Category: Poetry

The World Has Need of Us

cliffs and gulls and boats
Port Anthony, Newfoundland, 2015

The World Has Need of You
everything here seems to need us…
– Rilke

I can hardly imagine it
as I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient
prayer of my arms swinging
in counterpoint to my feet.
Here I am, suspended
between the sidewalk and twilight,
the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.
What if you felt the invisible
tug between you and everything?
A boy on a bicycle rides by,
his white shirt open, flaring
behind him like wings.
It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little. Does the breeze need us?
The cliffs? The gulls?
If you’ve managed to do one good thing,
the ocean doesn’t care.
But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth,
the earth, ever so slightly, fell
toward the apple as well.

– Ellen Bass –

This notion of being reminded…remembering…knowing that we are needed by the world has been a theme in the poetry I’ve chosen for these recent Friday posts. Given that I retrieve many poems from social media, saved in a file for future sharing, apparently, I’m in good company – being reminded and inviting others to this remembering. When I read these poems, I feel soothed. My breath slows and deepens. A spaciousness from which to settle, reset, and choose emerges.

Yes, among many of us, last month’s US election and the subsequent appointments of those who will assume positions of power (over?) have evoked a collective bracing, an autonomic tightening of our bodies. This month, as we (in the Northern Hemisphere) are nudged or tossed into winter’s cold and growing darkness, and into a Holyday season where Hallmark cards and streamed movies consistently and reliably portray “the happily ever after,” and stores are filled to the rafters with Christmas tchotchkes, many of us are living a vastly different reality.

Yes, for many of us right now, it’s a hard time to be human. We know too much and too little. Suffering devastating losses, living in that tension, actually that grief, we may need to be repeatedly reminded – from whomever, wherever, whenever – that the world – animate and inanimate, human and more-than-human – has need of us. That “everything here seems to need us.”

Believe it. Then, notice the evidence.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Caretake This Moment

CARETAKE THIS MOMENT

Caretake this moment.
Immerse yourself in its particulars.
Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed.

Quit the evasions.
Stop giving yourself needless trouble.
It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now.
You are not some disinterested bystander.
Exert yourself.

Respect your partnership with providence.
Ask yourself often, How may I perform this particular deed
such that it would be consistent with and acceptable to the divine will?
Heed the answer and get to work.

When your doors are shut and your room is dark you are not alone.
The will of nature is within you as your natural genius is within.
Listen to its importunings.
Follow its directives.

As concerns the art of living, the material is your own life.
No great thing is created suddenly.
There must be time.

Give your best and always be kind.

~ Epictetus ~

I’m glad to have not only a folder of saved poems for Friday’s photo and poem feature, but ones already crafted and sitting in the draft folder that occasionally fit the mood. Today was my good fortune as after yesterday’s grueling session at the dentist for a root canal (“Hard work,” declared the dentist. “Tell my jaw,” thought I.), all I was up to last night sipping soup, with a side of Tylenol and Advil, was watching the recommended new Netflix series “‘Man on the Inside.”

Epictetus says it. And in a similar vein, John Muth in his classic children’s tale, The Three Questions, a reworking of Leo Tolstoy, here read by Meryl Streep. Too, a verse from Mary Oliver’s poem, Dogfish, that I love:

“…And anyway it’s the same old story – – –
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world…”

Better late than never, here it is.

May your Friday be touched by the glow of nature that shines as much from within you as it does from outside. And may we each and all be kind as we caretake the moments of our lives.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Catastrophe as a Clarion Call

Never more in times of turmoil and chaos, in times of anguish and division, are we this close to the guidance of wisdom. Like standing on the precipice as one thing recedes to make room for something new to exist.

Catastrophe is a clarion call to our highest abilities, but it requires each of us to step more fully into the way of wisdom. We must reconstitute the world through our many small but brave contributions.

So keep going. We need you. You are necessary.

– Toko-pa Turner, “Remaking the World” in Dreamspeak

Not a poem, but writing with a poetic voice, Toko-pa Turner’s timely instruction fit the bill for today’s photo and poem feature.

