musons verse

The spring flowers, the autumn moon;
Summer breezes, winter snow.
If useless things do not clutter your mind,
You have the best days of your life.

Thomas Pynchon

“We have to look for power sources here, and distribution networks we were never taught, routes of power our teachers never imagined, or were encouraged to avoid … we have to find meters whose scales are unknown in the world, draw our own schematics, getting feedback, making connections, reducing the error, trying to learn the real function … zeroing in on what incalculable plot?”

anais nin

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world not possibly born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

Kenneth Patchen

You have used a word
Which means nothing.
You have given a word
The power to send men to death.
Men are not free who are sent to die.
Only those who send them are ‘free.’
You should have freedom stuffed down your fat throats.

Canada Geese by Robert Davidson

Out of the haar, in flight,
in formation, in position, each eye
on the white rump in front, each aware
of the white bar on a face away to the side.
Direct, speedy – the flock is two waving lines
passing between mountains, over salt water,
following the coast, a creamy shoreline
broadening on to marshes, tidal islands
until – ahead and below – something familiar,
another flock resting on a sand bar.
Down they go.

Down, level with the hills.
Down, level with the road.
Down, level with the shore.
Skimming over water the lead bird
working hardest, the wind from his wings lifting
the following bird, then the next until
they are all floating on air broken by the birds in front.

They lift to cross an island. Come down again
on the other side. Up ahead, white-barred heads
turn on long necks. Take care! Take care!
crying from the bar, and from the air the flight
calls back, We’re here! We’re here! The sky
between sand bar and flight filled with voice.
Take care! We’re here! Take care! We’re here!

Spreading their wings, turning them downwards,
they stretch out webbed feet. Everthing now,
every part of them, is catching the air,
slowing them, dropping them.
Take care! Take care!
In they come as though they must scatter
the geese on the sand like marbles, but now
their dropped wings lift them and bring them
down again, slower now, one after the other,
feet planing across the water, all together

hhhiiiiiiiisssssssshhhhhhhhhhh!!!

to sit down on it, glide along the surface and paddle out
onto the sand, to become a feathery conference
of webs, wings, necks and beaks, all crying together.
We’re here! We’re here!

The Geese by Richard Peck

My father was the first to hear
The passage of the geese each fall,
Passing above the house so near,
He’d hear within his heart their call.

And then at breakfast time he'd say:
"The geese were heading south last night,"
For he had lain awake till day,
Feeling his earthbound soul take flight.

Knowing that winter's wind comes soon
After the rushing of those wings,
Seeing them pass before the moon,
Recalling the lure of far-off things.

A Colour of the Sky by Tony Hoagland

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,

driving over the hills from work.

There are the dark parts on the road

                     when you pass through clumps of wood   

and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,   

but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize

for being so boring at dinner last night,

but can I really promise not to be that way again?   

And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees, tossing   

in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it’s spring, and everything looks frail;

the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves

are full of infant chlorophyll,   

the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer’s song is making a comeback on the radio,   

and on the highway overpass,

the only metaphysical vandal in America has written   

MEMORY LOVES TIME

in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.

She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.   

Years ago she penetrated me

but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,   

I never got her out,

but now I’m glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.   

What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.   

What I thought was an injustice

turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store   

and the police station,

a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,   

like a sudsy mug of beer;

like a bride ripping off her clothes,

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.   

It’s been doing that all week:

making beauty,

and throwing it away,

and making more.

Viewing Peach Blossoms and Realizing the Way by Dogen

In spring wind
peach blossoms
begin to come apart.
Doubts do not grow
branches and leaves.

You Do Not Need Many Things by Ryokan

My house is buried in the deepest recess of the forest
Every year, ivy vines grow longer than the year before.
Undisturbed by the affairs of the world I live at ease,
Woodmen’s singing rarely reaching me through the trees.
While the sun stays in the sky, I mend my torn clothes
And facing the moon, I read holy texts aloud to myself.
Let me drop a word of advice for believers of my faith.
To enjoy life’s immensity, you do not need many things.

