I want to get up early one more morning,

before sunrise. Before the birds, even.

I want to throw cold water on my face

and be at my work table

when the sky lightens and smoke

begins to rise from the chimneys

of the other houses.

I want to see the waves break

on this rocky beach, not just hear them

break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to see again the ships

that pass through the Strait from every

seafaring country in the world—

old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,

and the swift new cargo vessels

painted every color under the sun

that cut the water as they pass.

I want to keep an eye out for them.

And for the little boat that plies

the water between the ships

and the pilot station near the lighthouse.

I want to see them take a man off the ship

and put another up on board.

I want to spend the day watching this happen

and reach my own conclusions.

I hate to seem greedy—have so much

to be thankful for already.

But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.

And go to my place with some coffee and wait.

Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

~ from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

(Random House, 1985)All throughout these months as the shadows have lengthened, this blessing has been gathering itself, making ready, preparing for this night. It has practiced walking in the dark, traveling with its eyes closed, feeling its way by memory by touch by the pull of the moon even as it wanes. So believe me when I tell you this blessing will reach you even if you have not light enough to read it; it will find you even though you cannot see it coming. You will know the moment of its arriving by your release of the breath you have held so long; a loosening of the clenching in your hands, of the clutch around your heart; a thinning of the darkness that had drawn itself around you. This blessing does not mean to take the night away but it knows its hidden roads, knows the resting spots along the path, knows what it means to travel in the company of a friend. So when this blessing comes, take its hand. Get up. Set out on the road you cannot see. This is the night when you can trust that any direction you go, you will be walking toward the dawn. ~from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

sometimes I wonder if Mary breastfed Jesus. if she cried out when he bit her or if she sobbed when he would not latch. and sometimes I wonder if this is all too vulgar to ask in a church full of men without milk stains on their shirts or coconut oil on their breasts preaching from pulpits off limits to the Mother of God. but then i think of feeding Jesus, birthing Jesus, the expulsion of blood and smell of sweat, the salt of a mother’s tears onto the soft head of the Salt of the Earth, feeling lonely and tired hungry annoyed overwhelmed loving and i think, if the vulgarity of birth is not honestly preached by men who carry power but not burden, who carry privilege but not labor, who carry authority but not submission, then it should not be preached at all. because the real scandal of the Birth of God lies in the cracked nipples of a 14 year old and not in the sermons of ministers who say women are too delicate to lead. ~ posted on Facebook on Dec 16, 2019 by Kaitlin Hardy Shetler

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive. Jump into experience while you are alive! Think... and think... while you are alive. What you call 'salvation' belongs to the time before death. If you don't break your ropes while you're alive, do you think ghosts will do it after? The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic just because the body is rotten -- that is all fantasy. What is found now is found then. If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death. If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire. So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is, Believe in the Great Sound! Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work. Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity. ~ from The Soul Is here For Its Own Joy, edited by Robert Bly (HarperCollins Publishers, 1995)

Some people feel lost inside their days. Always waiting for worse to happen. They make bets with destiny. My funniest uncle gave up cursing bad words inside his head. He says he succeeded one whole hour. He tried to unsubscribe to the universe made by people. He slept outside by himself on top of the hill. When Facebook says I have “followers”— I hope they know I need their help. Subscribe to plants, animals, stars, music, the baby who can’t walk yet but stands up holding on to the sides of things, tables, chairs, and takes a few clumsy steps, then sits down hard. This is how we live. ~ from The Tiny Journalist (BOA Editions, Ltd. 2019)

 for my mother

Odd but necessary the solution that comes to us,
to stare through glass at you: your parched face
slanted towards the afternoon light. On your wall
a forest you’d painted when we were young.

Two red coated figures walk under trees
and we remember the bedtime story you read us –
wardrobe portal into snow, a lamppost, Narnia’s wood.
Now, here is the masked carer, opening the window

to the love we yell in – such force it unsettles you.
We’re ready to turn back to our strange world
where we stand apart, can’t touch, but lucky
we’ve seen your lips pucker into one last kiss.

~ 11 April 2020, Blackrock, Co. Dublin
(Manchester Metropolitan University, 
https://www.mmu.ac.uk/write/through-the-window)

This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.

~ from To Bless the Space Between Us (Doubleday March 4, 2008)

I want to get up early one more morning,

before sunrise. Before the birds, even.

I want to throw cold water on my face

and be at my work table

when the sky lightens and smoke

begins to rise from the chimneys

of the other houses.

I want to see the waves break

on this rocky beach, not just hear them

break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to see again the ships

that pass through the Strait from every

seafaring country in the world—

old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,

and the swift new cargo vessels

painted every color under the sun

that cut the water as they pass.

