Browsing Category "Poems"
7 Sep
2016
Posted in: Poems, Practice
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Intimate and Ultimate

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So I’m thinking, after yesterday’s post, what else can I say about this new relationship I’ve discovered with the breath.

How about this:

from To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
by Mary Oliver

2.

Eat bread and understand comfort.

Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the
hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who
are
thrillingly gluttonous.

For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine
underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar
you 
believe in.

And someone’s face, whom you love,
will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and
respectful.

And you will hear the air itself, like a
beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the
two
beautiful bodies of your lungs. 

18 Aug
2016
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Then….

G17-curly-hair-girl-self-hug-red-dress-watercolor-greeting-cardexcerpt from
To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
by Mary Oliver

7.

What I loved in the beginning, I think,
was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since some-
body had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my
confinements,
though with difficulty.

I mean the ones that thought to rule my
heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush
pile.
They will be nourishment somehow
(everything is nourishment
somehow or another).

And I have become the child of the 
clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy,
whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing
what I have learned,

I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this,
which is all I  know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love
the world.

16 Aug
2016
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What Returns

gallery_yogibuildings

I’m getting ready to leave on Sunday for a 10-day retreat at Spirit Rock, which is located near San Fransisco in beautiful northern California, where the land and the climate seem so much like Tuscany, and yet…..

Why California Will Never Be Like Tuscany
by Gary Snyder

There must have been huge oaks and
pines, cedars,
maybe madrone,

in Tuscany and Umbria long ago.
A few centuries after wood was gone,
they began to build with brick and
stone.
Brick and stone farmhouses, solid, fire-
proof,
steel shutters and doors.
But farming changed.
60,000 vacant solid fireproof Italian
farm houses
on the market in 1970,
scattered across the land.
Sixty thousand affluent foreigners,
to fix them,
learn to cook, and write a book.
But in California, houses all are wood–
roads pushed through, sewers dug, lines
laid underground–
hundreds of thousands, made of strand-
board, sheetrock, plaster–.
They won’t be here 200 years from now
–they’ll burn or rot.
No handsome solid second homes for
Thousand-year later wealthy
Melanesian or Eskimo artists and writers
here,
— oak and pine will soon return.

***

(photo: Spirit Rock dormitories) 

 

12 Aug
2016
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There Is a Moment

2 doorsThe Decision
by Jane Hirshfield

There is a moment before a shape
hardens, a color sets.
Before the fixative or heat of kiln.
The letter might still be taken
from the mailbox.
The hand held back by the elbow,
the word kept between the larynx pulse
and the amplifying drum-skin of the room’s air.

The thorax or an ant is not as narrow.
The green coat on old copper weights more.
Yet something slips through it–
looks 
around,
sets out in the new direction, for other lands.
Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed.
As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road:
it cannot be after turned back from.

9 Aug
2016
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Why Ask Why

no-need-to-ask

Here
by Gary Snyder

In the dark
(The new moon long set)

A soft grumble in the breeze
Is the sound of a jet so high
It’s already long gone by
Some planet
Rising from the east   shines
Through the trees
It’s been years since I thought,
Why are we here?

5 Aug
2016
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Not a Gate, Not a Bell

why-temples-have-bells

The Tongue Says Loneliness
by Jane Hirshfield

The tongue says loneliness, anger, grief,
but does not feel them.

As Monday cannot feel Tuesday,
nor Thursday
reach back to Wednesday
as a mother reaches out for her found child.

As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging
through it.
Not a bell,
but the sound of the bell in the bell-shape,
lashing full strength with the first blow from
inside the iron. 

4 Aug
2016
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Of the Though, Of the Thought, Of the Thought

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Cat Trauma Update:
I had a visit today from the House-Call Vet and am MUCH relieved. The vet said that most calico cats tend to be bullies and that yes, my calico (Stella) is acting true to form…but that the situation is salvageable. She said I’m doing the right thing by separating them, that the process will take time, that ultimately I’ll need to make some 
adjustments in terms of extra feeding stations and litter boxes in different parts of the house, but that everything points to a successful and harmonious outcome. (Probably not until the end of the year. But OK, I’m good with that.)