To remember the clarity and calm found in the eye of the storm…the invitation to wisdom…to persist with our small brave contributions…to know that we are needed and necessary …felt perfectly on point and necessary to share.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

To Never Forget

standing on the shore of Whidbey Island

To love. To be loved.

To never forget your own insignificance.

To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you.

To seek joy in the saddest places.

To pursue beauty to its lair.

To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple.

To respect strength, never power.

Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

~Arundhati Roy from The Cost of Living ~

I’ve taken the liberty to reformat Arundhati Roy’s words, originally written in paragraph, to emphasize the power of her statement. Every line, a simple, clear instruction for living in these times. A potent, unequivocal pointing to how to be, and what action to take, or not. An echoing of the many words, paragraphs, and poems that have been newly crafted or resurrected this past week to console and inspire.

This past Monday, in both Canada and the US, was a day officially designated to remember, to never forget the sacrifices made by millions of men and women who gave (and continue to give) life and limb, heart and mind, in the fight for human rights and freedom, and a democratic way of living. A profound juxtaposition that this day occurred so soon after election results that many fear will, with clear and unequivocal intention, undo and make, at the very least, moot these sacrifices.

A couple of years ago, in another Friday photo and peom feature, I posted William Stafford’s A Ritual to Read to Each Other (1998), wherein he reminds us:

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

In this week’s writing circle, a monthly zoom space where five of us (give or take, depending on life’s other plans) support each other in living a writerly life, despite life’s other plans, I was invited to read my poem, In the Days That Follow, posted here last week. We spoke of the need to take time to fully feel our griefs; to rekindle small communities of support; to intentionally look for evidence of our being enough; to hold onto our individual visions of hope.

Each a way to help us be awake amidst the deep darkness.
Each a commitment to never forget.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

In the Days That Follow

walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino, May 2022

In the Days That Follow

Imagine the wrongs made right, the crooked made straight
the middle way the means to hold the center strong
the point to rise again to choose again
to act with love, to be kind.

Invoke the wisdom of ancients, angels, and ancestors
with wild words of song, and prayers whispered
over a cauldron wrought of shadowed griefs
fired by our righteous rage.

Mix equal parts beauty, truth, and justice into
an elixir made in paradox, luminescent in the dark
heaven sent on the more-than-human breath
earth bound on waves of sand and water.

Elemental formula with sacred geometry
to bravely mend and steadfastly restore
our broken hearts, a torn country,
the exhausted planet.

A work in progress, this poem coalesced the day following the US election. Like many around the world, I awoke to the news I’d hoped and prayed would be different. A brief scroll though social media and a friend’s post of an image – no words – of a tear falling down a woman’s cheek said it all.

Last night, I began reading The Dreaming Way: Courting the Wisdom of Dreams (2024), the latest book by Toko-pa Turner. An internationally recognized dreamworker and one with whom I have personally studied, Toko-pa writes, “As our dreams nudge us in step with the larger intent of nature, we grow to see how necessary we are to these troubled times.”

Describing the Dreaming Way as the practice of choosing to live in reciprocity with the inner and outer worlds, she encourages us to regularly shift our attention away from our modern, external life of reason and rationale to take seriously the imaginal world and dreaming. By doing so, we are contributing to the shifting power in the world and enacting a revolution from within.

My poem, sourced from and steeped in the richness of the imaginal world, is a homage to knowing, trusting, and valuing the necessity of walking in both worlds, my long-time way of being. Now, I recommit to paying more and regular attention to my inner life, a takeaway from my most recent long walk, and the boon of living in my eldering landscape. My life and our world depend on it.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Holding Vigil Holding Each Other’s Hands

Capranica, Italy along la Via Francigena

My usual pattern is to post a poem with one of my photos on Fridays, maybe with some reflection – what evoked it being selected, or what it stirs in me. Mondays are for my own writing. Musings on my wabi sabi life. What I call “contemplative creative nonfiction.” Not sure that’s a legit genre beyond my imagination, but it is an apt description.

This morning (I’m writing on Sunday for a Monday drop), fresh with that extra “fall back” hour, this poem arrived in my inbox, the daily offering from the Daily Rattle. Written by American poet, playwright and essayist, Alison Luterman, it’s her in-the-moment response to the mounting tensions in the US. It resonates for me, for like it or not, what happens Tuesday, on their election day, reverberates around the world with vast implications. So, I’m shifting my pattern in response.

