Poems that I love

by Lucille Clifton For my dear friend Bonnie Johnson. Please join me in praying for her safe passage between this and that. may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that bendición de los barcos (En el puerto de Santa María) por Lucille Clifton puede la marea que está entrando ahora mismo el borde de nuestra comprensión llevar a cabo lo más allá de la cara del miedo puedes besar al viento y después aparte de él seguro, confidiado de que te vas a querer igual. que puedes abrir tus ojos al agua ondeando el agua para siempre y que en tu inocencia vas a navegar a esto a aquello. Spanish translation by Ken Ireland For more of my poems, click here! Blessing of the Tuna Fleet at Groix 1923 , a painting by P

by Adyashanti If you prefer smoke over fire then get up now and leave. For I do not intend to perfume your mind's clothing with more sooty knowledge. No, I have something else in mind. Today I hold a flame in my left hand and a sword in my right. There will be no damage control today. God is in a mood to plunder your riches and fling you nakedly into such breathtaking poverty that all that will be left of you will be a tendency to shine. So don't just sit around this flame choking on your mind. This is no campfire song to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with. Jump now into the space between thoughts and exit this dream before I burn the damn place down.

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.