Weekly Reading

Singapore

 

In Singapore, in the airport,

A darkness was ripped from my eyes.

In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.

A woman knelt there, washing something

in the white bowl.

 

Disgust argued in my stomach

and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

 

A poem should always have birds in it.

Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.

Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.

A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain

rising and falling.

A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

 

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.

Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and

neither could win.

She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this?

Everybody needs a job.

 

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor,

which is dull enough.

She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as

hubcaps, with a blue rag.

Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing.

She does not work slowly, nor quickly, like a river.

Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

 

I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life.

And I want to rise up from the crust and the slop

and fly down to the river.

This probably won’t happen.

But maybe it will.

If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

 

Of course, it isn’t.

Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only

the light that can shine out of a life.  I mean

the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,

The way her smile was only for my sake; I mean

the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

Weekly Reading

Roses, Late Summer

What happens
to the leaves after
they turn red and golden and fall
away? What happens

to the singing birds
when they can't sing
any longer? What happens
to their quick wings?

Do you think there is any
personal heaven
for any of us?
Do you think anyone,

the other side of that darkness,
will call to us, meaning us?
Beyond the trees
the foxes keep teaching their children

to live in the valley.
So they never seem to vanish, they are always there
in the blossom of the light
that stands up every morning

in the dark sky.
And over one more set of hills,
along the sea,
the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.
If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn't mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question.
~Mary Oliver

Weekly Reading

Just for Now,
without asking how,
let yourself sink into stillness.

Just for now,
lay down the weight
you so patiently bear upon your shoulders.
Feel the earth receive you,
and the infinite expanse of the sky grow even wider
as your awareness reaches up to meet it.

Just for now,
allow a wave of breath to enliven your experience.
Breathe out whatever blocks you from the truth.

Just for now,
be boundless, free, with awakened energy
tingling in your hands and feet.
Drink in the possibility of being who and what you really
are – so fully alive that the world looks different,
newly born and vibrant,
just for now.
~ Danna Faulds

Weekly Reading

Just give me this: A rinsing out, a cleansing free of all my smaller
strivings so I can be the class act God intended. True to my purpose,
all my energy aligned behind my deepest intention.

And just this: A quieting down, a clearing away of internal ruckus,
so I can hear the huge stillness in my heart and feel how I pulse with
all creation, part and parcel of Your great singing ocean.

And this too: A willingness to notice and forgive the myriad times
I fall short, forgetting who I really am, what I really belong to. So
I can start over, fresh and clean like sweet sheets billowing in the
summer sun, my heart pierced with gratitude.
~ Belleruth Naparstek

Weekly Reading

 You, Reader

I wonder how are you going to feel
when you find out
that I wrote this instead of you,

that it was I who got up early
to sit in the kitchen
and mention with a pen

the rain-soaked windows,
the ivy wall paper,
and the goldfish circling in its bowl.

Go ahead and turn aside,
bite your lip and tear out the page,
but listen-it was just matter of time

before one of us happened
to notice the unlit candles
and the clock humming on the wall.

Plus, nothing happened that morning-
a song on the radio,
a car whistling along the road outside-

and I was only thinking
about the shakers of salt and pepper
that were standing side by side on a place mat

I wondered if they had become friends
after all these years
or if they were still strangers to one another

like you and I
who manage to be known and unknown
to each other at the same time-

me at this table with a bowl of pears,
you leaning in a doorway somewhere
near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.

Weekly Reading

Numbers
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.
I like the domesticity of addition--
add two cups of milk and stir--
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.
And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.
Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.
There's an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.
And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.
Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.
~Mary Cornish

Weekly Reading

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

~ Mary Oliver