She also said I could call, text, or email her any time. That she would help guide me through the eventual re-introduction (which should not happen until after I get back from the end-of-August retreat, at the earliest). And that she’d be available to work with my house sitter, if needed, while I’m gone. So WHEW!

FYI: If anybody needs a vet that will come to your house, give her a call!
Kim Lynch, DVM, CVA
Vaccinations, Internal Medicine, Acupuncture
Phone: 314-412-5069. Email: 
vet@arczip.com

2 Aug
2016
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Remedy

00muqi_6persMu Ch’i’s Persimmons
by Gary Snyder

On the back wall down the hall
lit by a side glass door
is the scroll of Mu Ch’i’s great
sumi painting, “persimmons”.
The wind-weights hanging from the
axles hold it still.
The best in the world, I say,
of persimmons.
Perfect statement of emptiness
no other than form
the twig and the stalk still on,
the way they sell them in the
market even now.
The original’s in Kyoto at a
lovely Rinzai temple where they
show it once a year.
This one’s a perfect copy from Benrido
I choose the mounting elements myself
with the advice of the mounter
I hang it every fall.
And now, to these over-ripe persimmons
from Mike and Barbara’s orchard.
Napkin in hand,
I bend over the sink
suck the sweet orange goop
that’s how I like it
gripping a little twig
those painted persimmons
sure cure hunger

(Dogen: “…there is no remedy for
satisfying hunger other than a
painted rice-cake.” November 1242.) 

1 Aug
2016
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Listen to the….

1881574475_8c50d0ee28_zDeep Summer
by Mary Oliver

The mockingbird
opens his throat
among the thorns
for his own reasons

but doesn’t mind
if we pause
to listen
and learn something

for ourselves;
he doesn’t stop,
he nods
his gray head

with the frightfully bright eyes,
he flirts
his supple tail,
he says:

listen, if you would listen.
There’s no end
to good talk,
to passion songs,

to the melodies
that say
this branch,
this tree is mine,

to the wholesome
happiness
of being alive
on a patch

of this green earth
in the deep
pleasures of summer.
What a bird!

Your clocks, he says plainly,
which are always ticking,
do not have to be listened to.
The spirit of his every word. 

29 Jul
2016
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Having Prepared….

how-it-wasCat Trauma Update: Last week I posted that there had been an “incident” with my cat Izzy. (Izzy is the grey tabby, seen here with my other cat Stella, in a photo taken about a year-and-a-half ago.) What happened last week is that Stella freaked out for some reason and tried to attack Izzy while I was trying to put her (Izzy) into a cat carrier. I thought everything had returned to normal that evening, but somehow it escalated during the night. I tried letting them “work it out,” which is what the people at the cat shelter told me to do, but things continued to escalate. So then I consulted my vet, who told me to keep Stella confined to a single room until Izzy feels safe in the house again, let them slowly get used to each other through the closed door, then try to see if they can be in each other’s sight again…but with leashes on, so they can be separated immediately if it looks like there’s going to be trouble. All of this, they say, will take MONTHS. (And sometimes, it never works out!)

So now I am sharing my bedroom with Stella (and her litter box, her food and water bowls, her cat toys, etc.) and I’ve moved my computer downstairs to the dining room table so I can be around Izzy during the day, since she’s still too afraid to go upstairs. Neither of them seems to mind the new arrangements, at least not for now. And I’m feeling less stressed. Although I do worry about what will happen when it comes time to re-introduce them.

But I have done the best I could do. And now, it seems, patience is what’s called for. In honor of which I offer this poem:

Winter Trees
by William Carlos Williams

All the complicated details
Of the attiring and
The disattirning are completed.
A liquid moon
Moves gently among
The long branches.
Thus, having prepared their buds
Agains a sure winter
The wise trees
Stand sleeping in the cold.