avalanche of thanksgiving if we look deeper.

How do you practice gratitude?

The Stars Now Rearrange Themselves

THE STARS NOW REARRANGE THEMSELVES . . .

by Dana Gioia from Daily Horoscope (Graywolf Press)

The stars now rearrange themselves above you

but to no effect. Tonight,

only for tonight, their powers lapse,

and you must look toward earth. There will be

no comets now, no pointing star

to lead where you know you must go.

Look for smaller signs instead, the fine

disturbances of ordered things when suddenly

the rhythms of your expectation break

and in a moment's pause another world

reveals itself behind the ordinary.

And one small detail out of place will be

enough to let you know: a missing ring,

a breath, a footfall or a sudden breeze,

a crack of light beneath a darkened door.


It's been a bit hard to look to earth lately when the skies have been so full of wonder-- Venus shining brightly in a cloudless night sky, the succulent full moon of earlier this week, news of solar flares and the anticipation of what that phenomenon may bring. 

I appreciate big, bold, loud, clear signs-- guiding stars, parting clouds, light streaming from heaven, the neon advertisements of the universe that flash, "Pay attention."  But for every flashy sign, there are countless whispers, gentle nudges, cracks of light peeking through that I tend to over look. 

I love Dana Gioia's  line about the rhythm of our expectations breaking and another world being visible in that moment.  Loud signs may clamor for our attention, but the whispers that cause us to pause for a moment may also provide us a glimpse of the extraordinary.

What is whispering to you today? 

At Least

AT LEAST

by Raymond Carver from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water (Vintage Books)

I want to get up early one more morning,
before sunrise. Before the birds, even.
I want to throw cold water on my face
and be at my work table
when the sky lightens and smoke
begins to rise from the chimneys
of the other houses.
I want to see the waves break
on this rocky beach, not just hear them
break as I did all night in my sleep.
I want to see again the ships
that pass through the Strait from every
seafaring country in the world—
old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,
and the swift new cargo vessels
painted every color under the sun
that cut the water as they pass.
I want to keep an eye out for them.
And for the little boat that plies
the water between the ships
and the pilot station near the lighthouse.
I want to see them take a man off the ship
and put another up on board.
I want to spend the day watching this happen
and reach my own conclusions.
I hate to seem greedy—I have so much
to be thankful for already.
But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.
And go to my place with some coffee and wait.
Just wait, to see what's going to happen.


Chances are very slim that I'll ever be up and at my desk before sunrise.  As I wrote yesterday, I may wake up with the sun, but I like that time in bed in the morning before I start my day.  However, like Raymond Carver, I would like to be able to wake up one day, make my cup of tea, open the blinds to my bedroom windows, sit at my desk and just wait to see what happens. 

It's not that I can't or don't see what happens outside my window during the course of the day now--the machine gun chatter of squirrels waging territorial battle for squatting rights on the backyard fence, the burgundy buds that have started to stain the tips of tree branches, a parade of unknown neighbors marching to and from the bus stop.  I can see all these things, and more, if I really pay attention.  Too often, though, I just don't.  My focus is elsewhere.  The world around me is a blur-- broad strokes of color in an impressionist painting that give me a sense of my surroundings but not the details, the particularity. 

As I thought about this, the phrase, "The devil is in the details," came to mind so I looked it up.  It turns out that the original saying was "God is in the detail," or, if Gustave Flaubert is the author of the phrase as some suggest, "Le bon Dieu est dans le détail."  (The good God is in the detail.)   When I go through my day without really seeing the details, I miss a glimpse of the holy, the sacred that is manifest in the world around me.  Surely I don't have to get out of bed before sunrise to do this-- I simply have to open my eyes and see.

What have you seen today?

David Whyte Wednesday - What to Remember When Waking

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

by David Whyte from The House of Belonging (Many Rivers Press)

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love?  What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

Waking is an interesting process.  When I was working a 9-5 job in an office not located in the corner of my bedroom, I would be wide awake and engaged in the day as soon as I opened my eyes.  Whether my body sprung or oozed out of bed, my brain would start scrolling through the "to do" list like the roller on a player piano and I'd be caught up in a pre-programmed melody. 

Now that I'm the composer of my days, waking is a different process.  My eyes still tend to open as the first rays of dawn creep through my bedroom window; but rather than rushing into the future of musts, shoulds and needs, my mind lingers in that liminal place between sleeping and waking.  I try to recall the secrets of my sleep-- the images, stories and sensations that I've experienced in the dark so I can carry a touchstone of that wildly imaginative and wonder-full world into my day.  Or, as David Whyte says, "To remember the other world in this world is your true inheritance." 

For me, remembering this other world lets me look at the blank page as something full of possibility rather than just another thing that must be filled before the day ends and the whole routine starts over again.  True, there are things that I have "to do," but somehow those become less tedious impositions and more moments of mindfulness when I am able to remember.


What does the blank page hold for you today? 

Tomorrow morning, try to see what you remember when waking.

