The Panther {Rainer Maria Rilke} His vision, from the constantly passing bars, has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else. It seems to him there are a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is likeContinue reading “Poem for a Sunday Morning”
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Poem for a Sunday Morning
Shipwreck {Kay Ryan} I was shipwrecked beneath a stormless sky in a sea shallow enough to stand up in. — Fernando Pessoa They’re laughable when we get there— the ultimate articulations of despair: trapped in a tub filling with our own tears; strapped to a breadstick mast a mouse could chew down; hopping around theContinue reading “Poem for a Sunday Morning”
Poem for a Sunday Morning
Scaffolding {Seamus Heaney, 1939-2013} Masons, when they start upon a building, Are careful to test out the scaffolding; Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points, Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints. And yet all this comes down when the job’s done Showing off walls of sure and solid stone. So if, my dear,Continue reading “Poem for a Sunday Morning”
Poem for a Sunday Morning
I Happened To Be Standing {Mary Oliver} I don’t know where prayers go, or what they do. Do cats pray, while they sleep half-asleep in the sun? Does the opossum pray as it crosses the street? The sunflowers? The old black oak growing older every year? I know I can walk through the world, alongContinue reading “Poem for a Sunday Morning”
Poem for a Sunday Morning
Who makes these changes? I shoot an arrow right. It lands left. I ride after a deer and find myself chased by a hog. I plot to get what I want and end up in prison. I dig pits to trap others and fall in. I should be suspicious of what I want. – Rumi
Poem for a Sunday Morning
Caminante, no hay camino, Se hace camino al andar. Al andar se hace el camino Pathmaker, there is no path, You make the path by walking. By walking, you make the path. – Antonio Machado – XXIX, Border of a Dream: Selected Poems
Poem for a Sunday Morning
Among the Intellectuals They were a restless tribe. They did not sit in sunlight, eating grapes together in the afternoon. Cloud-watching among them was considered a disgusting waste of time. They passed the days in an activity they called “thought-provoking,” as if thought were an animal, and they used long sticks to poke through theContinue reading “Poem for a Sunday Morning”
Poem for a Sunday Morning
Some poems lodge themselves within us and at the right moment, given the smallest opening, emerge to break down the last few bricks that enclose revelation. This is one of those poems for me. I have heard David Whyte recite it many times, always commenting on how totally un-Irish it is for an Irish poetContinue reading “Poem for a Sunday Morning”
Poem for a Sunday Morning
Beannacht {John O’Donohue} On the day when The weight deadens On your shoulders And you stumble, May the clay dance To balance you. And when your eyes Freeze behind The grey window And the ghost of loss Gets into you, May a flock of colours, Indigo, red, green And azure blue, Come to awaken inContinue reading “Poem for a Sunday Morning”
Poem for a Sunday Morning
The Peace of Wild Things {Wendell Berry} When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and theContinue reading “Poem for a Sunday Morning”
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