Poems that I love

by David Whyte There is a faith in loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours, especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand held out to you this way. I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness and what we feel we are worthy of in this world. Years ago in the Hebrides I remember an old man who walked every morning on the grey stones to the shore of baying seals, who would press his hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind and say his prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the water, and I think of the story of the storm and everyone waking and seeing the distant yet familiar figure far across the water calling to them, and how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking, and that calling, and that moment we have to say yes, except it will not come so grandly, so Biblically, but more subtly and intimately in the face of the one you know you have to love,

by Zenshin Philip Whalen for Adin, 4/11/11 Do these leaves know as much as I? They must Know that and more—or less. We See each other through the glass. We bless each other Desk and tree, a fallen world of holiness. Blessed Francis taught the birds All the animals understood. Who will Pray for us who are less than stone or wood? I think of St. Dot's during sesshin

by Marge Piercy This is how things begin to tilt into change, how coalitions are knit from strands of hair, of barbed wire, twine, knitting wool and gut, how people ease into action arguing each inch, but the tedium of it is watching granite erode. Let us meet to debate meeting, the day, the time, the length. Let us discuss whether we will sit or stand or hang from the ceiling or take it lying down. Let us argue about the chair and the table and the chairperson and the motion to table the chair. In the room fog gathers under the ceiling and thickens in every brain. Let us form committees spawning subcommittees all laying little moldy eggs of reports. Under the grey fluorescent sun they will crack to hatch scuttling lizards of more committees. The Pliocene gathers momentum and fades. the earth tilts on its axis. More and more snows fall each winter and less melt each spring. A new ice age is pressing the glaciers forward over the floor. We watch the wall of ice

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.

by Lynn Ungar It's hard not to laugh. What a picture it makes— the dumbfounded shepherds and the stricken sheep, the cacophony of bleating and the barking of sheepdogs dashing and nipping in a vain attempt at order, and over it all the angels trying to make their shimmery voices heard. “A who? Wrapped in what?” the shepherds holler back. “Where are we supposed to go?” Poor guys. They wanted directions, a purpose, some sense of how the story might end. And all they got, all any of us ever get, was the sound of angels, somewhere beyond the din, singing “Glory, Hosanna” across the improbable night.

by Jane Hirshfield for J.S. It was like this: you were happy, then you were sad, then happy again, then not. It went on. You were innocent or you were guilty. Actions were taken, or not. At times you spoke, at other times you were silent. Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say? Now it is almost over. Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life. It does this not in forgiveness— between you, there is nothing to forgive— but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment he sees the bread is finished with transformation. Eating, too, is a thing now only for others. It doesn’t matter what they will make of you or your days: they will be wrong, they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man, all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention. Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad, you slept, you awakened. Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

by Li-Young Lee And what did I learn, a child, on the Sabbath? A father is bound to kill his favorite son, and to his father's cherishing the beloved answers Yes. The rest of the week, I hid from my father, grateful I was not prized. But how deserted he looked, with no son who pleased him. And what else did I learn? That light is born of dark to usurp its ancient rank. And when a pharaoh dreams of ears of wheat or grazing cows, it means he's seen the shapes of the oncoming years. The rest of my life I wondered: Are there dreams that help us to understand the past? Or is any looking back a waste of time, the whole of it a too finely woven net of innumerable conditions, causes, effects, countereffects, impossible to read? Like rain on the surface of a pond. Where's Joseph when you need him? Did Jacob, his father, understand the dream of the ladder? Or did his enduring its mystery make him richer? ** Why are you crying? my father asked in my