Love Poems Between Ryokan and Teishin

Was it really you
I saw
Or is this joy
I still feel
only a dream?
--Teishin

In this dream world
We doze
And talk of dreams --
Dream, dream on,
As much as you wish
--Ryokan

Here with you
I could remain
For countless days and years
Silent as the bright moon
We watched together
--Teishin

have you forgotten me
Or lost the path here?
I wait for you
All day, every day
But you do not appear
--Ryokan

The moon, I'm sure
Is shining brightly
High above the mountains
But gloomy clouds
Shroud the peak in darkness
--Teishin

You must rise above
The gloomy clouds
Covering the mountaintop
Otherwise, how will you
Ever see the brightness?
--Ryokan

Ryokan

Now it reveals its hidden side
and now the other—thus it falls,
an autumn leaf.

Issa

Everything I touch
with tenderness, alas,
pricks like a bramble.

Issa

dawn's glow
hasn't quite yet dyed
the dewdrops

Zen of Housework by Al Zolynas

I look over my own shoulder
down my arms
to where they disappear under water
into hands inside pink rubber gloves
moiling among dinner dishes.

My hands lift a wine glass,
holding it by the stem and under the bowl.
It breaks the surface
like a chalice
rising from a medieval lake.

Full of the grey wine
of domesticity, the glass floats
to the level of my eyes.
Behind it, through the window
above the sink, the sun, among
a ceremony of sparrows and bare branches,
is setting in Western America.

I can see thousands of droplets
of steam—each a tiny spectrum—rising
from my goblet of grey wine.
They sway, changing directions
constantly—like a school of playful fish,
or like the sheer curtain
on the window to another world.

Ah, grey sacrament of the mundane!

Wheat by Ishihara Yoshiro

Let a stalk of wheat
be your witness
to every difficult day.

Since it was a flame
before it was a plant,
since it was courage
before it was grain,
since it was determination
before it was growth,
and, above all, since it was prayer
before it was fruition,
it has nothing to point to
but the sky.
                                 
Remember the incredibly gentle wheat stalk
which holds its countless arrows fixed
to shoot from the bowstring—
you, standing in the same position
where the wind holds it.

Winter of Listening by David Whyte

No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.

All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire,

what disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.

What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.

Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world.

All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say.

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard.

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.

And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.

Silence and winter
has led me to that
otherness.

So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.

Perhaps... by Ting Shu

For the loneliness of the author

Perhaps these thoughts of ours
             will never find an audience
Perhaps the mistaken road
             will end in a mistake
Perhaps the lamps we light one at a time
             will be blown out, one at a time
Perhaps the candles of our lives will gutter out
             without lighting a fire to warm us

Perhaps when all the tears have been shed
             the earth will be more fertile
Perhaps when we sing praises to the sun
             the sun will praise us in return
Perhaps these heavy burdens
             will strengthen our philosophy
Perhaps when we weep for those in misery
             we must be silent about miseries of our own

Perhaps
Because of our irresistible mission
We have no choice

What Have I Learned by Gary Snyder

What have I learned but
the proper use for several tools?

The moments
between hard pleasant tasks

To sit silent, drink wine,
and think my own kind
of dry crusty thoughts.

     —the first Calochortus flowers
     and in all the land,
              it's spring.
I point them out:
the yellow petals, the golden hairs,
              to Gen.

Seeing in silence:
never the same twice,
but when you get it right,

     you pass it on.

Zazen on Ching-t'ing Mountain by Li Po

The birds have vanished down the sky.
 Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

Losing My Sight by Lisel Mueller

I never knew that by August
the birds are practically silent,
only a twitter here and there.
Now I notice. Last spring
their noisiness taught me the difference
between screamers and whistlers and cooers
and O, the coloraturas.
I have already mastered
the subtlest pitches in our cat's
elegant Chinese. As the river
turns muddier before my eyes,
its sighs and little smacks
grow louder. Like a spy,
I pick up things indiscriminately:
the long approach of a truck,
car doors slammed in the dark,
the night life of animals—shrieks and hisses,
sex and plunder in the garage.
Tonight the crickets spread static
across the air, a continuous rope
of sound extended to me,
the perfect listener.

