It’s Like Wyoming
At sunset you have piled the empties and
come to the edge, where the wind kicks up
outside of town. A scatter of rain
rakes the desert. All this year’s weather
whistles at once through the fence.
This land so wide, so gray, so still that
it carries you free—no one here need bother
except for their own breathing. You touch
a fencepost and the world steadies onward:
barbed wire, field, you, night.
William Stafford
A Scale Weighs the Outer World in Pounds and Ounces
A winch,
with its drag drum and hoist drum, is strong.
Grief is stronger,
yet weighs no more than the pattern
of leaf and sun on the bark of a tree.
Joy, too, is strong,
yet changes no more than the cloth of a curtain
pulled open rather than closed.
Emotion—handless and eyeless—
runs through the body like current through copper wire.
Equally innocent of its ends, equally voracious
A scale weighs the outer world in pounds and ounces.
The sum does not alter,
whatever happens within and between us.
One will feel this as a blessing, another as horror.
Jane Hirshfield
From Blossoms
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the joy
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.
~ Li-Young Lee ~
Warning
When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other peoples' gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beer mats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
~ Jenny Joseph ~
If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.
Catherine Aird, writer
On the Uncountable Nature of Things
I.
Thus, not the thing held in memory, but this:
The fruit tree with its scars, thin torqued branches;
The high burnished sheen of morning light
Across its trunk; the knuckle-web of ancient knots,
II.
The swift, laboring insistence of insects-
Within, the pulse of slow growth in sap-dark cores,
And the future waiting latent in fragile cells:
The last, terse verses of curled leaves hanging in air-
And the dry, tender arc of the fruitless branch.
III.
Yes: the tree's spine conditioned by uncountable
Days of rain and drought: all fleeting coordinates set
Against a variable sky-recounting faithfully
The thing as it is-transient, provisional, changing
Constantly in latitude-a refugee not unlike
Us in this realm of exacting, but unpredictable, time.
IV.
And only once a branch laden with perfect
Fruit-only once daybreak weighed out perfectly by
The new bronze of figs, not things in memory,
But as they are here: the roar and plough of daylight,
The perfect, wild cacophony of the present-
Each breath measured and distinct in a universe ruled
V.
By particulars-each moment a universe:
As when under night heat, passion sparks-unique,
New in time, and hands, obedient, divine,
As Desire dilates eye-pulse the blue-veined breast,
Touch driving, forging the hungering flesh:
To the far edge of each moment's uncharted edge-
VI.
For the flesh too is earth, desire storm to the marrow-
Still-the dream of simplicity in the midst of motion:
Recollection demanding a final tallying of accounts,
The mind, loyal clerk, driven each moment to decide-
Even as the tree's wood is split and sweat still graces
The crevices of the body, which moment to weigh in,
For memory's sake, on the mobile scales of becoming.
~ Ellen Hinsey ~
The Pear Tree
Today the ninety-year-old pear tree
In my neighbors' garden
Stricken with petals
Is white all over
Startling as a cry
Its every branch and shoot
Spur twig and spray
Has broken into blossom
And every blossom
Is flinging itself open
Wide open
Disclosing every tender filament
Sticky with nectar
Beaded with black pollen.
Anne Porter
None of Us are Free
Well you better listen my sisters and brothers,
'cause if you do you can hear
there are voices still calling across the years.
And they're all crying across the ocean,
and they're crying across the land,
and they will till we all come to understand
None of us are free.
None of us are free.
None of us are free if one of us is chained,
None of us are free.
And there are people still in darkness,
and they just can't see the light.
If you don't say its wrong then that says its right.
We got to try to feel for each other;
let our brothers know that we care.
Got to get the message, send it out loud and clear:
None of us are free.
None of us are free.
None of us are free if one of us is chained,
None of us are free.
It's a simple truth we all need,
just to hear and to see:
None of us are free if one of us is chained,
None of us are free.
Now I swear your salvation isn't too hard to find,
but none of us can find it on our own.
We've got to join together
in spirit, heart and mind,
so that every soul who's suffering
will know that they're not alone.
None of us are free.
None of us are free.
None of us are free if one of us is chained,
None of us are free.
If you just look around you,
you’re gonna see what I say
’cause the world is getting smaller each passing day.
Now it's time to start making changes,
and it's time for us all to realize,
that the truth is shining bright right before our eyes:
None of us are free.
None of us are free.
None of us are free if one of us is chained,
None of us are free.
Solomon Burke
In a real sense all of life is interrelated. All persons are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you aught to be and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Little Apocalypse
The butterfly’s out on noon patrol,
dragooning down to the rapt flower heads.
The ground shudders beneath the ant’s hoof.
Under cover of sunlight, the dung beetle bores through his summer
dreams.
High up, in another world,
the clouds assemble and mumble their messages.
Sedate, avaricious life,
The earthworm huddled in darkness,
the robin, great warrior, above,
Reworking across the shattered graves of his fathers.
The grass, in its green time, bows to whatever moves it.
Afternoon’s ready to shove its spade
deep in the dirt,
Coffins and sugar bones awash in the sun.
Inside the basements of the world,
the clear-out’s begun,
Lightning around the thunder-throat of the underneath,
A drop of fire and a drop of fire,
Bright bandages of fog
starting to comfort the aftermath.
Then, from the black horizon, four horses heave up, flash on their
faces.
Charles Wright
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of
civilization. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
Carmel Point
The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses—
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads—
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine
beauty Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff. —As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.
Robinson Jeffers
Window Poems (#19)
Peace. May he waken
not too late from his wraths
to find his window still
clear in its wall, and the world
there. Within things
there is peace, and at the end
of things. It is the mind
turned away from the world
that turns against it.
