Mindful..

Mindful by Mary Oliver

Every day

I see or hear

something 

that more of less 

kills me

with delight,

that leaves me

like a needle

in the haystack

of light.

It was what I was born for - 

to look, to listen,

to lose myself

inside this soft world - 

to instruct myself

over and over 

in joy, 

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking 

about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful, 

the very extravagant - 

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab.

the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself, 

how can you help

but grow wise

with such teachings 

as these - 

the untrimmable light

of the world,

the ocean's shine,

the prayers

that are made 

out of grass?  

Purple Cows!

"I Never Saw a Purple Cow,

I Never Hope to See One,

But I Can Tell You Anyhow,

I'd Rather See Than Be One!"

by Gelett Burgess

"Ah, yes, I wrote the "Purple Cow" -

I'm Sorry, now, I wrote it:

But I can tell you Anyhow

I'll kill you if you quote it.”
-also by Gelett Burgess

What I Have Learned So Far

What I Have Learned So Far - by Mary Oliver


Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life,
on the hillside,
looking into the shining world?  Because properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause?  I don’t think so.


All summations have a beginning, all effect has a 
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.  
Thought buds toward radiance.  The gospel of 
light is the crossroads of -- indolence, or action.


Be ignited, or be gone.   

The Real Work

The Real Work
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,


and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.


The mind that is not baffled is not employed. 
The impeded stream is the one that sings. 
by Wendell Berry 

My Hero

My Hero
Just as the hare is zipping across the finish line,
the tortoise has stopped once again
by the roadside,
this time to stick out his neck
and nibble a bit of sweet grass, 
unlike the previous time
when he was distracted
by a bee humming in the heart of a wildflower.  
-Billy Collins, Horoscopes for the Dead

Keep a Poem in your Pocket...

Here is one of the first poems I ever memorized.  It felt perfect to be memorizing a poem that spoke to the virtue of have a poem written in your head!  

"Keep a poem in your pocket, and a picture in your head

and you'll never feel lonely, at night when you're in bed.

The little poem will sing to you, the little picture will bring to you,

a dozen dreams to dance to you, at night when you're in bed.

So-

Keep a picture in your pocket, and a poem in your head,

and you'll never feel lonely, at night when you're in bed.

-Beatice Schenk de Regniers

We Real Cool...

We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks

WE REAL COOL

--The Pool Players. At The Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

A Short Panegyric...

A Short Panegyric by Mark Strand


Now that the vegetarian nightmare is over and we are back to
Our diet of meat and deep in the sway of our dark and beauty-
ful habits and able to speak with calm of having survived, let
the breeze of the future touch and retouch our large and hun-
gering bodies.  Let us march to market to embrace the butcher
and put the year of the carrot, the month of the onion behind
us, let us worship again the roast or the stew that takes it’s place once
again at the sacred center of the dining room table.  

When my professor asked for class feedback I don’t think he expected such a deluge of comments.  He’s a pretty decent teacher but several of my cohorts thinks he overcomplicates the material.  Plus, when you inquire, you're bound to get the entire gamut of suggestions and then what do you do.  It’s not a short-order course (even if some students would like it to be).  Anyway, his request reminded me of a Billy Collin’s poem titled, of course, Feedback: 

The woman who wrote from Phoenix
after my reading there


to tell me they were all still talking about it


just wrote again
to tell me that they had stopped.  

The Journey is the Reward..

I wasn’t going to post this poem because it’s longer than I usually put up on the blog.  But, how can I not include it?  It’s a personal favorite.

C. P. Cavafy is a Greek poet and Ithaka might be his best known work.  I love the message that enjoying the journey and using every resource of our senses and intellect are the important things.  The island home is going to be a disappointment for Odysseus if reaching Ithaka is the only goal.  

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka

hope the voyage is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

angry Poseidon - don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as rare excitement

stirs your spirit and body.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

wild Poseidon - you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.

May there be many a summer morning when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbors seem for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind -

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you are old by the time you reach the island

wealthy with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

-C.P. Cavafy

Wafted Back Into Childhood

Swallowtail - by Glenda Cotter

Perhaps it does not matter

whether a great yellow flap

of a swallowtail butterfly

has floated through

all the summers

of my life;

perhaps it only matters

that I think it is so,

that each time it

drifts through a blue drenched day

I am wafted on its wings

back into childhood

and all the room

I had to grow;

or carried hopefully

toward the future,

happy in the thought

of the butterflies

to come

Or simply centered

in this day, this good

and beautiful day

when a single

aimless butterfly

gave a simple direction

to gather the present.

Mindful...

Yesterday was pretty much an ordinary day. Fortunately, Mary Oliver has just the right words to describe the importance of the ordinary...

Mindful by Mary Oliver

Every day

I see or hear

something

that more or less

kills me

with delight,

that leaves me

like a needle

in the haystack

of light.

It was what I was born for -

to look, to listen.

to lose myself

inside this soft world -

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy,

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking

about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,

the very extravagant -

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself,

how can you help

but grow wise

with such teachings

as these -

the untrimmable light

of the world,

the ocean’s shine,

the prayers that are made

out of grass?

The generosity of numbers...

Numbers by Mary Cornish

I like the generosity of numbers.

The way, for example,

they are willing to count

anything or anyone:

two pickles, one door to the room,

eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition --

add two cups of milk and stir--

the sense of plenty: six plums

on the ground, three more

falling from the tree.

And multiplication’s school

of fish times fish,

whose silver bodies breed

beneath the shadow

of a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,

just addition somewhere else:

five sparrows take away two,

the two in someone else’s

garden now.