I Laugh and Cry with the Same Eyes by James Kavanaugh

I laugh and cry with the same eyes,
Love and hate with the same heart.
I feel my rage and my gentleness,
My sanity and suicide.
When I hide my anger, my joy doesn't seem real.
When I hide my fear, my strength is a fraud.
If I only laugh, I leave no place for your pain.
If I only shout, I leave no place for your tenderness.
I want to be all of myself,
So you can be all of yourself,
And together we can be whole.

You Are There by Erica Jong

You are there.
You have always been
there.
Even when you thought
you were climbing
you had already arrived.
Even when you were
breathing hard,
you were at rest.
Even then it was clear
you were there.

Not in our nature
to know what
is journey and what
arrival.
Even if we knew
we would not admit.
Even if we lived
we would think
we were just
germinating.

To live is to be
uncertain.
Certainty comes
at the end.

There Was A Time by Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi

There was a time I would reject those
who were not of my faith.
But now, my heart has grown capable
of taking on all forms.
It is a pasture for gazelles,
An abbey for monks.
A table for the Torah,
Kaaba for the pilgrim.
My religion is love.
Whichever the route love’s caravan shall take,
That shall be the path of my faith.

The Word by Tony Hoagland

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between “green thread”
and “broccoli,” you find
that you have penciled “sunlight.”

Resting on the page, the word
is beautiful. It touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent from someplace distant
as this morning—to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing

that also needs accomplishing.
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue,

but today you get a telegram
from the heart in exile,
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

—to any one among them
who can find the time
to sit out in the sun and listen.

A Dark Thing Hidden Inside the Day by Linda Gregg

So many want to be lifted by song and dancing,
and this morning it is easy to understand.
I write in the sound of chirping birds hidden
in the almond trees, the almonds still green
and thriving in the foliage. Up the street,
a man is hammering to make a new house as doves
continue their cooing forever. Bees humming
and high above that a brilliant clear sky.
The roses are blooming and I smell the sweetness.
Everything desirable is here already in abundance.
And the sea. The dark thing is hardly visible
in the leaves, under the sheen. We sleep easily.
So I bring no sad stories to warn the heart.
All the flowers are adult this year. The good
world gives and the white doves praise all of it.

September Meditation by Burton D. Carley

I do not know if the seasons remember their history or if the days and
nights by which we count time remember their own passing.

I do not know if the oak tree remembers its planting or if the pine
remembers its slow climb toward sun and stars.

I do not know if the squirrel remembers last fall's gathering or if the
bluejay remembers the meaning of snow.

I do not know if the air remembers September or if the night remembers
the moon.

I do not know if the earth remembers the flowers from last spring or if
the evergreen remembers that it shall stay so.

Perhaps that is the reason for our births—to be the memory for
creation.

Perhaps salvation is something very different than anyone ever expected.

Perhaps this will be the only question we will have to answer:
"What can you tell me about September?"

Fall Song by Mary Oliver

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries — roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay — how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

I Worried by Mary Oliver

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

Generation by Rae Armantrout

We know the story.

She turns
back to find her trail
devoured by birds.

The years: the
undergrowth

The Buddhas Last Instruction 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 crowd.

Our True Heritage by Thich Naht Hanh

The cosmos is filled with precious gems.
I want to offer a handful of them to you this morning.
Each moment you are alive is a gem,
shining through and containing earth and sky,
water and clouds.

It needs you to breathe gently
for the miracles to be displayed.
Suddenly you hear the birds singing,
the pines chanting,
see the flowers blooming,
the blue sky,
the white clouds,
the smile and the marvelous look
of your beloved.

You, the richest person on Earth,
who have been going around begging for a living,
stop being the destitute child.
Come back and claim your heritage.
We should enjoy our happiness
and offer it to everyone.
Cherish this very moment.
Let go of the stream of distress
and embrace life fully in your arms.

