Understanding Edges...

Between forest and field, a threshold

like stepping from a cathedral into the street–
the quality of air alters, an eclipse lifts,

boundlessness opens, earth itself retextured

into weeds where woods once were.
Even planes of motion shift from vertical

navigation to horizontal quiescence:
there’s a standing invitation to lie back

as sky’s unpredictable theater proceeds.

Suspended in this ephemeral moment

after leaving a forest, before entering
a field, the nature of reality is revealed.

Ravi Shankar, ‘Crossings’

Recollections

Ye blesséd Creatures, I have heard the call
     Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
     My heart is at your festival,
       My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.

William Wordsworth, 1770 - 1850,
'Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood'

Only Love Lasts

The dawn is not distant, nor is the night starless;
love is eternal.

H.W. Longfellow

The World Is Your Mirror

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.

Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.

Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.

Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.

There is room in the halls of pleasure 
For a long and lordly train, 
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Solitude

Mornings

Every morning
the world
is created. 
Under the orange 

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again 

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands 

of summer lilies. 
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails...

~ Mary Oliver, Morning Poem

self

I never wish to be easily defined. 

I’d rather float over other people’s minds 

as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; 

more like a transparent, 

paradoxically iridescent creature 

rather than an actual person...

— Franz Kafka  

Ithaca

When you set out for Ithaka

ask that your way be long,

full of adventure, full of instruction...

Have Ithaka always in your mind.

Your arrival there is what you are destined for.

But don't in the least hurry the journey.

Better it last for years,

so that when you reach the island you are old,

rich with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.

Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She hasn't anything else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn't deceived you.

So wise you have become, of such experience,

that already you'll have understood what these Ithakas mean. 

Constantine P. Cavafy

when you arrived here...

No, they whisper. You own nothing.

You were a visitor, time after time

climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.

We never belonged to you.

You never found us.

It was always the other way round.

-- Margaret Atwood

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

― John O'Donohue

The Mystery Of Man

We come from a distant past that we’ve forgotten

And now we look up and aspire to the stars

We are the mystery that even we can’t decipher

The mystery of man

The story is told in stone and broken arrows

In traces of cities unknown lost in sand

In colours and castle walls silent and unseen statues

The mystery of man

The wind stirs in the trees likes voices in dreams

And then just when it seems we know what it means

Simply its gone

The miracle is the mind asking the questions

Seeking to find itself if it can

Only to see itself endlessly echoed in mirrors

The mystery of man.

---

Karol Wojtyla (the late Pope John Paul II)

finding the words

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. 

― Jack Kerouac

every day... is judgement day

I shall tell you a great secret my friend. 

Do not wait for the last judgement. 

It takes place every day.

- Albert Camus

how to feel blessed all the time

When life is sweet, 

say thank you and celebrate. 

And when life is bitter, 

say thank you 

and grow.

 Shauna Niequist

The poet dreams of the mountain

Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountains, slowly, taking
The rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
Under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.

I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
That we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
And peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.

All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.

― Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

to be like water...

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you.

But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child.

Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

—Margaret Atwood, from "The Penelopiad."

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

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

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

Elegy in Joy

We tell beginnings: for the flesh and the answer,
or the look, the lake in the eye that knows,
for the despair that flows down in widest rivers,
cloud of home; and also the green tree of grace,
all in the leaf, in the love that gives us ourselves.

The word of nourishment passes through the women,
soldiers and orchards rooted in constellations,
white towers, eyes of children: 
saying in time of war What shall we feed?
I cannot say the end.

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed.

This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.
Years over wars and an imagining of peace.  Or the expiation journey
toward peace which is many wishes flaming together,
fierce pure life, the many-living home.
Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all
new techniques for the healing of the wound,
and the unknown world.  One life, or the faring stars.


- Muriel Rukeyser