whatever happens

 

Whatever happens. Whatever

what is is is what

I want. Only that. But that.

Galway Kinnell

a song on the end of the world

On the day the world ends

A bee circles a clover,

A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

Happy porpoises jump in the sea,

By the rainspout young sparrows are playing

And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends

Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,

A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,

Vegetable peddlers shout in the street

And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,

The voice of a violin lasts in the air

And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder

Are disappointed.

And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps

Do not believe it is happening now.

As long as the sun and the moon are above,

As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,

As long as rosy infants are born

No one believes it is happening now...

Czeslaw Milosz

The Collected Poems 1931-1987

the life of a day

Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has its own personality quirks which can easily be seen if you look closely. But there are so few days as compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than most people. But usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost traveler and bunches of cattle. For some reason we like to see days pass, even though most of us claim we don’t want to reach our last one for a long time. We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when we are convinced, our lives will start for real. Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted, as some days are, with the right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light breeze scented with a perfume made from the mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk.

Tom Hennen

from Darkness Sticks to Everything:

Collected and New Poems

Photo: Peter Bowers

barriers

Your task is not to seek for love, 

but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself

that you have built against it.

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

everything that happens

Everything that happens is the message:

you read an event and be one and wait,

like breasting a wave, all the while knowing

by living, though not knowing how to live.

Or workers built an antenna - a dish

aimed at stars - and they themselves are its message, 

crawling in and out, being worlds that loom, 

dot-dash, and sirens, and sustaining beams.

And sometimes no one is calling but we turn up

eye and ear - suddenly we fall into

sound before it begins, the breathing

so still it waits there under the breath - 

And then the green of leaves calls out, hills

where they wait or turn, clouds in their frenzied

stillness unfolding their careful words:

"Everything counts.  The message is the world."

William Stafford

Photo:  Peter Bowers