Inter-relationship by Thich Naht Hanh

You are me and I am you.
Isn't it obvious that we inter-are?
You cultivate the flower in yourself
so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself
so that you do not have to suffer.
I support you you support me.
I am here to bring you peace
you are here to bring me joy.

Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End? by Mary Oliver

Don't call this world adorable, or useful, that's not it.
It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn't the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven't the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?

Don't call this world an explanation, or even an education.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,

as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?

Sleeping in the Forest by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

From Blossoms by Li-Yeung Lee

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Late Hours by Lisel Mueller

On summer nights the world
moves within earshot
on the interstate with its swish
and growl, an occasional siren
that sends chills through us.
Sometimes, on clear, still nights,
voices float into our bedroom,
lunar and fragmented,
as if the sky had let them go
long before our birth.

In winter we close the windows
and read Chekhov,
nearly weeping for his world.

What luxury, to be so happy
that we can grieve
over imaginary lives.

A Dedication to My Wife by TS Eliot

To whom I owe the leaping delight
That quickens my senses in our wakingtime
And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,
    The breathing in unison

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech
And babble the same speech without need of meaning.

No peevish winter wind shall chill
No sullen tropic sun shall wither
The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only

But this dedication is for others to read:
These are private words addressed to you in public.

Winter Dawn by Tu Fu

The men and beasts of the zodiac

Have marched over us once more.

Green wine bottles and red lobster shells,

Both emptied, litter the table.

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot?” Each

Sits listening to his own thoughts,

And the sound of cars starting outside.

The birds in the eaves are restless,

Because of the noise and light. Soon now

In the winter dawn I will face

My fortieth year. Borne headlong

Towards the long shadows of sunset

By the headstrong, stubborn moments,

Life whirls past like drunken wildfire.

Poem Without A Category by Gensei

Trailing my stick I go down to the garden edge,

call to a monk to go out the pine gate.

A cup of tea with my mother,

looking at each other, enjoying our tea together.

In the deep lanes, few people in sight;

the dog barks when anyone comes or goes.

Fall floods have washed away the planks of the bridge;

shouldering our sandals, we wade the narrow stream.

By the roadside, a small pavilion

where there used to be a little hill:

it helps out our hermit mood;

country poems pile one sheet on another.

I dabble in the flow, delighted by the shallowness of the stream,

gaze at the flagging, admiring how firm the stones are.

The point in life is to know what’s enough–

why envy those otherworld immortals?

With the happiness held in one inch-square heart

you can fill the whole space between heaven and earth.

Too lazy to be ambitious by Ryokan

Too lazy to be ambitious,

I let the world take care of itself.

Ten days’ worth of rice in my bag;

a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.

Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?

Listening to the night rain on my roof,

I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

Radish Haiku by Issa

The man pulling radishes

pointed the way

with a radish.

There comes the strangest moment by Kate Light

There comes the strangest moment in your life,

when everything you thought before breaks free —

what you relied upon, as ground-rule and as rite

looks upside down from how it used to be.

Skin’s gone pale, your brain is shedding cells,

you question every tenet you set down;

obedient thoughts have turned to infidels

and every verb desires to be a noun.

I want—my want. I love—my love. I’ll stay
with you. I thought transitions were the best,
but I want what’s here to never go away.
I’ll make my peace, my bed, and kiss this breast . . .

Your heart’s in retrograde. You simply have no choice.

Things people told you turn out to be true.

You have to hold that body, hear that voice.

You’d have sworn no one knew you more than you.

How many people thought you’d never change?

But here you have. It’s beautiful. It’s strange.

Autumn Leaves by Marilyn Chin

The dead piled up, thick, fragrant, on the fire escape.

My mother ordered me again, and again, to sweep it clean.

All that blooms must fall. I learned this not from the Tao,

    but from high school biology.

Oh, the contradictions of having a broom and not a dustpan!

I swept the leaves down, down through the iron grille

and let the dead rain over the Wong family’s patio.

And it was Achilles Wong who completed the task.

    We called her:

The-one-who-cleared-away-another-family’s-autumn.