There’s an amplitude to long division,

as it opens Chinese take-out

box by paper box,

inside every folded cookie

a new fortune.

And I never fail to be surprised

by the gift of an odd remainder,

footloose at the end:

forty-seven divided buy eleven equals four,

with three remaining.

Three boys beyond their mothers’ call,

two Italians off to the sea,

one sock that isn’t anywhere you look.

Did I Miss Anything?

Even teachers in graduate school hate to hear that age-old question after someone was absent: “Did I miss anything?”

How do you even answer that absurd question? I happen to love that one poet/teacher came up with the perfect response in the poem below:

Did I Miss Anything? by Tom Wayman

Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here

we sat with our hands folded on our desks

in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth

40 percent of the grade for this term

And assigned some reading due today

on which I’m about to hand out a quiz

worth 50 percent

Nothing. None of the content of this course

has value of meaning

Take as many days off as you like:

any activities we undertake as a class

I assure you will not matter either to you or me

and are without purpose.

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time

a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel

or other heavenly being appeared

and revealed to us what each woman or man must do

to attain divine wisdom in this life and

the hereafter

This is the last time the class will meet

before we disperse to bring the good news to all people

on earth.

Nothing. When you are not present

how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom

is a microcosm of human experience

assembled for you to query and examine and ponder

This is not the only place such an opportunity has been

gathered

but it was one place

And you weren’t here

Happy Easter...

The linen which once held Him is empty.

It lies there,

Fresh and white and clean.

The door stands opened.

The stone is rolled away,

And I can almost hear the angels singing His praises.

Linen cannot hold Him.

Stone cannot hold Him.

The linen which once held Him is now empty.

It lies there,

Fresh and white and clean

And oh, hallelujah, it is empty.

-Emily Harris, “Empty Linen” New Era April 2011.

I Am Cherry Alive...

I Am Cherry Alive by Delmore Schwartz

“I am cherry alive,” the little girl sang,

“Each morning I am something new:

I am apple, I am plum, I am just as excited

As the boys who made the Hallowe’en bang:

I am tree, I am cat, I am blossom too:

When I like, if I like, I can be someone new,

Someone very old, a witch in a zoo:

I can be someone else whenever I think who,

And I want to be everything sometimes too,

And I put it in along with everything

To make the grown-ups laugh whenever I sing:

And I sing: It is true; It is untrue;

I know, I know, the true is untrue,

The peach has a pit,

The pit has a peach:

And both may be wrong

When I sing my song,

But I don’t tell the grown-ups, because it is sad,

And I want them to laugh just like I do

Because they grew up

And forgot what they knew

And they are sure

I will forget it some day too.

They are wrong. They are wrong.

When I sang my song, I knew, I knew!

I am red, I am gold,

I am green, I am blue,

I will always be me,

I will always new!"

Did You Really Just Say That To Me?

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?

by Robert Hershon

Don’t fill up on bread

I say absent-mindedly

The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be receding a bit, says

Did you really just say that to me?

What he doesn’t know

is that when we’re walking

together, when we get

to the curb

I sometimes start to reach

for his hand

Oh, how I relate to this poem! It doesn’t matter how old my kids get, the reflex to parent them always remains. The reality they’ve grown up and don’t need me telling them to “look both ways” before crossing the street is hard to grasp.

Hershon describes this sentiment in a great poem with very few words. I can perfectly imagine being somewhere like Willow Street and reminding my kids (okay, my adult children) to go easy filling up on the bread but I would never in a million years impose my opinion on my friends. What’s up with that? And, I’ve also had those moments where I forget that my kids no longer need curb assistance. Love this poem!

Lacking Inspiration...

Bad Day by Kay Ryan

Not every day

Is a good day

for the elfin tailor.

Some days

the stolen cloth

reveals what it

was made for:

a handsome weskit

or the jerkin

of an elfin sailor.

Other days

the tailor

sees a jacket

in his mind

and sets about

to find the fabric.

But some days

neither the idea

nor the material

presents itself;

and these are

the hard days

for the tailor elf.

Yesterday I was struggling with one of my papers due for finals week and I remembered Kay Ryan’s poem. Ryan was the US Poet Laureate from 2008-2010.

Anyway, some days neither the ideas or material seems to come, I guess for tailors and writers alike! Hope the writing process goes a little better for me today; major paper due this Thursday!

The Center Cannot Hold...

Today is St. Patricks Day and instead of any leprechaun tales, in honor of Ireland, I’ll print a passage from the great Irish poet, W. B. Yeats.

It’s one stanza from The Second Coming, one of Yeats best known poems. In fact, if you’ve heard people use the phrase “the center cannot hold” or “things fall apart” they’re quoting Yeats (and might not even know it).

It’s kind of a dismal poem for a holiday, but Yeats wrote the poem in 1919, a rough time in history, hence, his somber vision of the world falling apart. But, it’s a classic, and a glimpse of why Yeats won the Nobel Prize in Literature just a few years later.

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity."

-W. B Yeats, The Second Coming

The Turtle

Turtle by Kay Ryan

Who would be a turtle who could help it?

A barely mobile hard roll, a four oared helmet,

She can ill afford the chances she must take

In rowing toward the grasses that she eats.

Her track is graceless, like dragging

A packing-case places, and almost any slope

Defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,

She’s often stuck up to the axle on her way

To something edible. With everything optimal,

She skirts the ditch which would convert

Her shell into a serving dish. She lives

Below luck-level, never imagining some lottery

Will change her load of pottery to wings.

Her only levity is patience,

The sport of truly chastened things.