Poems that I love

by Mary Oliver “Make of yourself a light” said the Buddha, before he died. I think of this every morning as the east begins to tear off its many clouds of darkness, to send up the first signal-a white fan streaked with pink and violet, even green. An old man, he lay down between two sala trees, and he might have said anything, knowing it was his final hour. The light burns upward, it thickens and settles over the fields. Around him, the villagers gathered and stretched forward to listen. Even before the sun itself hangs, disattached, in the blue air, I am touched everywhere by its ocean of yellow waves. No doubt he thought of everything that had happened in his difficult life. And then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills, like a million flowers on fire- clearly I’m not needed, yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value. Slowly, beneath the branches, he raised his head. He looked into the faces of that frightened crow...

by Mary Oliver What did you notice? The dew snail; the low-flying sparrow; the bat, on the wind, in the dark; big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance; the soft toad, patient in the hot sand; the sweet-hungry ants; the uproar of mice in the empty house; the tin music of the cricket’s body; the blouse of the goldenrod. What did you hear? The thrush greeting the morning; the little bluebirds in their hot box; the salty talk of the wren, then the deep cup of the hour of silence. What did you admire? The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit; the carrot, rising in its elongated waist; the onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the pale green wand; at the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid beauty of the flowers; then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost. What astonished you? The swallows making their dip and turn over the water. What would you like to see again? My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness, ...

by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things. from Dream Work , 1985 If you want to read more of Mary Oliver’s poems, here are some that I like.

Even grandma goes out drinking-- moonlit night -Issa

by Troy Jollimore 1. Where what I see comes to rest, at the edge of the lake, against what I think I see and, up on the bank, who I am maintains an uneasy truce with who I fear I am, while in the cabin’s shade the gap between the words I said and those I remember saying is just wide enough to contain the remains that remain of what I assumed I knew. 2. Out in the canoe, the person I thought you were gingerly trades spots with the person you are and what I believe I believe sits uncomfortably next to what I believe. When I promised I will always give you what I want you to want, you heard, or desired to hear, something else. As, over and in the lake, the cormorant and its image traced paths through the sky. From: The NewYorker July 27, 2009

Simplify. Clarify. Vivify. Surprise your eyes. Break your heart open. Dose all your ills with laughter. Look out! Here comes the Imperishable Light! Accept no substitutes. We are all participants in the marvelous. ~ James Broughton  

by R S Thomas Summer is here. Once more the house has its Spray of martins, Prousts fountain Of small birds, whose light shadows Come and go in the sunshine Of the lawn as thoughts do In the mind. Watching them fly Is my business, not as a man vowed To science, who counts their returns To the rafters, or sifts their droppings For facts, recording the wave-length Of their screaming; my method is so To have them about myself Through the hours of this brief Season and to fill with their Movement, that it is I that they build In and bring up their young To return to after the bitter Migrations, knowing the site Inviolate through its outward changes.

By Lucia Perillo Of all the birds, they are the ones who mind their being armless most: witness how, when they walk, their heads jerk back and forth like rifle bolts. How they heave their shoulders into each stride as if they hoped that by some chance new bones there would come popping out with a boxing glove on the end of each. Little Elvises, the hairdo slicked with too much grease, they convene on my lawn to strategize for their class-action suit. Flight they would trade in a New York minute for a black muscle car and a fist on the shift at any stale green light. But here in my yard by the Jack-in-the-Box Dumpster they can only fossick* in the grass for remnants of the world’s stale buns. And this despite all the crow poems that have been written because men like to see themselves as crows (the head-jerk performed in the rearview mirror, the dark brow commanding the rainy weather). So I think I know how they must feel: ripped off, shook down, taken to the c...

by Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

[From our retreat: here are a few lines from Rumi translated by Coleman Barks.] Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins? Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms? Who comes to a spring thirsty and sees the moon reflected in it? Who, like Jacob, blind with grief and age, smells the shirt of his son and can see again? Who lets a bucket down and brings up a flowing prophet? Or like Moses goes for fire and finds what burns inside the sunrise? Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies, and opens a door to the other world. Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring. Omar storms in to kill the prophet and leaves with blessings. Chase a deer and end up everywhere! An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop. Now there's a pearl. A vagrant wanders empty ruins Suddenly he's wealthy. But don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanation, so everyon...