Happy as a Dog's Tail

HAPPY AS A DOG'S TAIL

by Anna Swir from Talking to My Body (Copper Canyon Press)

[translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan]

Happy as something unimportant   

and free as a thing unimportant.   

As something no one prizes

and which does not prize itself.   

As something mocked by all

and which mocks at their mockery.   

As laughter without serious reason.   

As a yell able to out yell itself.   

Happy as no matter what,

as any no matter what.

Happy

as a dog’s tail.

Allegory, metaphor, simile . . . these have been on my mind since Saturday morning when I watched a bit of the conversation between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell that my local PBS station was playing for pledge week.  Although I've seen bits and pieces of the program before, what struck me this time was when Joseph Campbell remarked that we need to read and understand the stories of our faith (for the Abrahamic traditions specifically) as poetry not prose, looking to the metaphor rather than to a literal interpretation of the narrative. 

When I was doing research for my doctoral dissertation I came across a school of thought I hadn't encountered in my almost decade of theological education, theopoetics.  Theopoetics asserts, like Campbell, that we need to speak of the Holy in metaphor and simile, attempting to understand our lived experience of God with the language of poetry. 

It's probably obvious that this resonates with me.  If it didn't, I'd be having an extra cup of tea each morning rather than blogging about poetry.  I realize, however, that there are some people who need to ease into metaphor like breaking in a pair of new shoes (that was a simile by the way, not a metaphor), so the question for this morning is a simple exercise in simile . . .

Fill in the blank:

I'm as _______ as ____________.

I'd love to hear your answers!

When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention - Mary Oliver Monday

WHEN THE ROSES SPEAK, I PAY ATTENTION
by Mary Oliver from Thirst (Beacon Press)

"As long as we are able to
be extravagant we will be
hugely and damply
extravagant.  Then we will drop
foil by foil to the ground.  This
is our unalterable task, joyfully."

And they went on, "Listen,
the heart-shackles are not as you think,
death, illness, pain,
unrequited hope, not loneliness, but

lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,
selfishness."

Their fragrance all the while rising
from their blind bodies, making me
spin with joy.

Friday I came home from the grocery store with bags full of produce and an arm full of scarlet tinged yellow roses and fiery red ranunculus (or is that ranunulae?).  I put them in my favorite Roseville vase and placed them on my dresser.  Every time I passed by that afternoon, I'd pause to rearrange a stem or admire the way the flowers were slowly unfolding.  By bedtime however, the ranunculus were dark, droopy, and closing in on themselves.  I went to bed planning to get up Saturday morning and throw them away (after all, I had dropped them in the parking lot so maybe my klutziness contributed to their early demise) but as the sun rose, I discovered their red heads were wide awake, greeting the morning with their abundant layers of petals wide open once again.

In looking up how to correctly spell ranunculus this morning, I learned that buttercups are part of this family of flora.  When I was little, my friends and I used to pick buttercups, holding them under our chins to see if the color reflected on our skin, supposedly a sign you liked butter.  I always thought it was kind of a stupid test.  I didn't need a flower to confirm my love for butter as my mother often told the tale of me, as a toddler,  sucking the butter off a piece of toast and hand the soggy bit of bread back to her pleading, "More."  I didn't need to hear what the ranunculus were saying to me back then, but this weekend I paid attention as they spoke of when to be open, flourishing, flashy, and when to turn inward, rest, and retreat.  The roses in my bouquet, haven't had much to say to me yet but I'm listening. . .

What is speaking to you and what are you paying attention to today?

Lines Lost Among Trees - Billy Collins Sunday

LINES LOST AMONG TREES
by Billy Collins from Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburgh Press)

These are not the lines that came to me
while walking in the woods
with no pen
and nothing to write on anyway.
 
They are gone forever,
a handful of coins
dropped through the grate of memory,
along with the ingenious mnemonic
 
I devised to hold them in place-
all gone and forgotten
before I had returned to the clearing of lawn
in back of our quiet house
 
with its jars jammed with pens,
its notebooks and reams of blank paper,
its desk and soft lamp,
its table and the light from its windows.
 
So this is my elegy for them,
those six or eight exhalations,
the braided rope of syntax,
the jazz of the timing,
 
and the little insight at the end
wagging like the short tail
of a perfectly obedient spaniel
sitting by the door.
 
This is my envoy to nothing
where I say Go, little poem-
not out into the world of strangers' eyes,
but off to some airy limbo,
 
home to lost epics,
unremembered names,
and fugitive dreams
such as the one I had last night,

which, like a fantastic city in pencil,
erased itself
in the bright morning air
just as I was waking up.


I'd like to add to the above list of lost things, documents that can't be recovered from hard drives that crash.  Which is what happened to me this morning after I rolled the short distance from my bed to my desk, planning to post before breakfast.  The good news is there are about two weeks left on my laptop warranty so I can pack it up tomorrow and ship it off to be fixed for free.  The bad news is that I discovered that the automatic weekly file back ups I had scheduled stopped running in early February.

