Category Archives: poetry

Raised, with the doors open.

poetry, quotes, , , , ,

……………When I lay prostrate in despair,
Thou hast raised me to keep the morning watch.
…………….-From Morning Prayers

LANDSCAPE

Isn’t it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn’t it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I’m alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky—as though

all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.

-Mary Oliver

 

 

The earth’s heart and mine.

nature, poetry, trees, weather, , , , ,

This week I discovered Longfellow’s poem, “The Poet’s Calendar,” and I liked it so much I decided to memorize it, starting with the April section. Just before dusk today, as I was ambling along the creek path, I worked on those several lines, which are so musical, within a few minutes the words had flowed right into my heart. Two sorts of hearts are featured in the poem.

April in these parts started out pretty cold, but is beginning to warm up. We had several surprise showers after it seemed that rain had gone for good — of course not forever, though our dry California summers sometimes feel like “forever,” while we wait and hope for precipitation again in the fall. One of those showers was half-frozen slush that splatted on my car’s windshield for a few minutes.

Storksbill or Cranesbill – don’t remember which…

It’s easier to fit in a good walk, now that the clocks have been changed and there is more evening to work with. The live oaks along my path are sprouting new growth, and climbing roses that escaped their back yards bloom again on the chain link fence.

APRIL

I open wide the portals of the Spring
…..To welcome the procession of the flowers,
With their gay banners, and the birds that sing
…..Their song of songs from their aerial towers.
I soften with my sunshine and my rain
…..The heart of earth; with thoughts of love I glide
Into the hearts of men, and with the Hours
…..Upon the Bull with wreathed horns I ride.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from “The Poet’s Calendar”

What He had promised Himself.

poetry,

SALVATOR MUNDI: VIA CRUCIS

Maybe He looked indeed
much as Rembrandt envisioned Him
in those small heads that seem in fact
portraits of more than a model.
A dark, still young, very intelligent face,
A soul-mirror gaze of deep understanding, unjudging.
That face, in extremis, would have clenched its teeth
In a grimace not shown in even the great crucifixions.
The burden of humanness (I begin to see) exacted from Him
That He taste also the humiliation of dread,
cold sweat of wanting to let the whole thing go,
like any mortal hero out of his depth,
like anyone who has taken herself back.
The painters, even the greatest, don’t show how,
in the midnight Garden,
or staggering uphill under the weight of the Cross,
He went through with even the human longing
to simply cease, to not be.
Not torture of body,
not the hideous betrayals humans commit
nor the faithless weakness of friends, and surely
not the anticipation of death (not then, in agony’s grip)
was Incarnation’s heaviest weight,
but this sickened desire to renege,
to step back from what He, Who was God,
had promised Himself, and had entered
time and flesh to enact.
Sublime acceptance, to be absolute, had to have welled
up from those depths where purpose
Drifted for mortal moments.

-Denise Levertov

 

I was wordless in the singing world.

nature, poetry, work,

It is never my lot to “trifle around with a poem” the way Mary very profitably does, but I know about the thrill of getting unstuck and running (after a fashion) out the door. Just wandering in the garden often changes my mood drastically.  Rain is falling here at this moment, and watering my being.

WORK, SOMETIMES

I was sad all day, and why not. There I was, books piled
on both sides of the table, paper stacked up, words
falling off my tongue.

The robins had been a long time singing, and now it
was beginning to rain.

What are we sure of? Happiness isn’t a town on a map,
or an early arrival, or a job well done, but good work
ongoing.  Which is not likely to be the trifling around
with a poem.

Then it began raining hard, and the flowers in the yard
were full of lively fragrance.

You have had days like this, no doubt. And wasn’t it
wonderful, finally, to leave the room? Ah, what a
moment!

As for myself, I swung the door open. And there was
the wordless, singing world. And I ran for my life.

-Mary Oliver

Older photo, from a little later in spring.