By Sarah Sarai Creeping, is what a saffron sun is doing, creeping out from a past it will soon revisit. I hike my blood-red tunic to my thighs with one hand while the other, well, in my arms, well, always a child, always delivered to us in indrawn- infant stillness, as if creation holds its breath because, really, all this is over so much too soon. Isn’t making art remembering what we knew? Why not, then, salvation? The water over rocks cold on granite— quartz and orthoclase—and slick moss. I’m the last person who should be entrusted to carry Him, me of the angry sinner school. And I would forswear sainthood and irony, I would, for this one, held against my heart. In response to: Saint Christopher and the Infant Christ, Follower of Dieric Bouts (Netherlandish, ca. 1480) Mississippi Review

by W.S. Merwin Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me And the silence will set out Tireless traveler Like the beam of a lightless star Then I will no longer Find myself in life as in a strange garment Surprised at the earth And the love of one woman And the shamelessness of men As today writing after three days of rain Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease And bowing not knowing to what  

by Bob O’Hearn As long as we imagine there is something to defend, we will find enemies. The war is always with ourselves in that respect. Mind divides itself into self and other, and so the wild rumpus continues. "Except for deserted wilderness what is there to protect?" ~Joshu The war is over -- nobody survived. No time to mourn the dead, sunrise over the settling dust was too captivating for any lament. Crimson trails of mind's lingering exhaust scar-streaked dawn's early sky, as if the dream of night itself exploded, as if from now on there would be flooding daylight only, though even that wild wonder will fall in time from the eyes, till what remains is not of time, not of mind, yet even in its flash of vanishing -- true balm for wounded hearts. We wake and rise and fall breathless into this luminosity, this sky meadow vibrant with vernal signs, hues, and vivid budding wonders -- the ordinary evidence of everything changing, ...

by Ken Ireland Will my heart ever warm to these foreign gods? No matter that we shaved our heads for awhile. No matter that we wore socks that felt more like gloves than the fingerless mittens that mother stuffed our hands into when the pond froze over. There is still some mystery the heart cannot speak. Sometimes I feel as if I've been snowed into that one room school my grandpa talked of, huddled around the stove, a gang of kids jostling for attention like best grades, playing with tongue tangled words in a Sanskrit yeshiva, parsing phrases as cold as Tibetan snow. I aim for the precision of the shovel I used to dig out the family car after the blizzard, cutting square white blocks to toss before the plow. I train my body to own the rhythm of swinging forward, bending down from the hips, throwing my arms towards the ground. It feels like falling. When the conversation overheats, almost as loud as at auntie's Sunday table b...

The following is a transcript of the inaugural poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” written and recited by Elizabeth Alexander, as provided by Graywolf Press. I have to admit to liking the poem much better when I see it in print than I did when Ms. Alexander recited it at President Obama’s Inauguration. Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each other’s eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair. Someone is trying to make music somewhere, with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum, with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice. A woman and her son wait for the bus. A farmer considers the changing sky. A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin. We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or d...

by Philip Whalen Mother and Ed are out in the car Wait til I put on some clothes Ed’s in a hurry. He hasn’t eaten since this morning Wait till I put on some clothes. Mother and Ed are out in the car. Do you have any clothes on yet? Let me come it. Wait till I get some clothes on Ed is impatient. He and mother are waiting. Can I come in? Wait till I put on some clothes. Mother and Ed are out in the car Wait till I get into some clothes Can’t I come in? Aren’t you dressed yet? Wait till I put on some clothes Mother and Ed are out in the car Can I come in? Wait till I get on some clothes.

by Woody Guthrie This land is your land. This land is my land From California to the New York island; From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and Me. As I was walking that ribbon of highway, I saw above me that endless skyway: I saw below me that golden valley: This land was made for you and me. I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts; And all around me a voice was sounding: This land was made for you and me. When the sun came shining, and I was strolling, And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting: This land was made for you and me. As I went walking I saw a sign there And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." But on the other side it didn't say nothing, That side was made for you and me. In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, By the relief office I seen my people; As they stood...