Tag Archives: poetry

As If On a Mist

there are places
places on earth
that are magical
.
that no words can
hope to describe
.
where your soul
empty and drained
is restored
.
where the whispers of angels
shimmer through the trees
as if on a mist
.
perfectly and peacefully
.
and gently floating
on the warm spring breeze
.
drifting weaving
.
falling on my face
filling me with grace
.
-Michael Traveler, from “Places”
 
 

 

Going to the Woods Alone

“Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone,
with not a single friend,
for they are all smilers and talkers
and therefore unsuitable.
I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree.

I have my ways of praying,
as you no doubt have yours.
Besides, when I am alone
I can become invisible.
I can sit on the top of a dune
as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned.

 

I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.

 


If you have ever gone to the woods with me,
I must love you very much.”

-Mary Oliver

 

What is Divine in All of Us

My religion (by J Clement Wall)

My religion
doesn’t involve a church or a minister or a pulpit;
it’s practiced under a roof of sky,
whispered by the wind,
preached by birds and crickets and rivers and toads.

My religion
isn’t written in scripture;
it’s written in the hearts of lovers
and parents
and artists
and everyone who,
broken from the weight of too many endings,
gets back up to love again.

My religion
lies at the point of contact,
where feet meet earth,
where inhale meets exhale,
where your infinitely breakable heart meets mine.

My religion
isn’t big on words like sin and wrong and perfect;
it’s big on honesty, vulnerability, messiness… awe.
The followers of my religion
are badass, open-hearted, hippie warriors of love,
who know that you don’t dance to get somewhere
or sing to reach the end of the song.

We sing and dance to reach what is
divine in all of us.

In love,
we are each other’s salvation.

Rabbitt, Trail of the Cedars

Spring!

Oh, sweet Spring, welcome.

She brings her volatile mix of winds, snow, rain, gropple, melt, growth, buds, fawns, raven babies, and the bright greens of new grass in the meadow, aspens and larch.

Rebirth and sprouting and earth’s bounty are bubbling with heated passionate energy to be expressed.

Bring it! Bring it all!

May 10

“It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what.”
-John Galsworthy

Tree Silhouette

 

“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Sunset from Somers

Once You Start to Awaken

Spring’s sweetness is so close!  We awaken again to this glorious season of rebirth.

Time again to nourish our true self.

This poem by John O’Donohue eloquently expresses the longings that come with the unfolding of Spring.

Fence & Frozen Pond

Now, I am Impatient….!

Once you start to awaken, no one can ever
claim you again for the old patterns.

Now you realize how precious your time here is.

You are no longer willing to squander your essence on undertakings that do not nourish your true self; your patience grows thin with tired talk and dead language.

You see through the rosters of expectation which promise you safety and the confirmation of your outer identity.

Now you are impatient for growth,
willing to put yourself in the way of change.

You want your work to become an expression of your gift.
You want your relationship to voyage beyond the pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation dwells.

You want your God to be wild
and to call you to where your destiny awaits.

-John O’Donohue

 

Learning to be Astonished – Mary Oliver Poetry…

“My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.”


Mary Oliver