This is the moment when you see again
the red berries of the mountain ash
and in the dark sky
the birds’ night migrations.
It grieves me to think
the dead won’t see them—
these things we depend on,
they disappear.
What will the soul do for solace then?
I tell myself maybe it won’t need
these pleasures anymore;
maybe just not being is simply enough,
hard as that is to imagine.
Tag: Poetry
Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies
I Met My Solitude by Naomi ReplanskyI
I met my Solitude. We two stood glaring.
I had to tremble, meeting her face to face.
Then she saying, and I with bent head hearing:
“You sent me forth to exile and disgrace,
“Most faithful of your friends, then most forsaken,
Forgotten in breast, in bath, in books, in bed.
To someone else you gave the gifts I gave you,
And you embraced another in my stead.
“Though we meet now, it is not of your choosing.
I am not fooled. And I do not forgive.
I am less kind, but did you treat me kindly?
In armored peace from now on let us live.”
So did my poor hurt Solitude accuse me.
Little was left of good between us two.
And I drew back: “How can we stay together,
You jealous of me, and I laid waste by you?
“By you, who used to be my good provider,
My secret nourisher, and mine alone.
The strength you taught me I must use against you,
And now with all my strength I wish you gone.”
Then she, my enemy, and still my angel,
Said in that harsh voice that once was sweet:
“I will come back, and every time less handsome,
And I will look like Death when last we meet.”
Weathering Hate by Harryette Mullen
The way, exposed to weather, a body is worn. Velvet threads begin to
wither, rapid ripened beyond the burst bloom. Vibrant strands, cut short, fray, unweaving faded fabric. Sun-struck, rain-warped, storm-blasted, rough-sanded in whipping wind that whittles rock.
Small, torturous fractures opened in stone where water freezes in the
pores with grains of salt. Cracks in the surface pried apart by unrelenting pressure. With incessant freezing and thawing, shock and fatigue speed rugged stress to ultimate breakdown. Intemperate weather, abrading edges, gradually disintegrates resolute minerals.
A boulder, even a mountain, will wear down. So will bodies, bent and
broken under toilsome burdens, caving beneath unbearable weight, in
adverse climate, exposed to harsh elements, caustic rains.
Healing Song by Adam Bauer
I am healing
I am healing
I am healed
I am safe and peaceful in my body
I am healing
I am healing
I am healed
I am safe and peaceful in my body
The outside world
heartbreaking as it feels
It’s the perfect place
I’m meant to be
The outside world
heartbreaking as it feels
It’s the perfect place
I’m meant to be
Hardi Om Tat Sat
Satchidananda
Hardi Om Tat Sat
Satchidananda
Hardi Om Tat Sat
Satchidananda
I am happy
I am seen
and I am known
Everywhere I go I feel at home
I am happy
I am seen
and I am known
Everywhere I go I feel at home
I am blissful
I am conscious
I am true
Love is the essence of my nature
Hardi Om Tat Sat
Satchidananda
Hardi Om Tat Sat
Satchidananda
Hardi Om Tat Sat
Satchidananda
Guidance and protection is my daily bread
Seva is the path I walk along
Guidance and protection is my daily bread
Seva is the path I walk along
Every day I am blessed to be alive
Bowling humbly to the cosmos
Every day I am blessed to be alive
Bowling humbly to the cosmos
Hardi Om Tat Sat
Satchidananda
Hardi Om Tat Sat
Satchidananda
Hardi Om Tat Sat
Satchidananda
🕉️
Ditty by Kevin Young
You, rare as Georgia
snow. Falling
hard. Quick.
Candle shadow.
The cold
spell that catches
us by surprise.
The too-early blooms,
tricked, gardenias blown about,
circling wind. Green figs.
Nothing stays. I want
to watch you walk
the hall to the cold tile
bathroom—all
night, a lifetime.
Imaginary Morning Glory by C. D. Wright
Whether or not the water was freezing. The body
would break its sheathe. Without layer on layer
of feather and air to insulate the loving belly.
A cloudy film surrounding the point of entry. If blue
were not blue how could love be love. But if the body
were made of rings. A loose halo would emerge
in the telluric light. If anyone were entrusted to verify
this rare occurrence. As the petal starts to
dwindle and curl unto itself. And only then. Love,
blue. Hallucinogenic blue, love.
Twenty-One Love Poems [(The Floating Poem, Unnumbered)] by Adrienne Rich
will haunt mine—tender, delicate
your lovemaking, like the half-curled frond
of the fiddlehead fern in forests
just washed by sun. Your traveled, generous thighs
between which my whole face has come and come—
the innocence and wisdom of the place my tongue has found there—
the live, insatiate dance of your nipples in my mouth—
your touch on me, firm, protective, searching
me out, your strong tongue and slender fingers
reaching where I had been waiting years for you
in my rose-wet cave—whatever happens, this is.
How to Love January Gill O’Neil
there is that question of how to love,
how to bundle yourself against the frosted morning—
the crunch of icy grass underfoot, the scrape
of cold wipers along the windshield—
and convert time into distance.
What song to sing down an empty road
as you begin your morning commute?
And is there enough in you to see, really see,
the three wild turkeys crossing the street
with their featherless heads and stilt-like legs
in search of a morning meal? Nothing to do
but hunker down, wait for them to safely cross.
As they amble away, you wonder if they want
to be startled back into this world. Maybe you do, too,
waiting for all this to give way to love itself,
to look into the eyes of another and feel something—
the pleasure of a new lover in the unbroken night,
your wings folded around him, on the other side
of this ragged January, as if a long sleep has ended.
The moon rose over the bay. I had a lot of feelings by Donika Kelly
of my skin, grateful to swing my limbs
and have them move as I intend, though
my knee, though my shoulder, though something
is torn or tearing. Today, a dozen squid, dead
on the harbor beach: one mostly buried,
one with skin empty as a shell and hollow
feeling, and, though the tentacles look soft,
I do not touch them. I imagine they
were startled to find themselves in the sun.
I imagine the tide simply went out
without them. I imagine they cannot
feel the black flies charting the raised hills
of their eyes. I write my name in the sand:
Donika Kelly. I watch eighteen seagulls
skim the sandbar and lift low in the sky.
I pick up a pebble that looks like a green egg.
To the ditch lily I say I am in love.
To the Jeep parked haphazardly on the narrow
street I am in love. To the roses, white
petals rimmed brown, to the yellow lined
pavement, to the house trimmed in gold I am
in love. I shout with the rough calculus
of walking. Just let me find my way back,
let me move like a tide come in.
Compassion Camp 