I want to keep an eye out for them.

And for the little boat that plies

the water between the ships

and the pilot station near the lighthouse.

I want to see them take a man off the ship

and put another up on board.

I want to spend the day watching this happen

and reach my own conclusions.

I hate to seem greedy—have so much

to be thankful for already.

But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.

And go to my place with some coffee and wait.

Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

~ from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

(Random House, 1985)1. The tide comes in, swollen, inching over rocks. Here, the full day meets the broken day, and the hour, full of light, holds the sea in its arms. If blue is hope it is all around me. 2. In this frame, there is more weight on one side than on the other, surf pounding off rocks into openness, spaciousness, so that in the end one is just beginning possibility. 3. Let’s believe, in time all desire reaches it’s goal. I wear my loose and beautiful dress After the storm, water shows itself unbearably tender, haunting. 4. Honour, relinquishment. I plough soil again and again. Who doesn’t want what’s underneath? 5. When night comes, something speaks from that soft, fragrant wilderness. It says, the heart is not a door. But it opens. We feel in the dark for the hinge. The body, our great ally, knows what it's here for. ~ from In Cannon Cave (Brick Books, 1997)

I would like to describe the simplest emotion 
joy or sadness 
but not as others do 
reaching for shafts of rain or sun  

I would like to describe a light 
which is being born in me 
but I know it does not resemble 
any star 
for it is not so bright 
not so pure 
and is uncertain  

I would like to describe courage 
without dragging behind me a dusty lion 
and also anxiety 
without shaking a glass full of water  

to put it another way 
I would give all metaphors 
in return for one word 
drawn out of my breast like a rib 
for one word 
contained within the boundaries 
of my skin  

but apparently this is not possible  

and just to say - I love 
I run around like mad 
picking up handfuls of birds 
and my tenderness 
which after all is not made of water 
asks the water for a face 
and anger 
different from fire 
borrows from it 
a loquacious tongue  

so is blurred 
so is blurred 
in me 
what white-haired gentlemen 
separated once and for all 
and said  
this is the subject 
and this is the object  

we fall asleep 
with one hand under our head 
and with the other in a mound of planets  

our feet abandon us 
and taste the earth 
with their tiny roots 
which next morning 
we tear out painfully

~from The Collected Poems 1956-1998 (Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2007)

Everything remembers something. The rock, its fiery bed, cooling and fissuring into cracked pieces, the rub of watery fingers along its edge. The cloud remembers being elephant, camel, giraffe, remembers being a veil over the face of the sun, gathering itself together for the fall. The turtle remembers the sea, sliding over and under its belly, remembers legs like wings, escaping down the sand under the beaks of savage birds. The tree remembers the story of each ring, the years of drought, the floods, the way things came walking slowly towards it long ago. And the skin remembers its scars, and the bone aches where it was broken. The feet remember the dance, and the arms remember lifting up the child. The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away, everything it lost and found again, and everyone it loved, the heart cannot forget. ~ from Coming Back to the Body (Holy Cow! Press, 2000)

I am no longer waiting for a special occasion; 
I burn the best candles on ordinary days.
I am no longer waiting for the house to be clean; 
I fill it with people who understand that even dust is Sacred.
I am no longer waiting for everyone to understand me; 
It’s just not their task.
I am no longer waiting for the perfect children; 
my children have their own names that burn as brightly as any star.
I am no longer waiting for the other shoe to drop; 
It already did, and I survived.
I am no longer waiting for the time to be right; 
the time is always now!!
I am no longer waiting for the mate who will complete me; 
I am grateful to be so warmly, tenderly held.
I am no longer waiting for a quiet moment; 
my heart can be stilled whenever it is called.
I am no longer waiting for the world to be at peace; 
I unclench my grasp and breathe peace in and out.
I am no longer waiting to do something great; 
being awake to carry my grain of sand is enough.
I am no longer waiting to be recognized; 
I know that I dance in a holy circle.
I am no longer waiting for Forgiveness.
I believe, I believe.

~ from National Catholic Reporter December 15, 2006

All day he works at his cousin’s mill, 
so when he gets home at night, he always sits at this one window, 
sees one time of day, twilight.
There should be more time like this, to sit and dream.
It’s as his cousin says:
Living— living takes you away from sitting.

In the window, not the world but a squared-off landscape 
representing the world.  The seasons change, 
each visible only a few hours a day.
Green things followed by golden things followed by whiteness—
abstractions from which come intense pleasures, 
like the figs on the table.

At dusk, the sun goes down in a haze of red fire between two poplars.
It goes down late in summer—sometimes it’s hard to stay awake.

