Sunday, September 22, 2013

I Write of That Journey


I remember how my mother would hold me.
I would look up at her sometimes and see her weep.

I understand now what was happening.
Love so strong a force
it broke the cage, 

and she disappeared from everything
for a blessed
moment.

All actions have evolved 
from the taste of flight; 
the hope of freedom
moves our cells
and limbs.

Unable to live on the earth, Mira ventured out alone in the sky - 
I write of that journey
of becoming as 
free as
God.

Don't forget love; 
it will bring all the madness you need
to unfurl yourself across
the universe.





Mira 
From:  Love Poems from God
Daniel Ladinsky 
Photo:  Peter Bowers







Tuesday, September 17, 2013

dew light


Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day

there is less of it I know none of that 
as I walk out through the early garden

only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up

without a number or a present age.  





W.S. Merwin 
Photo:  Peter Bowers






Wednesday, September 11, 2013

No Path



There is No Path that Goes all the Way 
Han Shan

Not that it stops us looking
for the full continuation.

The one line in the poem
we can start and follow

straight to the end.  The fixed belief
we can hold, facing a stranger

that saves us the trouble 
of a real conversation.

But one day you are not
just imagining an empty chair

where your loved one sat.
You are not just telling a story

where the bridge is down
and there's nowhere to cross.

You are not just trying to pray
to a God you imagined
would keep you safe.

No, you've come to the place
where nothing you've done

will impress and nothing you 
can promise will avert

the silent confrontation.
The place where

your body already seems to know
the way, having kept

to the last, its own secret
reconnaissance.

But still, there is no path
that goes all the way,

one conversation leads 
to another, 

one breath to the next
until

there's no breath at all, 

just
the inevitable 
final release
of the  burden.

And then, 
wouldn't your life
have to start 
all over again
for you to know
even a little 
of who you had been? 





David Whyte







Sunday, September 8, 2013

Sweet Darkness



When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone, 
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark 
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The  world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone 
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.





David Whyte
Photo:  Peter Bowers








Thursday, September 5, 2013

Love After Love




The time will come 
when, with elation
 you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here.  Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from  the bookshelf, 

the photographs, the desperate notes, 
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.  Feast on your life.





Derek Walcott
Photo:  Peter Bowers













For The Senses




May the touch of your skin
Register the beauty
Of the otherness
That surrounds you.

May your listening be attuned
To the deeper silence
Where sound is honed
To bring distance home.

May the fragrance
Of a breathing meadow
Refresh your heart
And remind you you are
A child of the earth

And when you partake 
Of food and drink, 
May your taste quicken 
To the gift and sweetness
That flows from the earth.

May your inner eye
See through the surfaces
And glean the real presence
Of everything that meets you.

May your soul beautify
The desire of your eyes
That you might glimpse
The infinity that hides
In the simple sights
That seem worn
To your usual eyes.  





John O'Donohue
Photo:  Peter Bowers






Monday, September 2, 2013

still here...



My dear octogenarian father looks at me from across the restaurant table with those eyes, pregnant with a lifetime of reflections, and says, "Strange how it all ... turns out... so unexpected..."

"How do you mean, dad?"

"You go through life, doing this and that... you have children, they grow up... you work, you make money, you lose money, you retire... they take everything away from you... but... well... I'm still... we're still... here... aren't we, son... ?

Still here, dad.   Still here.





Jeff Foster