q

Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country.  Why did we look up for a blessing - instead of around, and down?  What hope we have lies here.  Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon.  Not from above, but from below.  Not in the light that binds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.

 

Ursula K. Le Guin

 

 

Stephen Wilder

p

To the Traveler

 

These stones aren't sad.

Within them lives gold,

they have the seeds of planets,

they have bells in their depths,

gloves of iron, marriages

of time with amethysts:

on the inside laughing with rubies,

nourishing themselves from lightening.

 

Because of this, traveler, pay attention

to the hardships of the road,

to the mysteries on the walls.

 

I know this at great cost,

that all life is not outward

nor all death within,

and that the age writes letters

with water and stone for no one,

so that no one knows,

so that no one understands anything.

 

Pablo Neruda (trans. by Dennis Maloney)

 

 

Stephen Wilder

q

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer.  But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

Henry David Thoreau

 

Stephen Wilder

p

     - When They Sleep

 

All people are children when they sleep.

There's no war in them then.

They open their hands and breathe

in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them.

 

They pucker their lips like small children

and open their hands halfway,

soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.

The stars stand guard

and a haze veils the sky,

a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.

 

If only we could speak to one another then

when our hearts are half-open flowers.

Words like golden bees

would drift in.

- God, teach me the language of sleep.

 

     Rolf Jacobsen (trans. by Robert Hedin)

 

 

p

Vocation

This dream the world is having about itself

includes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail,

a groove in the grass my father showed us all

one day while meadowlarks were trying to tell

something better about to happen.

I dreamed the trace to the mountains, over the hills,

and there a girl who belonged wherever she was.

But then my mother called us back to the car:

she was afraid; she always blamed the place,

the time, anything my father planned.

Now both of my parents, the long line through the plain

the meadowlarks, the sky, the world's whole dream

remain, and I hear him say while I stand between the two,

helpless, both of them part of me:

"Your job is to find what the world is trying to be." William Stafford

q

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

     Helen Keller

q

Act as if what you do makes a difference.  It does.

    William James

p

Call and Answer

     August 2002

 

Tell me why it is we don't lift our voices these days

And cry over what is happening.  Have you noticed

The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?

 

I say to myself:  "Go on, cry.  What's the sense

Of being an adult and having no voice?  Cry out!

See who will answer!  This is Call and Answer!"

 

We will have to call especially loud to reach

Our angels, who are hard of hearing; they are hiding

In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.

 

Have we agreed to so many wars that we can't

Escape from silence?  If we don't lift our voices, we allow

Others (who are ourselves) to rob the house.

 

How come we've listened to the great criers - Neruda,

Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass - and now

We're silent as sparrows in the little bushes?

 

Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.

Where are we in the week?  Is it Thursday yet?

Hurry, cry now!  Soon Sunday night will come.

 

     Robert Bly

 

q

Peace between countries must rest on the solid foundation of love between individuals.

     Mohandas K. Ghandi

p

A Path through Grass

 

A path through grass

worn as an old hoehandle

and pale as silver.

The silent things

that build bridges so many places,

roads after dead people, a handle,

a path in the field

moves like an unreal thing through the summer,

moon bridges build over the green seas.

 

Rolf Jacobson