All this time,
the life you were
supposed to live
has been rising around you
like the walls of a house
designed with warm
harmonious lines.
As if you had actually
planned it that way.
As if you had
stacked up bricks
at random,
and built by mistake
a lucky star.

~from Northern Oracle (Spout Press, 2007)

My great grand uncle had a peculiar hobby.
He used to collect the feathers	
    of different kinds of birds
    of different colours, from different places.
His bedroom, corridor and staircase
Were full of thousands of colourful, colourless feathers.

On the day of his death
Just before sunrise, at dawn, 
My great grand uncle	
    went to the rooftop of his house
And threw the feathers into the morning air.
The feathers floated in the golden rays
            of the rising sun.
Some of the feathers dropped near.
Some went far.
Some floated towards eternity, the sky.

No, it is not possible to write a story	
            on this subject
But some feathers are still floating	
in the sky.

translated by the poet
~ from This Same Sky, A Collection of Poems from around the World, Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye (Aladdin Paperbacks, 1992)

Don’t be ashamed that your parents
Didn’t happen to meet at an art exhibit
Or at a protest against a foreign policy
Based on fear of negotiation,
But in an aisle of a discount drugstore,
Near the antihistamine section,
Seeking relief from the common cold.
You ought to be proud that even there,
Amid coughs and sneezes,
They were able to peer beneath
The veil of pointless happenstance.
Here is someone, each thought,
Able to laugh at the indignities
That flesh is heir to. Here
Is a person one might care about.
Not love at first sight, but the will
To be ready to endorse the feeling
Should it arise. Had they waited
For settings more promising,
You wouldn’t be here,
Wishing things were different.
Why not delight at how young they were
When they made the most of their chances,
How young still, a little later,
When they bought a double plot
At the cemetery. Look at you,
Twice as old now as they were
When they made arrangements,
And still you’re thinking of moving on,
Of finding a town with a climate
Friendlier to your many talents.
Don’t be ashamed of the homely thought
That whatever you might do elsewhere,
In the time remaining, you might do here
If you can resolve, at last, to pay attention.

~ from Callings (Penguin Poets, 2010)

She is working now, in a room     
not unlike this one,     
the one where I write, or you read.     
Her table is covered with paper.     
The light of the lamp would be     
tempered by a shade, where the bulb's     
single harshness might dissolve,     
but it is not, she has taken it off.     
Her poems? I will never know them,     
though they are the ones I most need.     
Even the alphabet she writes in     
I cannot decipher. Her chair—     
Let us imagine whether it is leather     
or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her     
have a chair, her shadeless lamp,     
the table. Let one or two she loves     
be in the next room. Let the door     
be closed, the sleeping ones healthy.     
Let her have time, and silence,     
enough paper to make mistakes and go on. 

~from The Lives of the Heart. © Harper Perennial, 1997

It happens all the time in heaven,
And some day

It will begin to happen
Again on earth -

That men and women who are married,
And men and men who are
Lovers,

And women and women
Who give each other
Light,

Often will get down on their knees

And while so tenderly
Holding their lover's hand,

With tears in their eyes,
Will sincerely speak, saying,

'My dear,
How can I be more loving to you;

How can I be more
Kind?'
	
~ from The Subject Tonight is Love (Pumpkin House Press, 1996)

It’s not holy if you tell it	
to a stranger 
on the beach.

It cannot be holy	
if it is a story whose telling
has just become habitual,
I met her in the shade,	
she wore green, 
inclined her head a bit,
we’d gone to the same school
but never met.

It is coarse, it is crude,	
it is profane and it does no favours
to the millions who wait
knowing or unknowing
for what is holy,
for what is secret,
for what can be told only in fragments,
reluctantly,
to old drunks and grandmothers
on buses,
barely listening. 