Thinking of my American friends and family members, I share Luterman’s heaviness and hold vigil with, as I wrote here on Friday, deep hope and much prayer. And as I wrote last Monday, knowing, too, the profound gift of care and safety that comes from holding each other’s hands and having each other’s backs.

May we not let go.

HOLDING VIGIL

My cousin asks if I can describe this moment,
the heaviness of it, like sitting outside
the operating room while someone you love
is in surgery and you’re on those awful plastic chair
eating flaming Doritos from the vending machine
which is the only thing that seems appealing to you, dinner-wise,
waiting for the moment when the doctor will come out
in her scrubs and face-mask, which she’ll pull down
to tell you whether your beloved will live or not. That’s how it feels
as the hours tick by, and everyone I care about
is texting me with the same cold lump of dread in their throat
asking if I’m okay, telling me how scared they are.
I suppose in that way this is a moment of unity,
the fact that we are all waiting in the same
hospital corridor, for the same patient, who is on life support,
and we’re asking each other, Will he wake up?
Will she be herself? And we’re taking turns holding vigil,
as families do, and bringing each other coffee
from the cafeteria, and some of us think she’s gonna make it
while others are already planning what they’ll wear to the funeral,
which is also what happens at times like these,
and I tell my cousin I don’t think I can describe this moment,
heavier than plutonium, but on the other hand,
in the grand scheme of things, I mean the whole sweep
of human history, a soap bubble, because empires
are always rising and falling, and whole civilizations
die, they do, they get wiped out, this happens
all the time, it’s just a shock when it happens to your civilization,
your country, when it’s someone from your family on the respirator,
and I don’t ask her how she’s sleeping, or what she thinks about
when she wakes at three in the morning,
cause she’s got two daughters, and that’s the thing,
it’s not just us older people, forget about us, we had our day
and we burned right through it, gasoline, fast food,
cheap clothing, but right now I’m talking about the babies,
and not just the human ones, but also the turtles and owls
and white tigers, the Redwoods, the ozone layer,
the icebergs for the love of God—every single
blessed being on the face of this earth
is holding its breath in this moment,
and if you’re asking, can I describe that, Cousin,
then I’ve gotta say no, no one could describe it
we all just have to live through it,
holding each other’s hands.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Hope

hope blooms eternal
photo captured October 30, 2024

HOPE
It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs
from the eyes to the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.

“Hope” by Lisel Mueller from Alive Together. © Louisiana State University Press, 1996.

I have a file where I save poems for my Friday blog. This one was posted by Parker Palmer in late July and felt apropos for today. He wrote by way of introduction:

“Today’s poet, Lisel Mueller (1924-2020), knew all about the threat of far-right politics, aka fascism. In 1939, her family fled Nazi Germany and emigrated to the U.S., where she eventually won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her poetry.

In this poem, she reminds us that hope is a fundamental dynamic in all forms of life, a way to name the energy keeps creating more life, one small act at a time, even in the face of very long odds.

She’s urging us to be sources of hope, sources of a deep resolve “not to betray one another.” I can think of no line that better sums up what’s at stake in the upcoming election. Let’s keep fomenting new life in any way we can. Much depends on it.”

Yes. I hope, with prayers, for my friends south of the border. For all who are suffering from the destruction of war and weather, illness and death. For us all.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Clouds

enroute to Gambassi Terme
enroute to Acquapendente

CLOUDS
All afternoon, Sir,
your ambassadors have been turning
into lakes and rivers.
At first they were just clouds, like any other.
Then they broke open. This is, I suppose,
just one of the common miracles,
a transformation, not a vision,
not an answer, not a proof, but I put it
there, close against my heart, where the need is, and it serves

the purpose. I go on, soaked through, my hair
slicked back;
like corn, or wheat, shining and useful.

Mary Oliver, in Why I Wake Early, 2004

Oh, the clouds.