Then everything falls away.
The world for a little longer 
is something to see, then only something to hear,
crickets, cicadas.
Or to smell sometimes, aroma of lemon trees, of orange trees.
Then sleep takes this away also.

But it’s easy to give things up like this, experimentally, 
for a matter of hours.

I open my fingers—
I let everything go.

Visual world, language, 
rustling of leaves in the night,
smell of high grass, of woodsmoke.

I let it go, then I light the candle. 
 
~ from A Village Life (Ferrar, Straus and  Giroux, 2009)

for Michael

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records . . .

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

~ from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems 
(Far Corner Books, 1995)

You tell me to live each day as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen where before coffee I complain of the day ahead—that obstacle race of minutes and hours, grocery stores and doctors. But why the last? I ask. Why not live each day as if it were the first— all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing her eyes awake that first morning, the sun coming up like an ingénue in the east? You grind the coffee with the small roar of a mind trying to clear itself. I set the table, glance out the window where dew has baptized every living surface. ~from Insomnia (W. W. Norton, 2015)

I want to get up early one more morning,

before sunrise. Before the birds, even.

I want to throw cold water on my face

and be at my work table

when the sky lightens and smoke

begins to rise from the chimneys

of the other houses.

I want to see the waves break

on this rocky beach, not just hear them

break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to see again the ships

that pass through the Strait from every

seafaring country in the world—

old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,

and the swift new cargo vessels

painted every color under the sun

that cut the water as they pass.

I want to keep an eye out for them.

And for the little boat that plies

the water between the ships

and the pilot station near the lighthouse.

I want to see them take a man off the ship

and put another up on board.

I want to spend the day watching this happen

and reach my own conclusions.

I hate to seem greedy—have so much

to be thankful for already.

But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.

And go to my place with some coffee and wait.

Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

~ from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

(Random House, 1985)In out-of-the-way places of the heart, Where your thoughts never think to wander, This beginning has been quietly forming, Waiting until you were ready to emerge. For a long time it has watched your desire, Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, Noticing how you willed yourself on, Still unable to leave what you had outgrown. It watched you play with the seduction of safety And the gray promises that sameness whispered, Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, Wondered would you always live like this. Then the delight, when your courage kindled, And out you stepped onto new ground, Your eyes young again with energy and dream, A path of plenitude opening before you. Though your destination is not yet clear You can trust the promise of this opening; Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life’s desire. Awaken your spirit to adventure; Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will be home in a new rhythm, For your soul senses the world that awaits you. ~ from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (Doubleday, 2008)

Life is the only way 	
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the sand,
rise on wings;

to be a dog,
or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain
from everything it’s not;

to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chance	
to remember for a moment
a conversation held
with the lamp switched off;

and if only once
to stumble on a stone,
end up drenched in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;

and to keep on not knowing
something important.

~ from Map, Collected and Last Poems, Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak  
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2015)

These poems
they are things that I do
in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?
 
These words
they are stones in the water
running away
 
These skeletal lines
they are desperate arms for my longing and love.
 
I am a stranger
learning to worship the strangers
around me
 
whoever you are
whoever I may become.

~ from We’re On: A June Jordan Reader 
(Alice James Books, 2017)

Sometimes it seems as though some puppet-player,
   A clenched claw cupping a craggy chin
Sits just beyond the border of our seeing,
   Twitching the strings with slow, sardonic grin.

~ from Negro Poets and Their Poems (Associated Publishers, 1923

I wake, doubt, beside you,
like a curtain half-open.

I dress doubting,
like a cup
undecided if it has been dropped.

I eat doubting,
work doubting,
go out to a dubious cafe with skeptical friends.

I go to sleep doubting myself,
as a herd of goats
sleep in a suddenly gone-quiet truck.

I dream you, doubt,
nightly—
for what is the meaning of dreaming
if not that all we are while inside it
is transient, amorphous, in question?

Left hand and right hand,
doubt, you are in me,
throwing a basketball, guiding my knife and my fork.
Left knee and right knee,
we run for a bus,
for a meeting that surely will end before we arrive.

I would like
to grow content in you, doubt,
as a double-hung window
settles obedient into its hidden pulleys and ropes.

I doubt I can do so:
your own counterweight governs my nights and my days.

As the knob of hung lead holds steady
the open mouth of a window,
you hold me,
my kneeling before you resistant, stubborn,
offering these furious praises
I can’t help but doubt you will ever be able to hear.

~ from Ledger (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020)

Our Buddha nature not easily grasped.
Only a clear mind will capture it.            
Bright as a jewel fired in volcanic heat;
A lotus plucked from a kiln, its hue, lush and fresh.                        

~ translated from the Vietnamese by Kevin Bowen and 
Nguyen Ba Chung, 2007

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. ~ Public domain