Weekly Reading

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.
~ Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

I Will Not Die an Unlived Life

I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I will choose to inhabit my days. To allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live as that which came to me as a seed goes to the next as blossom and that which came to me as blossom goes on as fruit.
~Dawna Markova

Weekly Reading

Song For the Salmon
For too many days now I have not written of the sea,

nor the rivers, nor the shifting currents

we find between the islands
For too many nights now I have not imagined the salmon

threading the dark streams of reflected stars,

nor have I dreamt of his longing

nor the lithe swing of his tail toward dawn
I have not given myself to the depth to which he goes,

to the cargoes of crystal water, cold with salt,

nor the enormous plains of ocean swaying beneath the moon.
I have not felt the lifted arms of the ocean

opening its white hands on the seashore,

nor the salted wind, whole and healthy

filling the chest with living air.
I have not heard those waves

fallen out of heaven onto earth,

nor the tumult of sound and the satisfaction

of a thousand miles of ocean

giving up its strength on the sand.
But now I have spoken of that great sea,

the ocean of longing shifts through me,

the blessed inner star of navigation

moves in the dark sky above

and I am ready like the young salmon

to leave his river, blessed with hunger

for a great journey on the drawing tide.
-David Whyte