The armed presidents stand
on deadly islands in the air,
overshadowing the crops.
Peace. Let men, who cannot be brothers
to themselves, be brothers
to mulleins and daisies
that have learned to live on the earth.
Let them understand the pride
of sycamores and thrushes
that receive the light gladly, and do not
think to illuminate themselves.
Let them know that the foxes and the owls
are joyous in their lives,
and their gayety is praise to the heavens,
and they do not raven with their minds.
In the night the devourer,
and in the morning all things
find the light a comfort.
Peace. The earth turns
against all living, in the end.
And when mind has not outraged
itself against its nature,
they die and become the place
they lived in. Peace to the bones
that walk in the sun toward death,
for they will come to it soon enough.
Let the phoebes return in the spring
and build their nests of moss
in the porch rafters,
and in autumn let them depart.
Let the garden be planted,
and let the frost come.
Peace to the porch and the garden.
Peace to the man in the window.
Wendell Berry
The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and wasteful.” Wendell Berry
These Mountains are Moved
(For all the mountains. Forgive us.)
It is here, in this place
of relief and strong breath
that rocks seep
the juice of life.
They crack a smile as we pass,
with bristly tops spitting in the wind.
These mountains are the ancients
having risen to cradle
the babes of now.
On their bellies they lay, upon the body skin,
their rounded shoulders and arms
shelter living seeds of time.
The weight and pungence of long embrace
turn hugs to chokes. As babes will do,
we claw at these arms like a madman defied.
We scratch and maul and pierce them too.
With iron and wheel and will
these mountains are moved.
Mercedes Lee
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the
environment. -Ansel Adams, photographer (1902-1984)
This week a poem submitted by one of our group. Thoughts and comments are welcome.
baily's beads
life is a song
in this night
the dark is met by dark
and harder conversation.
the coming eclipse
leans heavy on the sky
i'm not ready
for this stage of life to pass
punctuated
by a brief absence of light
my lack of preparation
fails to slow time
this dark
will only be a verse
the chorus will echo
of lightlyness.
my prayer now is of desired resonance:
i yearn to dwell on
the brightlyness
of the moon
as it returned to the sky
not the moment
filled by loss
e.h. sullivan
Note: Near the beginning and end of total solar eclipse, the thin slice of the Sun visible appears broken up into beads of light. These lights are called 'Baily's Beads' after the British astronomer Francis Bailey, who discovered them. They occur because the edge of the Moon is not smooth but jagged with mountain peaks.
Yesterday,
I shattered the ice
To draw water—
No matter, this morning
Frozen just as solid.
Rengetsu
Frank O'Hara
Sabbaths 1998, VI
By expenditure of hope,
Intelligence, and work,
You think you have it fixed.
It is unfixed by rule.
Within the darkness, all
Is being changed, and you
Also will be changed.
Now I recall to mind
A costly year: Jane Kenyon,
Bill Lippert, Philip Sherrard,
All in the same spring dead,
So much companionship
Gone as the river goes.
And my good workhorse Nick
Dead, who called out to me
In his conclusive pain
To ask my help. I had
No help to give. And flood
Covered the cropland twice.
By summer's end there are
No more perfect leaves.
But won't you be ashamed
To count the passing year
At its mere cost, your debt
Inevitably paid?
For every year is costly,
As you know well. Nothing
Is given that is not
Taken, and nothing taken
That was not first a gift.
The gift is balanced by
Its total loss, and yet,
And yet the light breaks in,
Heaven seizing its moments
That are at once its own
And yours. The day ends
And is unending where
The summer tanager,
Warbler, and vireo
Sing as they move among
Illuminated leaves.
~ Wendell Berry ~
Praise Them
Li-Young Lee
The birds don't alter space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace. It is our own
astonishment collects
in chill air. Be glad.
They equal their due
moment never begging,
and enter ours
without parting day. See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
Give up what you guessed
about a whirring heart, the little
beaks and claws, their constant hunger.
We're the nervous ones.
If even one of our violent number
could be gentle
long enough that one of them
found it safe inside
our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze,
who wouldn't hear
what singing completes us?
Snowflakes
Snowflakes are fools God sweeps out of his kitchen.
Last night he emptied his dustbin all over western
and we sure got a load of them
on top of everything else.
No wonder snow falls in such a light-headed mizzy,
makes us all silly,
immune, we believe, to all life's unreasonable demands—
our own children
when they become strange to us,
parents when they are frighteningly familiar because we've become
them, lovers
who want us to be their parents and children.
I spent this morning watching the border collie on Highway 200
chasing magpies from a road-killed deer. Entitled,
so spit-snapping-angry
that by noon when a golden eagle blew down
(that pitbull of raptors, known to airlift live lambs)
the dog hadn't yet had her first mouthful.
Had it been me I would have run home hurting for sympathy
and bit off my good husband's right ear,
kicked my own scat at my frightened children,
sung the family dirge: Injustice!
Then spent days as a field post, alone,
arm-wrestling with the winterly west wind.
At dusk the dog came home with one anvil-shaped hoof in her mouth,
seemed glad to have it.
Deborah Slicer
The last of human freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Victor Frankel, holocaust survivor
Ten Degrees
How beautiful the sun as it skims
across the air in the hush of ten degrees,
disc of palest yellow hope along a sky
of circumstance; how beautifully we watch it fall,
the random tern, forgotten mole,
the infant tree inside rough winter bark.
How beautiful this frost, female fingers
tracing down the glass, how beautiful
this world too cold to criticize itself;
how beautiful Earth's creatures are, happy
and forever safe from the only perfect tragedy,
which is of course to never have been born.
Tom Chandler
