poetry

Of Love

I have been in love more times than one,

thank the Lord.  Sometimes it was lasting

whether active or not.  Sometimes

it was all but ephemeral, maybe only

an afternoon, but not less real for that.

They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,

or anyway people beautiful to me, of which

there are so many.  You, and you, and you,

whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe

missed.  Love, love, love, it was the 

core of my life, from which, of course, comes

the word for the heart.  And, oh, have I mentioned

that some of them were men and some were women

and some- now carry my revelation with you-

were trees.  Or places.  Or music flying above

the names of their makers.  Or clouds, or the sun

which was the first, and the best, the most

loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into

my eyes, every morning.  So I imagine

such love of the world- it's fervency, its shining its

innocence and hunger to give of itself- I imagine

this is how it all began.  

~ Mary Oliver

something

As I said in an earlier post, I am overcome with poetry right now.  So, here's a snippet of from Red Bird that I'm loving right now:

                         4.

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

                         5.

Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and thoroughly, solved everything.

 ~ Mary Oliver

poetry

Poetry has been speaking to me lately.  Perhaps it's my shortened, summer-time attention span, perhaps it's just the place I'm at emotionally, regardless, I'm happy to fill my days with poetry.  My poet du jour is Mary Oliver, so perfect in the way she captures the bigs and littles of our everydays.  But I'm going to save her as I have a feeling I will be posting a lot of poetry this month.  Wendell Berry is another favorite author, so I shall share a poem of his that I found this afternoon.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the least sound

in fear of what my life and 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.

~Wendell Berry

love

Another finding from my browsing the other day...I work daily to remember to be glad.  Gratitude for all I've been given and continue to receive.  I am overwhelmingly, undeservedly blessed. 

The Mystery of Love
by Kent Nerburn


Remember that you don't choose love. Love chooses you. All you can really do is accept it for all its mystery when it comes into your life. Feel the way it fills you to overflowing, then reach out and give it away. Give it back to the person who brought it alive in you. Give it to others who deem it poor in spirit. Give it to the world around you in any way you can.


There is where many lovers go wrong. Having been so long without love, they understand love only as a need. They see their hearts as empty places that will be filled by love, and they begin to look at love as something that flows to them rather than from them.


The first blush of new love is filled to overflowing, but as their love cools, they revert to seeing their love as a need. They cease to be someone who generates love and instead become someone who seeks love. They forget that the secret of love is that it is a gift, and that it can be made to grow only by giving it away.


Remember this and keep it to your heart. Love has its time, its own season, its own reason for coming and going. You cannot bribe it or coerce it, or reason it into staying. You can only embrace it when it arrives and give it away when it comes to you. [...] Love always has been and always will be a mystery. Be glad that it came to live for a moment in your life.


--Kent Nerburn

to share

Before You Know What Kindness Really Is
-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 every where
like a shadow or a friend.

--Naomi Shihab Nye, from The Words Under the Words

in gratitude for laughter and moments upside down

The Place I Want To Get Back To

is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness

and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me

they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let’s see who she is
and why she is sitting

on the ground like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;

and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way

I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can’t be repeated.

If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

- Mary Oliver