"Moving Forward," Rainer Maria Rilke

                                               The deep parts of my life pour onward,

                                               as if the river shores were opening out.

                                               It seems that things are more like me now,

                                               that I can see farther into paintings.

                                               I feel closer to what language can't reach.

                                               With my senses, as with birds, I climb

                                               into the windy heaven, out of the oak,

                                               and in the ponds broken off from the sky

                                               my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

"Eyes that Last I Saw in Tears," T. S. Eliot

Eyes that last I saw in tears

Through division

Here in death's dream kingdom

The golden vision reappears

I see the eyes but not the tears

This is my affliction

This is my affliction

Eyes I shall not see again

Eyes of decision

Eyes I shall not see unless

At the door of death's other kingdom

Where, as in this,

The eyes outlast a little while

A little while outlast the tears

And hold us in derision.

"Porcupine at Dusk," Ingrid Wendt

Out of the bunch grass

out of the cheat grass

a bunch of grass waddles

my way.

Quill-tips bleached by winter four

inches down: crown of glory dark

at the roots: a halo

catching the sun's

final song:

No way could such steady

oblivion possibly live

up to legend, whatever

fear I might have had

is gone, but still I stop

Short on my after-dinner walk, no

collision course if I

can help it, thinking

at first it's the wind,

nudging a path out of the field

Or one of a covey of tumbleweed

lost like those today on the freeway,

racing ahead of my car that whole long drive

here to the banks of the Snake, to friends

so close they know

when to leave me alone.

As though I were nowhere around, the porcupine

shuffles the edge of the road,

in five minutes crosses

a distance I could have covered

in less than one

And disappears at last into cattails

and rushes, sunset, a vespers

of waterbirds, leaving me

still unwilling to move.

I am a sucker for scenes like this.

The slowest beauty can rush me.

And here I am,

all of my defenses down.

"Hokusai Says," Roger Keyes

Hokusai says

Hokusai says... Look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.

He says there is no end to seeing.

He says Look Forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it,
repeat yourself as long as it is interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says every one of us is a child,
every one of us is ancient,
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find
a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive -
shells, buildings, people, fish,
mountains, trees.
Wood is alive.
Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.

Everything lives inside us.

He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn't matter if you draw,
or write books. It doesn't matter
if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn't matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.

It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.
Peace is life living through you.

He says don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid.

Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

"Elegance," Hafiz

It

Is not easy

To stop thinking ill

Of others.

Usually one must enter into a friendship

With a person

Who has accomplished that great feat himself.

Then

Something 

Might start to rub off on you

Of that

True

Elegance

"As the Plant That Never Blooms," Pablo Neruda

                    I do not love you as if you were salt-rose or topaz,
                    or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
                    I love you as certain things are to be loved,
                    in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

                    I love you as the plant that never blooms,
                    but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers.
                    Thanks to your love a certain fragrance,
                    risen darkly from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

                    I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
                    I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or 
                         pride,
                    so I love you because I know no other way than this:
                    where "I" does not exist, nor "you,"
                    So close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
                    So close that your eyes close and I fall asleep.

"Washing the Elephant," Barbara Ras

Isn’t it always the heart that wants to wash

the elephant, begging the body to do it

with soap and water, a ladder, hands,

in tree shade big enough for the vast savannas

of your sadness, the strangler fig of your guilt,

the cratered full moon’s light fuelling

the windy spooling memory of elephant?

What if Father Quinn had said, “Of course you’ll recognize

your parents in Heaven,” instead of

“Being one with God will make your mother and father

pointless.” That was back when I was young enough

to love them absolutely though still fear for their place

in Heaven, imagining their souls like sponges full

of something resembling street water after rain.

Still my mother sent me every Saturday to confess,

to wring the sins out of my small baffled soul, and I made up lies

about lying, disobeying, chewing gum in church, to offer them

as carefully as I handed over the knotted handkerchief of coins

to the grocer when my mother sent me for a loaf of Wonder,

Land of Lakes, and two Camels.

If guilt is the damage of childhood, then eros is the fall of adolescence.

Or the fall begins there, and never ends, desire after desire parading

through a lifetime like the Ringling Brothers elephants

made to walk through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel

and down Thirty-fourth Street to the Garden.

So much of our desire like their bulky, shadowy walking

after midnight, exiled from the wild and destined

for a circus with its tawdry gaudiness, its unspoken

pathos.

It takes more than half a century to figure out who they were,

the few real loves-of-your-life, and how much of the rest—

the mad breaking-heart stickiness—falls away, slowly,

unnoticed, the way you lose your taste for things

like popsicles unthinkingly.

