November ender notes

—I write

and write, and transcend
nothing, escape
nothing, nothing
is truly born from me,

yet magically it’s better

than nothing—I know

you must be quite

changed by now, but you,

are just the same, too,
like those stars that keep
shining for a long time after
they go out—but it’s just a light

they touch us with this

evening amid the fine

rain like mist, among the pines.

—Denis Johnson
“From a Berkeley Notebook” in
The Incognito Lounge: And Other Poems
(Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1994)

"Eyes Only"

Dear lost sharer
of silences,
I would send a letter
the way the tree sends messages
in leaves,
or the sky in exclamations
of pure cloud.

—Linda Pastan

The Rose

So with the heart, and with all proud things. In the end nothing remains but a handful of petals of what was once a proud flower …

John Cournos

You know what?

When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. 
That's what careless words do. 
They make people love you a little less.

― Arundhati Roy

From Song of the Open Road

Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading me wherever I
choose.

Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good for-
tune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need
nothing;

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.

-- Walt Whitman

Who Am I?

My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.

I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.

I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”

My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.


-- Carl Sandburg, “Chicago Poems”

Fluent

I would love to live

Like a river flows

Carried by the surprise

Of its own unfolding.

—John O’Donohue

Through A Window

Many Windows

“There are many windows through
which we can look out into the
world, searching for meaning …

…Most of us, when we ponder on the
meaning of our existence,
peer through but one of these
windows onto the world.
And even that one is often misted over
by the breath of our finite humanity.

We clear a tiny peephole and stare through.

No wonder we are confused by the
tiny fraction of a whole that we see.

It is, after all, like trying to
comprehend the panorama of the
desert or the sea through
a rolled-up newspaper.”

—Jane Goodall

Carl Gustav Jung

Simple things are always the most difficult. In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life. That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy… all these are undoubtedly great virtues…

But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea, the very fiend himself-that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved-what then?

—Carl Gustav Jung

A new day

Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.

THICH NHAT HANH

Chimes

Brief on a flying night,
  From the shaken tower,
A flock of bells take flight,
  And go with the hour.

Like birds from the cote to the gales,      
  Abrupt—oh, hark!—
A fleet of bells set sails,
  And go to the dark.

Sudden the cold airs swing:
  Alone, aloud,      
A verse of bells takes wing
  And flies with the cloud.

Alice Meynell

Moonrise

Will you glimmer on the sea?
Will you fling your spear-head
On the shore?
What note shall we pitch?

We have a song,    
On the bank we share our arrows—
The loosed string tells our note:

O flight,
Bring her swiftly to our song.
She is great,      
We measure her by the pine-trees.

By H.D.
Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936)
The New Poetry: An Anthology.  1917

Irradiations

Over the roof-tops race the shadows of clouds:
Like horses the shadows of clouds charge down the street.

Whirlpools of purple and gold,
Winds from the mountains of cinnabar,
Lacquered mandarin moments, palanquins swaying and balancing      
Glint of the glittering wings of dragon-flies in the light;
Silver filaments, golden flakes settling downwards;
Rippling, quivering flutters; repulse and surrender,
The sun broidered upon the rain,      
The rain rustling with the sun.


Over the roof-tops race the shadows of clouds:
Like horses the shadows of clouds charge down the street.

Verse I
John Gould Fletcher

Ode To The Rebels

I Go my way complacently,
  As self-respecting persons should.
You are to me the rebel thought,
  You are the wayward rebel mood.

What shall we share who are separate?        5
  We part—as alien persons should.
But oh, I have need of the rebel thought,
  And a wicked urge to the rebel mood!



Florence Kiper Frank, You

Fireflies in the Corn

How I adore you, you happy things, you dears,
  Riding the air and carrying all the time
  Your little lanterns behind you: it cheers
  My heart to see you settling and trying to climb
  The corn-stalks, tipping with fire their spears.


D. H. Lawrence