~ from Undercurrents, New Voices in Canadian Poetry
edited by Robyn Sarah (Cormorant Books, 2011)

So that’s life, then: things as they are? 
                           — Wallace Stevens 

Once there was music that could tear
your heart open and heal it
before you took another breath.
That was what art could do.
Kings and princes, bishops and popes

all knew this, as they knew
how to get what they wanted and keep
what they had. Mostly what happens
to people doesn’t happen by chance.
You spend your life in the mud,

you eat the same thin soup each night,
and then on Sunday a thousand angels
start to sing. The walls are ablaze
with suffering and forgiveness.
And you think this is what you’ll see

when you die. When you yearn,
this is what you yearn for. Or something
like it, the version you’ve been told
you can afford. They were smart to keep
belief and understanding at a distance,

go for the big effects, everything you get
when you’re through with this world,
the one you got stuck with—potatoes and soup,
the morning and the afternoon,

the afternoon and the evening,
things as they are.

~ from The History of Forgetting (Penguin Books, 2009)

Brains so sharp they know everything at once	
and don’t sort it into parts, their caw, caw, caw
parsed only by the dead in the stench of the gut.

Two crows or one: sorrow and joy have nothing	
to do with them.  Meat does, and the eyes of lambs,	
and rotting matter.  In the high boughs of the spruce

they tuck their feet beneath their robes and take confession.
Go on—it’s you who gives them that, their black	
Madonnas, their worry beads of bones.

They have no gods of punishment or absolution.
They have no stations.  Yet, without exception,	
they dote on their young, give them what they lac,

pluck the songbird’s newly hatched like living plums.

~ from The Wrong Cat (McClelland & Stewart, 2015)

It is I who must begin.

Once I begin, once I try —
here and now,
right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
— to live in harmony
with the “voice of Being,” as I
understand it within myself
— as soon as I begin that,
I suddenly discover,
to my surprise, that
I am neither the only one,
nor the first,
nor the most important one
to have set out
upon that road.

Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost.

~from Life Prayers from Around the World, edited by 
Elizabeth Roberts & Elias Amidon (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996)

Then, the winter will have fallen all in white
and the hill will be rising to the north,
the night also rising and leaving,
dawn light just coming in, the fire out.

Down the hill running will come that flame
among the dancing skeletons of the ash trees.
I will leave the door open for him.

~ from Winter (Hobblebush Books, 2013)

Let us step outside for a moment
As the sun breaks through clouds
And shines on wet new fallen snow,
And breathe the new air.
So much has died that had to die this year.

We are dying away from things.
It is a necessity—we have to do it
Or we shall be buried under the magazines,
The too many clothes, the too much food.
We have dragged it all around
Like dung beetles
Who drag piles of dung
Behind them on which to feed,
In which to lay their eggs.

Let us step outside for a moment
Among ocean, clouds, a white field,
Islands floating in the distance.
They have always been there.
But we have not been there.

We are going to drive slowly
And see the small poor farms,
The lovely shapes of leafless trees
Their shadows blue on the snow.
We are going to learn the sharp edge
Of perception after a day’s fast.

There is nothing to fear.
About this revolution…
Though it will change our minds.
Aggression, violence, machismo
Are fading from us
Like old photographs
Faintly ridiculous
(Did a man actually step like a goose
To instill fear?
Does a boy have to kill
To become a man?)

Already there are signs.
Young people plant gardens.
Fathers change their babies’ diapers
And are learning to cook.

Let us step outside for a moment.
It is all there
Only we have been slow to arrive
At a way of seeing it.
Unless the gentle inherit the earth
There will be no earth.

~ from Collected Poems (Norton, 1993)

Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has its own personality quirks which can easily be seen if you look closely. But there are so few days as compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than most people. But usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost traveler and bunches of cattle. For some reason we like to see days pass, even though most of us claim we don’t want to reach our last one for a long time. We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when we are convinced, our lives will start for real. Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted, as some days are, with the right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light breeze scented with a perfume made from the mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk.

~ from Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2013)

Don’t surrender your loneliness 
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human 
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft
My voice 
So tender

My need of God
Absolutely 
Clear.

~ from The Subject Tonight is Love, translated by Daniel Ladinsky (Pumpkin House Press, 1996)

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
 In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human—
looks out of the heart
burning with purity—
for the burden of life
is love,

but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.