She blossomed, tall, benevolent, notwithstanding.

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

from “Song of the Open Road” by Walt Whitman

Listen! I will be honest with you.

I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes.

These are the days that must happen to you:

You shall not heap up what is called riches,

You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve.

However sweet the laid-up stores,

However convenient the dwellings,

You shall not remain there.

However sheltered the port,

And however calm the waters,

You shall not anchor there.

However welcome the hospitality that welcomes you

You are permitted to receive it but a little while.

Afoot and lighthearted, take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before you,

The long brown path before you, leading wherever

you choose.

Say only to one another:

Camerado, I give you my hand!

I give you my love, more precious than money,

I give you myself before preaching or law:

Will you give me yourself?

Will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

I am Completely Different by Kuroda Saburo

I am completely different.

Though I am wearing the same tie as yesterday,

am as poor as yesterday,

as good for nothing as yesterday,

today

I am completely different.

Though I am wearing the same clothes,

am as drunk as yesterday,

living as clumsily as yesterday, nevertheless

today

I am completely different.

Ah—

I patiently close my eyes

on all the grins and smirks

on all the twisted smiles and horse laughs—

and glimpse then, inside me

one beautiful white butterfly

fluttering towards tomorrow.

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep by Anon

Do not stand at my grave and weep;

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there. I did not die.

Poem by Matthew Rohrer

You called, you’re on the train, on Sunday,

I have just taken a shower and await

you. Clouds are slipping in off the ocean,

but the room is gently lit by the green

shirt you gave me. I have been practicing

a new way to say hello and it is fantastic.

You were so sad: goodbye. I was so sad.

All the shops were closed but the sky

was high and blue. I tried to walk it off

but I must have walked in the wrong direction

How to Read a Poem: Beginner’s Manual by Pamela Spiro Wagner

First, forget everything you have learned,
that poetry is difficult,
that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you,
with your high school equivalency diploma,
your steel-tipped boots,
or your white-collar misunderstandings.

Do not assume meanings hidden from you:
the best poems mean what they say and say it.

To read poetry requires only courage
enough to leap from the edge
and trust.

Treat a poem like dirt,
humus rich and heavy from the garden.
Later it will become the fat tomatoes
and golden squash piled high upon your kitchen table.

Poetry demands surrender,
language saying what is true,
doing holy things to the ordinary.

Read just one poem a day.
Someday a book of poems may open in your hands
like a daffodil offering its cup
to the sun.

When you can name five poets
without including Bob Dylan,
when you exceed your quota
and don’t even notice,
close this manual.

Since Nine— by CP Cavafy

Half past twelve. Time has gone by quickly
since nine o’clock when I lit the lamp
and sat down here. I’ve been sitting without reading,
without speaking. Completely alone in the house,
whom could I talk to?

Since nine o’clock when I lit the lamp
the shade of my young body
has come to haunt me, to remind me
of shut scented rooms,
of past sensual pleasure—what daring pleasure.
And it’s also brought back to me
streets now unrecognizable,
bustling night clubs now closed,
theatres and cafés no longer there.

The shade of my young body
also brought back the things that make us sad:
family grief, separations,
the feelings of my own people, feelings
of the dead so little acknowledged.

Half past twelve. How the time has gone by.
Half past twelve. How the years have gone by.

Song by Donald Justice

Morning opened

Like a rose,

And the snow on the roof

Rose-color took.

Oh, how the street

Toward light did leap!

And the lamps went out.

Brightness fell down

From the steeple clock

To the rows of shops

And rippled the bricks

Like the scales of a fish,

And all that day

Was a fairy tale

Told once in a while

To a good child.

Throw Yourself Like Seed by Miguel de Unamuno

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

Ecclesiastes 3:1–8

To every thing there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate;

a time of war, and a time of peace.

Summer 1983 by Mary Jo Salter

None of us remembers these, the days

when passing strangers adored us at first sight,

just for living, or for strolling down the street;

praised all our given names; begged us to smile . . .

you, too, in a little while,

my darling, will have lost all this,

asked for a kiss will give one, and learn

how love dooms us to earn

love once we can speak of it.