Walking most of the eighteen days in Italy on la Via Francigena – up and down Tuscan hills, across the wide expanses of freshly tilled farmland, in forests dappled with light or dark and sodden with rain – those heavenly ambassadors companioned us, occasionally letting loose their heavy load. A common miracle turned potentially disastrous, depending on the day, the colour of the weather alert (yellow, orange or red) and location in the country, or continent. (In Morocco last week, rain turned years’ dry lakes and rivers into muddy flows.) We were always safe, with our technical guides, Ambra and then Laura, always checking on their various weather and trail apps.

One day, I accepted the invitation to make the memories that come from braving the elements, and walked with three of my companions the distance to Bolsena- every step in the persistent rain and wind. Twenty-six kilometers from early morning to late afternoon through acres of dying sunflowers, village streets, forest paths, up into the medieval town and then down its treacherously steep and slippery cobblestone to the lakeside town’s more contemporary hotels. Clouds so thick the spectacular views obscured until the next day.

Soaked but warm. No waterproofing enough to withstand the deluge.
Shining and smiling. Proud of our accomplishment.
Memories made.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

memories made in medieval Bolsena, Italy (me in red)
photo credit: Laura Harris

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

– Mary Oliver –

This poem arrived shortly after I had posted Monday’s blog, Love Letters to Life. Its imagery brings to life what I could only hope to have conveyed. That by walking alone along the same river routes for weeks, I began to know and feel my relationship with earth, with life, and its relationship with me. That as I re-remembered this, so, too, was I being remembered, taken in, and held by earth.

A few minutes ago, I wished my friend “buona notte” as we concluded our monthly Zoom call. Held within our mutual love and respect for each other, our conversations always bring gifts – an insight, deeper clarity, more to ponder. Knowing that in a week’s time I’ll be in Italy, feeling its imminent “realness” and growing excitement and curiosity, with her invitation I was able to speak my intention for walking, alone-together with women, currently strangers, but soon to be walking mates.

May we feel remembered by the earth.
May we “sleep as never before,” rising each morning rested, refreshed, and ready for the day’s stage.
May our thoughts “float as light as moths among the branches of perfect trees,” and not weigh heavy as stones in our packs.
May we feel the presence, support, and joy of being with each other, inviting each other and ourselves into “something better.”

This will be my last Friday photo and poem feature until my return in mid-October. I expect to post “love letters” on Facebook if you’d like to follow along. Until then, much love and kindest regards, dear friends.


So Much Happiness

so much happiness…in a boat by the Amalfi Coast

SO MUCH HAPPINESS

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to
pick up,
Something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs
or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
And disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
And now live over a quarry of noise and dust
Cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
It too could wake up filled with possibilities
Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
And love even the floor which needs to be swept,
The soiled linens and scratched records….

Since there is no place large enough
To contain so much happiness,
You shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
Into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
For the moon, but continues to hold it, and to share it,
And in that way, be known.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

I’ve been absent from this space for a few weeks. I’ve been preoccupied with walking in preparation for another long walk in Italy. This time, a section of the Via Francigena, one of the oldest of Europe’s many pilgrimages. In three weeks, I’ll be bound for Rome where, the Fairweather and Travel gods willing, I’ll land, secure my train ticket at the airport, and continue to one of Tuscany’s famous hill towns, San Miniato. There, I’ll stay in a bright, spacious apartment with a view onto vineyards and hills, to rest, recalibrate and meet my walking mates four days later.

This summer, I’ve walked close to four hundred kilometers in our river valley, rain or mostly shine, and mostly alone. When I’m not listening to podcasts or audio books, I’m aware of my shifting moods. Those uninvited guests – the sadness or irritation, self-doubt, and even anger – most often at the beginning of a walk when fatigue and loneliness weigh, when I’ve yet to find my stride, or my place within the nature that is surrounding me. When I stop to notice the beauty holding me, to breathe, to give myself a few words of encouragement for persevering, then happiness and gratitude arrive.

While this wasn’t the year for peaches here – cold froze the Okanagan orchards – we did have a bumper crop of raspberries with many eaten fresh and many more frozen for winter muffins, galettes, and smoothies. And that errant red currant seed dropped by a bird a couple of years ago bore just enough berries to make my first ever two small jars of glistening garnet-coloured jelly. So much happiness in a spoon, spread on sourdough seedy rye toast.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.