Weekly Reading

How would you life then?

What if a hundred rose-breasted grosbeaks
flew in circles around your head?

What if the mockingbird came into the house with you
and became your advisor?

What if the bees filled your walls with honey
and all you needed to do was ask them
and they would fill the bowl?

What if the brook slide downhill just past your bedroom windows
so you could listen to its slow prayers as you fell asleep?

What if the stars began to shout their names,
or to run this way and that way above the clouds?

What if you painted a picture of a tree,
and the leaves began to rustle,
and a bird cheerfully sang from its painted branches?

What if you suddenly saw that the silver of water was brighter than the silver of money?

What if you finally saw that sunflowers,
turning toward the sun all day and every day – who knows how,
but they do it – were more precious,
more meaningful than gold?
~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

Choice II
I do not respond
in predictable ways,
like a rat in a maze.

I am not controlled
by people or events.

I make conscious choices
that put me
in control of my life.

I think, then act,
and watch my life transform.

Spirit turns
the darkness before me
into light.

When blind to solutions at hand,
when the way seems blocked,
I trust divine intelligence
to reveal answers
and show the way
to paths I have not known.
~Gabriel Halpern

Weekly Reading

8. The Garden
What I want to know, please, is
what is possible, and what is not.
If it is not, then I am for it.
My heat is out of its flesh-phase.
I am done with all of it, the habits, the patience.
Whoever I was, it is growing hazy and forgettable.

Whoever I am it is for mere appearance's sake.
It is for coin, and foolishness,
and I am thinking of something better.
All morning it has been raining.
In the language of the garden, this is happiness.
The tissues perk and shine.
Truely this is the poem worth keeping.
A mossy house anyone with any sense would enter
as soon as the soul begins
to desire the impossible.
~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

Grammar
Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's a conjugated verb.
She's been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.
~Tony Hoagland

Weekly Reading

What I Believe
I believe there is no justice,
but that cottongrass and bunchberry
grow on the mountain.

I believe that a scorpion's sting
will kill a man,
but that his wife will remarry.

I believe that, the older we get,
the weaker the body,
but the stronger the soul.

I believe that if you roll over at night
in an empty bed,
the air consoles you.

I believe that no one is spared
the darkness,
and no one gets all of it.

I believe we all drown eventually
in a sea of our making,
but that the land belongs to someone else.

I believe in destiny.
And I believe in free will.

I believe that, when all
the clocks break,
time goes on without them.

And I believe that whatever
pulls us under,
will do so gently.

so as not to disturb anyone,
so as not to interfere
with what we believe in.
~Michael Blumenthal