Posted in poem, survival on December 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Starlings in Winter
Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly
they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,
dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,
[...]
Posted in poem on November 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A November Sunrise
Wild geese are flocking and calling in pure golden air,
Glory like that which painters long ago
Spread as a background for some little hermit
Beside his cave, giving his cloak away,
Or for some martyr stretching out
On her expected rack.
A few black cedars grow nearby
And there’s a donkey [...]
Posted in poem, prayer, survival on November 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
XI.
Though he was ill and in pain,
in disobedience to the instruction he
would have received if he had asked,
the old man got up from his bed,
dressed, and went to the barn.
The bare branches of winter had emerged
through the last leaf-colors of fall,
the loveliest of all, browns and yellows
[...]
Posted in poem, survival on October 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
COMPANY OF FRIENDS
When I die, let them judge me by my company of friends
Let them know me as the footprints that I left upon the sand
Let them laugh for all the laughter
Let them cry for laughter’s end
But when I die, let them judge me by my company of friends
When I die, let them toast to [...]
Posted in poem on September 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In The Night Orchard
I know, because Paul has told me
a hundred times, that the deer
gliding tonight through tangleweed
and trashwood, then bounding across
Mount Atlas Road, are after his pears.
And who could blame them?
On the threshold of autumn, the Asian
imports, more amazing than any Seckle
or indigenous apple, start [...]
Posted in Amsterdam NY, Montgomery County, NY, community, poem, survival on September 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
my city.
My city wakes up early.
Quietly sprawling, stretching its arms
before the sun rises.
My city wakes up early
because it knows there is work to be done.
My city keeps its nose to the grind.
Lifting, pushing, sweating,
and always keeping an eye on what is next.
My city keeps its nose to the grind
because it knows that pain is progress.
My [...]
Posted in poem, survival, women on August 15, 2009 | 1 Comment »
The day your son calls you on the telephone
and is no more your boy, you know
he is someone else’s man.
Hi, Mom! he calls across a chasm.
You guess the joy that carved it,
and you cry, Hello!
She will be the bridge, now,
between you and your son.
Overnight he has become shy with you.
Now that he knows her secret
he [...]
Posted in poem, quote on July 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
You are cloud, sea, forgetting; you are also what you lost in a moment– we are all those who have left. The reflection of our face in the mirror changes each instant and every day has its own labyrinth. The cloud vanishing in the sunset is our image; endlessly, a rose becomes another rose.
- [...]
Posted in poem on June 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Look to the Future
Look to the future
Detach from the past
Let the people go
Start a new this time
Look to the future
Love like it’ll last
Dream like it’s forever
No move envy
Look to the future
Have the star life
Learn from others
Take it in
Look to the future
Be proud with yourself
No more lies
No more disguises
Look to the future
Solve the unresolved
Be someone’s firefly
Stop [...]
Posted in poem on June 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Questions
If on a summer afternoon a man should find himself
in love with only one woman
in a sea of women, all the others mere half-naked
swimmers and floaters, and if that one woman
therefore is clad in radiance
while the mere others are burdened by their bikinis,
then what does he do [...]
Posted in poem, revitalization, survival on May 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Birches
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, [...]
Posted in poem on May 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
On a Perfect Day
… I eat an artichoke in front
of the Charles Street Laundromat
and watch the clouds bloom
into white flowers out of
the building across the way.
The bright air moves on my face
like the touch of someone who loves me.
Far overhead a dart-shaped plane softens
through membranes of [...]
Posted in poem, revitalization, survival, women on May 4, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Optimism
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and
over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the
light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another.
A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence [...]
Posted in poem, prayer, revitalization, survival on April 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
O Breathing Life, your Name shines everywhere!
Release a space to plant your Presence here.
Envision your “I Can” now.
Embody your desire in every light and form.
Grow through us this moment’s bread and wisdom.
Untie the knots of failure binding us,
as we release the strands we hold of others’ faults.
Help us not forget our Source,
Yet free us from [...]
Posted in poem, survival on April 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Foreseeing
Middle age refers more
to landscape than to time:
it’s as if you’d reached
the top of a hill
and could see all the way
to the end of your life,
so you know without a doubt
that it has an end—
not that it will have,
but that it does have,
if only [...]
Posted in poem, poetry, revitalization, survival, women on April 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over [...]
First Lesson
Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man’s float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you [...]
Posted in poem, poetry, prayer on March 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton, ‘We are All Writing God’s Poem’
by Barbara Crooker
Today, the sky’s the soft blue of a work shirt washed
a thousand times. The journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step. On the interstate listening
to NPR, I heard a Hubble scientist
say, “The universe is [...]
Posted in poem, poetry, prayer on March 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“It is only when people begin to shake loose from their preconceptions, from the ideas that have dominated them, that we begin to receive a sense of opening, a sense of vision.”
- Barbara Ward
Hear the words of the dancing God,
the music of whose laughter stirs the winds,
whose voice calls the seasons:
I who am the Lord [...]
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