In the afternoons,
in the almost empty fields,
I hum the hymns
I used to sing

in church.
They could not tame me,
so they would not keep me,
alas,

and how that feels,
the weight of it,
I will not tell
any of you,

not ever.
Still, as they promised,
God, once he is in your heart,
is everywhere—

excerpt from Mary Oliver's The Beautiful, Striped Sparrow

The Apple Orchard

Come let us watch the sun go down

and walk in twilight through the orchard's green.

Does it not seem as if we had for long 

collected, saved and harbored within us

old memories? To find releases and seek new hopes, 

remembering half-forgotten joys,

mingled with darkness coming from within,

as we randomly voice our thoughts aloud

wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees

reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, 

branches which, bent under the fully ripened fruit,

wait patiently, trying to outlast, 

to serve another season's hundred days of toil,

straining, uncomplaining, by not breaking

but succeeding, even though the burden

should at times seem almost past endurance.

Not to falter! Not to be found wanting!

 

Thus must it be, when willingly you strive

throughout a long and uncomplaining life,

committed to one goal: to give yourself!

And silently to grow and to bear fruit.

 

 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

 

Invisible Work

Because no one could ever praise me enough,

because I don't mean these poems only

but the unseen

unbelievable effort it takes to live

the life that goes on between them,

I think all the time about invisible work.

About the young mother on Welfare

I interviewed years ago,

who said, "It's hard.

You bring him to the park,

run rings around yourself keeping him safe,

cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,

and there's no one

to say what a good job you're doing,

how you were patient and loving

for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."

And I, (who am used to feeling sorry for myself

because I am lonely,

when all the while, as the Chippewa poem says, 

I am being carried by great winds across the sky,)

thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,

the slow, unglamorous work of healing,

the way worms in the garden

tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe

and bees ransack this world into being,

while owls and poets stalk shadows,

our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers for everything, 

and the sea is a mother too,

whispering and whispering to us

long after we have stopped listening.

I stopped and let myself lean a moment 

against the blue shoulder of the air. 

The work of my heart

is the work of the world's heart.

There is no other art.

~ Alison Luterman ~

How to be a Poet (to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill— more of each
than you have— inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
And desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

~ Wendell Berry

Pope Francis:  Let us too become like poets of prayer: let us develop a taste for finding our own words, let us once again grasp those which teach us the Word of God.

'Three Little Birds' is Back

and it feels like a homecoming...it feels like this...

When my nineteen-year-old son turns on the kitchen tap
and leans down over the sink and tilts his head sideways
to drink directly from the stream of cool water,
I think of my older brother, now almost ten years gone,
who used to do the same thing at that age;
and when he lifts his head back up and, satisfied,
wipes the water dripping from his cheek
with his shirtsleeve, it’s the same casual gesture
my brother used to make; and I don’t tell him
to use a glass, the way our father told my brother,
because I like remembering my brother
when he was young, decades before anything
went wrong, and I like the way my son
becomes a little more my brother for a moment
through this small habit born of a simple need,
which, natural and unprompted, ties them together
across the bounds of death, and across time …
as if the clear stream flowed between two worlds
and entered this one through the kitchen faucet,
my son and brother drinking the same water.

"A Drink of Water" by Jeffrey Harrison

How God Talks to Me

Coffee in one hand
leaning in to share, listen:
How I talk to God.

“Momma, you’re special.”
Three-year-old touches my cheek.
How God talks to me.

While driving I make
lists: done, do, hope, love, hate, try.
How I talk to God.

Above the highway
hawk: high, alone, free, focused.
How God talks to me.

Rash, impetuous
chatter, followed by silence:
How I talk to God.

First, second, third, fourth
chance to hear, then another:
How God talks to me.

Fetal position
under flannel sheets, weeping
How I talk to God.

Moonlight on pillow
tending to my open wounds
How God talks to me.

Pulling from my heap
of words, the ones that mean yes:
How I talk to God.

Infinite connects
with finite, without words:
How God talks to me.

~ Kelly Belmonte

O Sapientia - a sonnet by Malcolm Guite

I cannot think unless I have been thought,

Nor can I speak unless I have been spoken.

I cannot teach except as I am taught,

Or break the bread except as I am broken.

O Mind behind the mind through which I seek,

O Light within the light by which I see,

O Word beneath the words with which I speak,

O founding, unfound Wisdom, finding me,

O sounding Song whose depth is sounding me,

O Memory of time, reminding me,

My Ground of Being, always grounding me,

My Maker’s Bounding Line, defining me,

Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring,

Come to me now, disguised as everything.

It Could Be...

It could be as simple
as using a good paring knife
and singing, as you peel the apple

from top to bottom, then kissing
your grandson's nose as you drop
the unbroken peel on his head.

