Posts

Reckless Poem

by Mary Oliver Today again I am hardly myself. It happens over and over. It is heaven-sent. It flows through me like the blue wave. Green leaves – you may believe this or not – have once or twice emerged from the tips of my fingers somewhere deep in the woods, in the reckless seizure of spring. Though, of course, I also know that other song, the sweet passion of one-ness. Just yesterday I watched an ant crossing a path, through the       tumbled pine needles she toiled. And I thought: she will never live another life but this one. And I thought: if she lives her life with all her strength       is she not wonderful and wise? And I continued this up the miraculous pyramid of everything       until I came to myself. And still, even in these northern woods, on these hills of sand, I have flown from the other window of myself to become white heron, blue whale,       red fox, hedgehog. Oh, sometimes already my body has felt like the body of a flower! Sometim

Sit Quietly

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by Nanao Sakaki If you have time to chatter, Read books. If you have time to read, Walk into the mountain, desert, and ocean. If you have time to walk, Sing songs and dance. If you have time to dance, Sit quietly, you Happy Lucky Idiot. for Seraphina Tarrant on her graduation from UCLA!--although to the unperceptive eye there does not appear to be much "silent solitude" around you, some of us think we know better. I thought of you when I read this poem. You do all recommended activities in abundance and then some. I am including a picture of a place where we both walked into the ocean, Manly Beach NSW.

We Have A Beautiful Mother

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by Alice Walker We have a beautiful Mother Her hills Are buffaloes Her buffaloes Hills. We have a beautiful Mother Her oceans Are wombs Her wombs Oceans. We have a beautiful Mother Her teeth The white stones At the edge Of the water The summer Grasses Her plentiful Hair. We have a beautiful Mother Her green lap Immense Her brown embrace Eternal Her blue body Everything we know.

Harvest of Thorns

by Scott O'Brien Whom are they arresting? Today, for the bomb in Times Square, the one that did not go off, except in people’s hearts and exploded faith - after calling us back from the borders of daily care to stand and watch in horror. Whom did they arrest? Not the insatiable hatred, not this misplaced passion, obsessed with righting wrongs at the expense of all that is right. Not the shadow of revenge, which knows no solace, runs from loving caresses, spits out the cloying taste of reconciliation. No, they never arrest the right one: that shadow fleeing over there, just now disappearing down the subway, rounding that corner, the one who has never yet been caught in all these millennia of wars, murderous martyrs, and lunacy. Each springs boxes him in, every butterfly is a bomber, fixing him in her sights, every child’s smile a vicious attack; only a cemetery feels like home to him. Such a strange universe, calling for help, holding so c

Hatred

by Wislawa Szymborska Look, how constantly capable and how well maintained in our century: hatred. How lightly she regards high impediments. How easily she leaps and overtakes. She's not like other feelings. She's both older and younger than they. She herself gives birth to causes which awaken her to life. If she ever dozes, it's not an eternal sleep. Insomnia does not sap her strength, but adds to it. Religion or no religion, as long as one kneels at the starting-block. Fatherland or no fatherland, as long as one tears off at the start. She begins as fairness and equity. Then she propels herself. Hatred. Hatred. She veils her face with a mien of romantic ecstasy. Oh, the other feelings -- decrepit and sluggish. Since when could that brotherhood count on crowds? Did ever empathy urge on toward the goal? How many clients did doubt abduct? Only she abducts who knows her own. Talented, intelligent, very industrious. Do we need to say how

THE PROBLEM OF DESCRIBING COLOR

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by Robert Hass If I said—remembering in summer, The cardinal’s sudden smudge of red In the bare gray winter woods— If I said, red ribbon on the cocked straw hat Of the girl with pooched-out lips Dangling a wiry lapdog In the painting by Renoir— If I said fire, if I said blood welling from a cut— Or flecks of poppy in the tar-grass scented summer air On a wind-struck hillside outside Fano— If I said, her one earring tugging at her silky lobe, If she tells fortunes with a deck of fallen leaves Until it comes out right— Rouged nipple, mouth— (How could you not love a woman Who cheats at the Tarot?) Red, I said. Sudden, red.

FUTURES IN LILACS

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by Robert Hass “Tender Little Buddha,” she said Of my least Buddha-like member. She was probably quoting Allen Ginsberg. Who was probably paraphrasing Walt Whitman. After the Civil War, after the death of Lincoln, That was a good time to own railroad stocks. But Whitman was in the Library of Congress, Researching alternative Americas, Reading up on the curiosities of Hindoo philosophy, Studying the etchings of stone carvings Of strange couplings in a book. She was taking off a blouse, Almost transparent, the color of a silky tangerine. From Capitol Hill Walt Whitman must have been able to see Willows gathering the river haze In the cooling and still-humid twilight. He was in love with a trolley conductor In the summer of—what was it?—1867? 1868? [from Time and Materials, Poems 1997-2005]