Praying

 It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones: just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Thirst, 2006

If I Were

 There are lots of ways to dance and

to spin, sometimes it just starts my

feet first then my entire body, I am

spinning no one can see it but it is

happening. I am so glad to be alive,

I am so glad to be loving and loved.

Even if I were close to the finish,

even if I were at my final breath, I

would be here to take a stand, bereft

of such astonishments, but for them.

If I were a Sufi for sure I would be

one of the spinning kind.

A Thousand Mornings, 2012

The Uses of Sorrow

Someone once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.






Thirst, 2006

Heavy

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had His hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
"It's not the weight you carry

but how you carry it---
books, bricks, grief---
it's all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down."
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth/

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled---
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?



Thirst, 2006

Black Oaks

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,
     or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
     and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound, though the blue jays
     carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
     the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing
     for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage
     of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
     little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
     one boot to another---why don't you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
     of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,
     I don't even want to come in out of the rain.





West Wind, 1997

I'm Not the River

I'm not the river
that powerful presence.
And I'm not the black oak tree
which is patience personified.
And I'm not redbird
who is a brief life heartily enjoyed.
Nor am I mud nor rock nor sand
which is holding everything together.
No, I am none of these meaningful things, not yet.




Blue Horses, 2014

At Blackwater Pond

You know how it feels,
wanting to walk into
the rain and disappear--
wanting to feel your life
brighten and grow weightless
as a leaf in the fall.
And sometimes, for a moment,
you feel it beginning--- the sense
of escape sharp as a knife-blade
hangs over the dark field
of your body, and your soul
waits just under the skin
to leap away over the water.
But the blade,
at the last minute, hesitates
and does not fall,
and the body does not open,
and you are what you are --
trapped, heavy and visible
under the rain, only your vision
delicate as old leaves skimming
over the mounds of the seasons,
the limits of everything,
the few shaped bones of time.



Twelve Moons, 1972