Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight. [...]

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Open and Shut

You open the blade of a flick knife so it drips transparency. You shut the restless cube of night and a stream of shadow ramifies. You open and shut the liquid diaphragm of my heart – and at dawn I arrive in the stately, tenfold starlight of your hands. ~David Huerta

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Monopoly

We used to play, long before we bought real houses. A roll of the dice could send a girl to jail. The money was pink, blue, gold as well as green, and we could own a whole railroad or speculate in hotels where others dreaded staying: the cost was extortionary. At last one person would [...]

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I Saw You Tomorrow

“I Saw You Tomorrow” You’re on an airplane In a car. You’re in a car On the bus. You’re on the bus Going home as you daydream At your desk. On your desk You have a postcard of Alaska. You are never where you are, And when you are, you’re leaving, Late already for something [...]

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wean yourself

Wean Yourself by Rumi Little by little, wean yourself. This is the gist of what I have to say. From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood, move to an infant drinking milk, to a child on solid food, to a searcher after wisdom, to a hunter of more invisible game….

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Dream Deferred

  What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore– And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over– like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? ~ Langston Hughes

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The crazy falling alphabet

I sit with my cup to catch the crazy falling alphabet. It crashes, it gravels down, a fault in the hemispheres. High rise L’s, without windows– buckling in slow motion; Subway G’s Y’s, twisted, collapsing underground: screams of passengers buried in the terrible phonemes, arms and legs paralyzed. And no one, no one at all, [...]

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These great times..the great “either/or”

“Thank GOD our time is now– when wrong comes up to meet us everywhere never to leave us– ’til we take the longest stride  of soul men ever took.” ~ Christopher Frye, poet and playwright   We are the ones we have been waiting for…. we are the ones now living in the either/or..”

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Apokatastasis

When things seem to  be falling apart, perhaps the best thing to do is to read poetry. Just a few lines even, will do. More on apokatastasis in a future post, but for the moment, a few lines from Rumi: “The New Rule”: “…..The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere. Nothing else to do. Here’s [...]

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“The Mysterious Human Heart” : by Matthew Dickman

This comes from Copper Canyon Press, my current fav poetry magazine. This is from All – American Poem. http://www.coppercanyonpress.org/catalog/index.cfm?action=displayBook&book_ID=1392   The produce in New York is really just produce, oranges and cabbage, celery and beets, pomegranates with their hundred seeds, carrots and honey, walnuts and thirteen varieties of apples. On Monday morning I will walk [...]

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Dreams Deferred

It’s National Poetry Month. This one is worth pondering. Dream Deferred (Langston Hughes, Missouri, USA) What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore– And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over– like a syrupy sweet? Maybe [...]

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Dancing with Daffodils

It’s daffodil season!!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (William Wordsworth, England) I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars [...]

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Mysteries, Yes

Another great one, from Mary Oliver, from her book Evidence. ******************************************* Mysteries, Yes Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of rising. How two hands touch and [...]

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In Memoriam of Lucille Clifton

In honor and memoriam of Lucille Clifton, a posting of 2 of her poems……She has passed over to the other side. ************************************************** Won’t You Celebrate With Me; Lucille Clifton won’t you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what [...]

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Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

Yeah, today is a Mary Oliver kind of Monday. … **************************************** 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 your despair, [...]

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In Blackwater Woods, by Mary Oliver

In Blackwater Woods Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every [...]

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NOTICE

NOTICE: by Steve Kowit **************************** This evening, the sturdy Levi’s I wore every day for over a year & which seemed to the end in perfect condition, suddenly tore. How or why I don’t know, but there it was: a big rip at the crotch. A month ago my friend Nick walked off a racquetball [...]

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Valentine

Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy ******************************** Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light like the careful undressing of love. Here. It will blind you with tears like a lover. It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of [...]

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Unfold Your Own Myth

Another gem from RUMI. ********************************************************* Unfold Your Own Myth 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 lost son [...]

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So Much Happiness

This poem…  is dedicated to the man who perpetually tells me to “be happy”, altho he is wise enough to know (thank G-d) when that phrase needs a rest. This poem I discovered in ten poems to set you free, by Roger Housden. *************************************************** So Much Happiness By Naomi Shihab Nye It is difficult to [...]

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why poems for the month of february?

February, is so grey. What better time to have some light, some consolation,  shed into our brains and souls , through the medium of poetry? A stranger wrote to me this week that one of the poems here was exactly what she needed to hear that day. Another reader wrote today that reading the blog [...]

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When Death Comes (Mary Oliver)

Another from my favorite poet, Mary Oliver. Sorry, I can’t help it. When Death Comes by Mary Oliver When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox when death [...]

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Shapes

Copper Canyon Press is one of my favorite publishers of poetry. This one, from “In the Next Galaxy”. Shapes by Ruth Stone. In the longer view it doesn’t matter. However, it’s that having lived, it matters. So that every death breaks you apart. You find yourself weeping at the door of your own kitchen, overwhelmed [...]

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With Passion, by Rumi

I post poems here as much for myself as for others. WITH PASSION  (rumi) With passion pray. With passion work. With passion make love. With passion eat and drink and dance and play. Why look like a dead fish in this ocean of God?

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The Peace of Wild Things

This poem perfectly expresses how I feel when I walk on the trail. It’s an almost immediate transformation of calm, being under a big open sky, hearing bird song, bearing witness to life in unbridled form. Freedom. Bliss. Peace. More time in the wild, less time watching reality TV (which can hardly be said to [...]

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