And though dailiness may have no place

for the ones who have etched themselves in the laugh lines

and frown lines on the face that’s harder and harder

to claim as your own, often one love-of-your-life

will appear in a dream, arriving

with the weight and certitude of an elephant,

and it’s always the heart that wants to go out and wash

the huge mysteriousness of what they meant, those memories

that have only memories to feed them, and only you to keep them clean.

"The Effect of Cause Despaired," William Bronk

      "Cause and Effect" from Olmo Ling Bon Buddhist Center

Wanting the significance that cause and effect

might have (we see it in little things where it is)

not seeing it in any place

important to us (it is in our lives but in ways

that deny each other) and the totality,

I suppose, is what I mean—it isn’t there—

we look around: the possibilities,

dreams and diversions, whatever else there is.

"Midsummer," William Bronk

                                                                                         "Guardare-ro" by Idhuna




                                          A green world, a scene of green deep
                                          with light blues, the greens made deep
                                          by those blues.  One thinks how
                                          in certain pictures, envied landscapes are seen
                                          (through a window, maybe) far behind the serene
                                          sitter's face, the serene pose, as though
                                          in some impossible mirror, face to back,
                                          human serenity gazed at a green world
                                          which gazed at this face.
                                                                                    And see now,
                                          here is that place, those greens
                                          are here, deep with those blues.  The air
                                          we breathe is freshly sweet, and warm, as though
                                          with berries.  We are here.  We are here.
                                          Set this down too, as much
                                          as if an atrocity had happened and been seen.
                                          The earth is beautiful beyond all change.

"Deepening the Wonder," Hafiz

Death is a favor to us,
But our scales have lost their balance.

The impermanence of the body
Should give us great clarity,
Deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes

Of this mysterious existence we share
And are surely just traveling through.

If I were in the Tavern tonight,
Hafiz would call for drinks

And as the Master poured, I would be reminded
That all I know of life and myself is that

We are just a midair flight of golden wine
Between His Pitcher and His Cup.

If I were in the Tavern tonight,
I would buy freely for everyone in this world

Because our marriage with the Cruel Beauty
Of time and space cannot endure very long.

Death is a favor to us,
But our minds have lost their balance.

The miraculous existence and impermanence of Form
Always makes the illuminated ones
Laugh and Sing.

"Allegiances," William Stafford

It is time for all the heroes to go home if they have any, time for all of us common ones to locate ourselves by the real things we live by. Far to the north, or indeed in any direction, strange mountains and creatures have always lurked- elves, goblins, trolls, and spiders: we encounter them in dread and wonder, But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes, and we come back, changed but safe, quiet, grateful. Suppose an insane wind holds all the hills while strange beliefs whine at the traveler's ears, we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love where we are, sturdy for common things.

"True or False," John Ciardi

                                    Real emeralds are worth more than synthetics
                                     but the only way to tell one from the other
                                     is to heat them to a stated temperature,
                                     then tap. When it’s done properly
                                     the real one shatters.

                                     I have no emeralds.
                                     I was told this about them by a woman
                                     who said someone had told her. True or false,
                                      I have held my own palmful of bright breakage
                                      from a truth too late. I know the principle.

"Deus ex Machina," A. E. Stallings

Because we were good at entanglements, but not
Resolution, and made a mess of plot,
Because there was no other way to fulfill
The ancient prophesy, because the will
Of the gods demanded punishment, because
Neither recognized who the other was,
Because there was no difference between
A tragic ending and a comic scene,
Because the play was running out of time,
Because the mechanism of the sublime
Was in good working order, but needed using,
Because it was a script not of our choosing,
Because we were actors, because we knew for a fact
We were only actors, because we could not act.

Sonnet XIX, Edna St. Vincent Millay

And you as well must die, belovéd dust,

And all your beauty stand you in no stead;

This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,

This body of flame and steel, before the gust

Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,

Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead

Than the first leaf that fell, - this wonder fled.

Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.

Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.

In spite of all my love, you will arise

Upon that day and wander down the air

Obscurely as the unattended flower,

It mattering not how beautiful you were,

                                Or how belovéd above all else that dies.

"The Art of Disappearing," Naomi Shihab Nye

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 any more.

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.

From "Letters to a Young Poet," Rainer Maria Rilke

"Child Holding a Dove," Picasso

        Have patience with everything unresolved          in your heart and try to love the questions      themselves ... Don't search for the answers,         which could not be given to you now, because       you would not be able to live them. And the       point is, to live everything. Live the questions       now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future,      you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.