p

LISTEN

with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

- W.S. MERWIN -

q

Reflect on your blessings, of which every man has many - not on your
past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Charles Dickens

p

The Bent-Over Ones

Some trees look down when

they walk, certain willows

you know, all the way from

Lousiana to Alaska without

looking up. They studied

centuries of buffalo grass

toward Dakota. I have

traveled among foreign

trees. Some of them kneel

when they approach mountains.

Like them I have learned quite

A bit about the ground.

William Stafford

q

Often trust is not full. We are not certain that God hears us because
we consider ourselves worthless and as nothing. This is ridiculous and
the very cause of our weakness. I have felt this way myself.
Julian of Norwich

p

Whether There is Enjoyment in Bitterness

This afternoon, let me

Be a sad person. Am I not

Permitted (like other men)

To be sick of myself?

Am I not allowed to be hollow,

Or fall in the hole

Or break my bones (within me)

In the trap set by my own

Lie to myself? O my friend,

I too must sin and sin.

I too must hurt other people and

(Since I am no exception)

I must be hated by them.

Do not forbid me, therefore,

To taste the same bitter poison,

And drink the gall that love

(Love most of all) so easily becomes.

Do not forbid me (once again) to be

Angry, bitter, disillusioned,

Wishing I could die.

While life and death

Are killing one another in my flesh

Leave me in peace. I can enjoy,

Even as other men, this agony.

Only (whoever you may be)

Pray for my soul. Speak my name

To Him, for in my bitterness

I hardly speak to Him: and He

While He is busy killing me

Refuses to listen.

Thomas Merton

q

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.

Henry David Thoreau  (Walden)

p

Grace Note

It is at last any morning

not answering to a name

I wake before there is light

hearing once more that same

music without repetition

or beginning playing

away into itself

in silence like a wave

a unison in its own

key that I seem

to have heard before I

was listening but by the time

I hear it now it is gone

as when on a morning

alive with sunlight

almost at the year's end

a feathered breath a bird

flies in at the open window

then vanishes leaving me

believing what I do not see

W. S. Merwin

q

Geography, the formal way in which we grapple with this real mystery,
is finally knowledge that calls up something in the land we recognize
and respond to. It gives us a sense of place and a sense of
community. Both are indispensable to a state of well-being...
Barry Lopez

p

The Weighing

The heart's reasons

seen clearly,

even the hardest

will carry

its whip-marks and sadness

and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved

eland forgives

the drought-starved lion

who finally takes her,

enters willingly then

the life she cannot refuse,

and is lion, is fed,

and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness

measured against all the dark

and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us

only the strength we have and we give it.

Then it asks more, and we give it.

Jane Hirshfield

q

Don't wait to start living. Live now! Your life should be real in this very moment…You can live every moment of every day deeply, in touch with the wonders of life.  Then you will learn to live, and, at the same time, learn to die.  A person who does not know how to die does not know how to live, and vice versa.  You should learn to die—to die immediately.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen master, scholar, author, poet, and peace activist, b. 1926