It could be checking the herbs
in the outdoor pots, noticing
the basil needs water.

It could be wrapping yourself
in a prayer shawl, fingering your beads,
studying the Bible -- all the better

to empty the space, prepare the ground
for the silence which offers answers
to questions which never cease.

It could be putting on your hat,
your boots and your gloves
and shoveling Mrs. Cohen's walkway

before you drive her to the doctor.
You wish she would talk less,
but you tuck your impatience

into the pocket of your coat,
and it escapes only once.
It could be as simple as blessing

the newspaper as you open it,
praying for the spoiled and lost ones
on all corners of the earth.

It could be as simple as knowing
that prayer is also love-in-action
or even hate in non-action,

that there is only one you
in the entire universe,
that your spark-raising cannot be done
by anyone else, not even by God.
~~Jennifer (Jinks) Hoffmann 

Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light

Blessed are you

who bear the light

in unbearable times,

who testify

to its endurance

amid the unendurable,

who bear witness

to its persistence

when everything seems

in shadow

and grief.

Blessed are you

in whom

the light lives,

in whom

the brightness blazes—

your heart

a chapel,

an altar where

in the deepest night

can be seen

the fire that

shines forth in you

in unaccountable faith

in stubborn hope

in love that illumines

every broken thing

it finds.

– Jan Richardson

Annunciation

This, my morning prayer poem 
(It will accompany me for some time, I suspect)

Annunciation
by Marie Howe

Even if I don’t see it again — nor ever feel it
I know it is — and that if once it hailed me
it ever does–
and so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as toward a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,
as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t — I was blinded like that — 
and swam in what shone at me,
only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.

What Gorgeous Thing

I do not know what gorgeous thing

       the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
       beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
       whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
       that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
       in the world that is without
questions that can't and probably
       never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
       with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.
   ~Mary Oliver

A Poetic Rendering of The First Principle and Foundation Of Ignatius Loyola

Love made me -
Love sustains me -
Love leads me forth.

For this I sing praise,
bow low, and put
my life at the disposal of
Love.

Every tree - every
single star in the sky
points back toward
the Beloved.

May nothing pull me
away from Love - no
small wish of mine
next to the immensity
of the Beloved.

With the Beloved
may I shine.

~ Christine Rodgers

Lent's Invitation

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

John O'Donohue

There is a voice that stirs my longing, it is Christ

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

- Rainer Maria Rilke from: Book of Hours, I 59

Happy Valentine's Day

Roger wrote me this in 1971, true to his word and heart on his sleeve. What a joyous life we share, no matter what life has brought or may one day bring, to be in it together, my life's greatest blessing! 

 

Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.

"Nothing is Lost" by Noel Coward

"What the Heart Cannot Forget"

Everything remembers something. The rock, its fiery bed,
cooling and fissuring into cracked pieces, the rub
of watery fingers along its edge.

The cloud remembers being elephant, camel, giraffe,
remembers being a veil over the face of the sun,
gathering itself together for the fall.

The turtle remembers the sea, sliding over and under
its belly, remembers legs like wings, escaping down
the sand under the beaks of savage birds.

The tree remembers the story of each ring, the years
of drought, the floods, the way things came
walking slowly towards it long ago.

And the skin remembers its scars, and the bone aches
where it was broken. The feet remember the dance,
and the arms remember lifting up the child.

The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away,
everything it lost and found again, and everyone
it loved, the heart cannot forget.

~ by Joyce Sutphen, Coming Back to the Body

For Sharon

Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet.

Let it not be a death but completeness.

Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.

Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.

Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.

Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment, and say your last words in silence.

I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way.

    Excerpt from Tagore's The gardener 

Listen and attend with the ear of your heart - St. Benedict

When someone deeply listens to you

it is like holding out a dented cup
you've had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.
When someone deeply listens to you
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind's eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!
When someone deeply listens to you
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.
-John Fox

 

MIRACLE FAIR

The commonplace miracle:
that so many common miracles take place.

The usual miracles:
invisible dogs barking
in the dead of night.

One of many miracles:
a small and airy cloud
is able to upstage the massive moon.

Several miracles in one:
an alder is reflected in the water
and is reversed from left to right
and grows from crown to root
and never hits bottom
though the water isn't deep.

A run-of-the-mill miracle:
winds mild to moderate
turning gusty in storms.

A miracle in the first place:
cows will be cows.

Next but not least:
just this cherry orchard
from just this cherry pit.

A miracle minus top hat and tails:
fluttering white doves.

A miracle (what else can you call it):
the sun rose today at three fourteen a.m.
and will set tonight at one past eight.

A miracle that's lost on us:
the hand actually has fewer than six fingers
but still it's got more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:
the inescapable earth.

An extra miracle, extra and ordinary:
the unthinkable
can be thought.
   

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~