No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love—
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
—cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:

the weight is too heavy

—must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.

The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye—

yes, yes,
that’s what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

~ from Collected Poems 1947-1980 (Harper Collins, 1981)

         The legendary Cang Jie was said to 
                  have invented writing after observing 
                  the tracks of birds.


A light snow last night,
and now the earth falls open to a fresh page.

A high wind is breaking up the clouds.
Children wait for the yellow bus in a huddle,

and under the feeder, some birds
are busy writing short stories,

poems, and letters to their mothers.
A crow is working on an editorial.

That chickadee is etching a list,
and a robin walks back and forth

composing the opening to her autobiography.
All so prolific this morning,

these expressive little creatures,
and each with an alphabet of only two letters.

A far cry from me watching
in silence behind a window wondering

what just frightened them into flight —
a dog's bark, a hawk overhead?

or had they simply finished
saying whatever it was they had to say?

~ from Ballistics (Random House, 2008)

IIt could have happened. It had to happen. It happened earlier. Later. Nearer. Farther off. It happened, but not to you. You were saved because you were the first. You were saved because you were the last. Alone. With others. On the right. The left. Because it was raining. Because of the shade. Because the day was sunny. You were in luck -- there was a forest. You were in luck -- there were no trees. You were in luck -- a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake, A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant . . . So you're here? Still dizzy from another dodge, close shave, reprieve? One hole in the net and you slipped through? I couldn't be more shocked or speechless. Listen, how your heart pounds inside me. ~ from Poems New and Collected 1957-1997

Along this cobble-stoned path	
a skin of ice tries to steal my step
as iris leaves, parched
but not yet snowbound,
whisper and rattle in judgment
from their frozen bed.

Some say a ghost lives in this house,	
a wife still waiting by the window
for the evening train.
How many years ago
did her husband ride the rails
each day, whistling,
swinging his lunch pail (so light,
so empty, on his return)
until the day of no return,
no whistle save the train’s?

Some say the draft	
that tonight in the dining room
licks my cheek like a plume
of cold breath is her spirit.
I am a skeptic		
but like the story, prefer it
to the diagnosis
“insufficient insulation.”

Outside, the irises dance:  
undone beauties
condemned to watch the living
carry on living.  Inside,
I turn to you without words,	
the two of us becalmed
amidst this restlessness of leaves,
a widow’s rustling skirts.

~ from The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home (Holy Cow Press, 2013)

I can’t leave my house
or answer the phone.
I’m going down again
but feeling no pain.

Settling at last		
accounts of the soul;
this for the trash,
that paid in full.

As for the fall, it
began long ago:
Can’t stop the rain,
Can’t stop the snow.

I sit in my chair.
I look at the street.
The neighbor returns   
my smile of defeat.

I move with the leaves.
I shine with the chrome.
I’m almost alive
I’m almost at home.

No one to follow
and nothing to teach,
except that the goal
falls short of the reach.

~ from Book of Longing (McLelland & Stewart Ltd, 2006)

Understand from the first this certainty. Butterflies don’t write books, neither do lilies, or violets. Which doesn’t mean they don’t know, in their own way, what they are. That they don’t know they are alive – that they don’t feel, that action upon which all consciousness sits, lightly or heavily. Humility is the prize of the leaf-world. Vainglory is the bane of us, the humans.

Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took time to reject them. Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don’t keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect.

~from Upstream (Penguin Press, 2016)

I meant to return long before this	
but in looking back we learn too much
of loss and I dreaded that.

Now going through the house	
and my parents’ lives
too revealed by what they saved

and what they left behind
for me to find, I feel nothing
but pain for the past

trying to understand
how I fell so short of what I intended
to do with my live.

How life twists and turns	
against us.  How a childhood
is not really understood

until it is lived a second time
in memory.  How wonderful
and how terrible

it seems now 
because it is gone
and because it was mine.

~ from The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home (Holy Cow Press, 2013)