A good traveler has no fixed plans by Lao Tzu

A good traveler has no fixed plans

and is not intent upon arriving.

A good artist lets his intuition

lead him wherever it wants.

A good scientist has freed himself of concepts

and keeps his mind open to what is.

Thus the Master is available to all people

and doesn’t reject anyone.

He is ready to use all situations

and doesn’t waste anything.

this is called embodying the light.

What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher?

What is a bad man but a good man’s job?

If you don’t understand this, you will get lost,

however intelligent you are.

It is the great secret.

Vermeer by Stephen Mitchell

            Quia respexit humilitatem
            ancillae suae. Luke I:48

She stands by the table, poised
at the center of your vision,
with her left hand
just barely on
the pitcher's handle, and her right
lightly touching the windowframe.
Sere as a clear sky, luminous
in her blue dress and many-toned
white cotton wimple, she is looking
nowhere. Upon her lips
is the subtlest and most lovely
of smiles, caught
for an instant
like a snowflake in a warm hand.
How weightless her body feels
as she stands, absorbed, within this
fulfillment that has brought more
than any harbinger could.
She looks down with an infinite
tenderness in her eyes,
as though the light at the window
were a newborn child
and her arms open enough
to hold it on her breast, forever.

Peace Poem by Oliver Bernard

waking at five or so to white
sky and various bird beginnings
from exhausting dreams of past
emotional encounters I can
rest at last in a small room

lying still considering
whether to go back to sleep
seeing the sky go colours of
sunrise I begin to wonder
how the tree looks and the wall

downstairs in the shadow of
the houses sleepers lie asleep
in Kenninghall in diss in Mellis
bliss behind the children's eyelids
all alone in morning silence

what is peace if it is not
loving indiscriminately
others? watching over all
human sleep and knowing there's
no need and every need to do so?

what is peace but watching while
being loved and cared for by
the very clouds and trees and grass
nourishing earth and the candid sky
breakneck rivers rising tides?

newspapers at seven o'clock
are laying on the day the grey
word of war and world of worry
all I want's a weather forecast
promising there'll be more weather

Walking Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh

Take my hand.
We will walk.
We will only walk.
We will enjoy our walk
without thinking of arriving anywhere.
Walk peacefully.
Walk happily.
Our walk is a peace walk.
Our walk is a happiness walk.

Then we learn
that there is no peace walk;
that peace is the walk;
that there is no happiness walk;
that happiness is the walk.
We walk for ourselves.
We walk for everyone
always hand in hand.

Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom under our feet.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Print on Earth your love and happiness.

Earth will be safe
when we feel in us enough safety

Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh

They woke me this morning
to tell me my brother had been killed in battle.
Yet in the garden, uncurling moist petals,
a new rose blooms on the bush.
And I am alive, can still breathe the fragrance of roses and dung,
eat, pray, and sleep.
But when can I break my long silence?
When can I speak the unuttered words that are choking me?

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me by Mary Oliver

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying

what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again

in a new way
on the earth!
That's what it said
as it dropped,

smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches

and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing

under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,

and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment,
at which moment

my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars

and the soft rain—
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.

Five AM in the Pinewoods by Mary Oliver

I'd seen
their hoofprints in the deep
needles and knew
they ended the long night

under the pines, walking
like two mute
and beautiful women toward
the deeper woods, so I

got up in the dark and
went there. They came
slowly down the hill
and looked at me sitting under

the blue trees, shyly
they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes and even

nibbled some damp
tassels of weeds. This
is not a poem about a dream,
though it could be.

This is a poem about the world
that is ours, or could be.
Finally
one of them— I swear it!—

would have come to my arms.
But the other
stamped sharp hoof in the
pine needles like

the tap of sanity,
and they went off together through
the trees. When I woke
I was alone,

I was thinking:
so this is how you swim inward,
so this is how you flow outward,
so this is how you pray.

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing
inside,
You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense
anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters
and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.