It might be better if, like the lines of the poem, I couldn't remember the details of what's been lost.  As I spent a few hours attempting error checks and system recoveries, I worried over what was lost like prayer beads, the strand growing longer as I recalled more work I'd done last month-- the two weeks worth of brainstorming and planning that I neatly organized in on-line notebooks, several days worth of tedious research into grant-giving organizations, a handful of miscellaneous documents.  All lost.

This morning my plan was to announce Billy Collins Sunday-- a day of rest from the usual poem and reflection/question format.  I had a poem picked out and absolutely no reflection or thought provoking questions to offer, just a few stanzas to be enjoyed in and of themselves. 

If you want to still do that, stop reading here and go do something else.  If you want a bit of wisdom, I'll share the lesson I gleaned from this poem and my experience today:  sometimes things are lost and we have to accept it and let them go.

And I will go ahead and offer a question to go along with that:  when was the last time you backed up your work? 

The Art of Disappearing

THE ART OF DISAPPEARING

by Naomi Shihab Nye from Words Under the Words:  New and Selected Poems (The Eighth Mountain Press)

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

No exposition or reflection today, just a question . . .

What do you want to do with your time?

Afternoon with Irish Cows



Cows on the Mullet Peninsula, Western Ireland, 2008



AFTERNOON WITH IRISH COWS

by Billy Collins from Sailing Alone Around the Room:  New and Selected Poems (Random House)

There were a few dozen who occupied the field

across the road from where we lived,

stepping all day from tuft to tuft,

their big heads down in the soft grass,

though I would sometimes pass a window

and look out to see the field suddenly empty

as if they had taken wing, flown off to another country.

Then later, I would open the blue front door,

and again the field would be full of their munching

or they would be lying down

on the black-and-white maps of their sides,

facing in all directions, waiting for rain.

How mysterious, how patient and dumbfounded

they appear in the long quiet of the afternoon.

 

But every once in a while, one of them

would let out a sound so phenomenal

that I would put down the paper

or the knife I was cutting an apple with

and walk across the road to the stone wall

to see which one of them was being torched

or pierced through the side with a long spear.

Yes, it sounded like pain until I could see

the noisy one, anchored there on all fours,

her neck outstretched, her bellowing head

laboring upward as she gave voice

to the rising, full-bodied cry

that began in the darkness of her belly

and echoed up through her bowed ribs into her gaping mouth.

 

Then I knew that she was only announcing

the large, unadulterated cowness of herself,

pouring out the ancient apologia of her kind

to all the green fields and the gray clouds,

to the limestone hills and the inlet of the blue bay,

while she regarded my head and shoulders

above the wall with one wild, shocking eye.

Yesterday afternoon I was on the phone with a friend who was out taking a walk in a field in Virginia.  At one point during our conversation, she paused by a pond to let me hear a chorus of peepers that were deafeningly proclaiming their existence.  Later, as I drove through Rock Creek Park, I was treated to a snippet of a chorus from some Maryland peepers who were singing the same song.

It reminded me not only of this poem by Billy Collins, but also of something I heard recently in a David Whyte lecture.  He was talking about how human beings are the only animals who seem to feel at times as if they don't belong-- cows, peepers, and the rest of creation are simply what they were created to be.  The cow in the Collins poem is announcing her "unadulterated cowness," not lamenting the fact that she's not a sheep or a cloud or even a California cow.  Whyte goes on to say that rather than trying to overcome this sense of exile, perhaps we should try to embrace it as one of the "core competencies" of humanity; for it is precisely this element of being human that allows us to feel compassion for others, including the rest of creation. 

When have you experienced a sense of exile?

How have you experienced compassion?

A Day in Bed with Aunt Maud

A DAY IN BED WITH AUNT MAUD
by Elizabeth Smither from The Year of Adverbs (Auckland University Press)

My dear high-foreheaded aunt, good
at sums and attentive to all that love
demands, loved a day in bed.

No illness drove her there, or fever
no drenched nightgown, twisted
but the bliss of a day in bed.

She lay, she slept, she reached out
a hand towards an improving book
she closed its covers on her day in bed.

She contemplated the plaster ceiling rose
and all the world that swam around it
a spider web from her day in bed.

She lay like someone in a shroud, proud
of her stretched toes, her spine
bearing not this day on her day in bed.

She took some rations, delicate things
and a jug of fresh-made squash
she dined daintily on her day in bed.

What did you get? the others asked.
A firmer view of the world, she said
through lying down on my day in bed

and love and anything you care to ask.
They never did. Away they sped
She contemplated them from her day in bed.

Here is the promised "day in bed" poem.  This idea might seem like an indulgence in what many churches deem a "penitential" season but as I mentioned in an earlier post, Lent to me has always been more about perspective than penance.  Sometimes being fed on a diet of bread and water in the silence of the desert provides the right conditions to survey the landscape of our lives.  But other times, we need to feed our souls with a good book, comfort food and, perhaps, a day in bed to give us a firmer view of not only the world, but also our place in it.

What do you need to feed your soul now?  Is it a time to feast a little or fast a little?